He’s the top graduate from Canada’s largest university — straight A-plus marks, the heady John Black Aird prize from the University of Toronto, a silver medal from the Governor-General. And for part of his studies, Anh Cao lived in a homeless shelter.

How this impish gifted student from Vietnam overcame economic odds to become a molecular biology whiz, a dazzling researcher and a teaching assistant so talented he now trains other tutorial leaders, speaks to his grit, to Canadian kindness and the fact it can take a village to raise an academic rock star.

There’s no denying his gift, marvels immunology professor Bebhinn Treanor, who said her jaw “fell on the floor” the day the second-year student sent her an outline of how her lab might tackle a stubborn research problem she had described to him that afternoon. “I was absolutely dumbfounded. He gets right to the heart of the issues, and he’s so enthusiastic.”

Yet his hefty $116,000 scholarship from the Vietnamese government proved no match for Canada's steep tuition for international students, which for Cao has climbed to $33,000 a year. When money ran short, he moved to a homeless shelter for a semester.

This year he has lived for free in a friend’s den and relied on home-made dinners made for him each day by Karen Siddique, the woman who cleans the science lab. Lunch came each day from the mother of a master’s student who heard how much Cao liked her hummus.

“Yay Canada — here’s what I have learned about this country: If you need help, there will be help for you,” said the grateful 23-year-old Monday after graduating at Convocation Hall in gown and sneakers, clutching a Vietnamese flag and a U of T teddy bear in cap-and-gown given to him by Siddique. He was heading home for the summer Tuesday night and will be back this fall to start on a master’s degree.

Still, some of Anh Cao’s hurdles were his own fault.

If he hadn’t grown so keen in first year to become a researcher in Treanor’s lab, he wouldn’t have decided to take two summer courses to speed up his qualifications, and wouldn’t have raided the fall installment of his scholarship to pay for them.

So he most certainly would not have had to Google “homeless shelter for students in Scarborough” at the start of second year.

“It was great, really; I found Second Base Youth Shelter near the Kennedy subway station and lived there for first semester,” recalled Cao breezily. “It was free food and TTC tokens and a wake-up call every morning, and they found me a quiet place to study.”

When his next installment came at year’s end, he moved back to residence.

Second Base Executive Director Sharon Allen-Elliott was proud Tuesday to hear of Cao’s success. “If we were able to help, we’re glad to make that difference.”

Cao also volunteered for the first two years for a hospice, visiting people in palliative care in their homes to offer companionship, make them lunch and clean their homes, as a way, he said, “to get to know Canada.”

How ironic, noted Treanor, “that he was cleaning other people’s houses when he was homeless himself.”

Cao wants Canadians to know not all international students are from rich families. His parents, a retired soldier and an English tutor, earn only about $500 a month. He is grateful for the scholarship of $75,000 for tuition and $36,000 living expenses over four years — “That was huge.” The U of T also gave him an $8,000 entrance scholarship.

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But compared with universities in the United States, Canadian universities could do more “to make it easy for international students through more grants and scholarships and financial assistance.”

FUN FACTS ABOUT ANH CAO

A wizard with numbers, not so much with money

He’s too darn generous for his own good, said his friend and master’s student Tiantian Zhao, who works with Cao in Professor Bebhinn Treanor’s immunology lab. “He had just $20 in his bank account and he used it to buy doughnuts that he passed around to everyone – even people he doesn’t know. With his last $20!”

He flies the flag of Vietnam … on his back

The Vietnamese international student wore the bright red flag of his home country on his shoulders, like a Superman cape, when he crossed the stage at Convocation Hall to collect his degree. “It’s a way to thank the 18 million people of Vietnam who paid taxes for (the scholarship that allowed) me to come. That was huge.”

Brainy food-aholic

“You should see how much he can eat,” marveled lab-mate Tiantian Zhao. “Four pounds of chicken wings at one sitting — four!” Caretaker Karen Siddique, who cooked his dinners all year, said “he’ll eat anything. He’s not fussy.” What is he dreaming of when he goes home this summer to Vietnam? “Junk food!” said Cao. “Vietnamese junk food!”

He taught his mother to send emails

His mother speaks English well — she’s a private English tutor in Ho Chi Minh City — but she hadn’t really got onto email, so Cao taught her how to type on a computer before he came to Canada four years ago so they could keep in touch. “Now she emails me every morning — and we Skype too.”

The brainiac who is afraid of the SAT

Which is one reason, he said, he picked a Canadian university — “no SATs!” Still, the University of Toronto grad with the 4.0 grade point average said he will have to cram for the GRE exam this summer, a requirement of many graduate programs.