By the time she was 16, Rama Youssef had fled a civil war, weathered bullying taunts by American seventh-graders and, using English, her second language, talked her way into a private high school in North Portland.

Yet by her own account, perhaps the hardest thing she's faced in her young life was figuring out how to pay for college.

"There were moments when I thought it wasn't possible," said Youssef, 18, who graduated from De La Salle North Catholic High School in June.

A Syrian immigrant, she never qualified for federal grants or student loans that help millions pay for higher education each year. Her family, scattered throughout the world from their country's conflict, couldn't afford to help.

This week, she began classes at California Lutheran University, where she's earned a full-ride scholarship and plans to study biology.

The St. Johns resident hopes to take the opportunities America has provided her and help others who are following a similar path – she wants to become a dentist and provide care to those displaced by war or famine.

"She's fought hard to create the very change she's envisioned," said Stephanie Barnhart, a friend and mentor in Portland. "I don't think a lot of us have that drive in adult life, let alone at 18 years old."

Six years before, life was much different for Youssef, the youngest of four daughters in a traditional Sunni Muslim household.

She lived in Damascus, Syria's capital, as a civil war raged. In March 2012, Youssef recalled, a bomb blast ripped through a section of the city close to where she attended middle school.

"It was then that my mother decided we had to leave," she said.

One of her older sisters had previously married a Syrian-American man and moved to San Diego. Youssef joined her sibling in the U.S., arriving that summer on a tourist visa.

Her mother, however, chose not to settle in Southern California and instead sought asylum in Germany. Youssef's father remained in Syria, where he still lives.

Without parents and with no command of English, Youssef started seventh grade in San Diego. She was frightened and painfully shy, she recalled. Her classmates, she said, targeted her for being different.

"I was called a terrorist by some of them," she said.

But life would get better. She'd make friends. She'd master English. By her second year of high school, Youssef started to feel like she had obtained some semblance of a normal life.

Then her sister's husband got a new job at a furniture store in Portland. The three moved to Oregon in 2016.

It was during that summer, while she worked at a Subway franchise on North Interstate Avenue, that Youssef first became interested in the red brick private school only blocks away.

De La Salle, she learned, offered a rigorous education to students, most of them low-income minorities. But it was rare for the school to grant outside transfers to those entering their junior or senior years.

Days before fall classes began, Youssef pressed her luck and finagled a meeting with the school's president.

"There was this young girl on my couch, and she started to tell her story, she started to cry," recalled Tim Hennessy, who retired from De La Salle last December. "She really touched my heart. Her story touched my heart."

Youssef started her junior year there just days later.

The school's unconventional curriculum offers classes only four days a week and requires students to work one day a week with a Portland-area business. Youssef held jobs with Willamette Week, where she met Barnhart, and later Nike, a competitive gig among her peers.

During this time Youssef said she also became involved with a number of social justice issues. She advocated for the rights of immigrants and volunteered with Syrian refugees who had recently resettled in the Northwest.

All the while Youssef fell in love with Portland. The St. Johns Bridge near her home. Northeast Alberta Street. The kind-hearted people with whom she crossed paths.

"I felt welcome here," she said. "I felt safe, too."

For the first time Youssef began to think about college, though with some hesitation. No one in her family had ever been. Nor did they have the money to pay for higher education.

Her immigration status was another hurdle. She now received Temporary Protective Status in the U.S., a program that currently extends to about 7,000 Syrians.

It allowed her to legally work and live in U.S. without fear of deportation. But it excluded her from receiving any type of federal financial aid for school.

"I remember her coming into my office one day, convinced that she couldn't do this," Hennessy said, the De La Salle president, said.

He and others persuaded her to try. Youssef threw herself into applying for schools and scholarships.

"She completely worked her butt off," said Barnhart, who added she helped edit more than two dozen scholarship applications Youssef submitted.

Her persistence eventually paid off. California Lutheran, in Thousand Oaks, offered her a full scholarship, which covered $40,000 a year in tuition and fees. But there was still the issue of room and board costs, which amounted to another $15,000.

So Youssef got to work. This summer, while many of her friends relaxed or readied for the fall, she juggled three jobs. She was a receptionist at Willamette Week, a tennis instructor for kids in North Portland and a cashier at the Dick's Sporting Goods on Jantzen Beach.

Her friends and mentors also encouraged Youssef to start a GoFundMe page to help cover her room and board, which has raised more than $10,000.

Speaking with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Youssef was upbeat, optimistic and grateful.

"America's thrown a lot of opportunities my way," she said. "I've taken every single one of them."

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

skavanaugh@oregonian.com

503-294-7632 || @shanedkavanaugh