On a recent morning before the sun rose, Alex Perez was up making his way to the MARTA station to do a trial run of the route to McCarthy construction company.

The 18-year-old rising senior at Benjamin E. Mays High School had been awarded a summer internship at the firm, and he had no intentions of being late.

If none of the other students in the Atlanta Studio for Creative Inquiry program understood the importance of such an opportunity, Perez did.

This was his shot to shine, to begin to pave the way out of the poverty he'd known his entire life. If he did a good job at McCarthy —- and that was his intention —- maybe he'd get a shot at college, too, and ultimately a better life.

Just 12 miles separate the Fairburn Road group home in Atlanta, where Perez has lived the past two years, and the McCarthy firm on Riveredge Parkway.

Twelve miles but it took two buses, two trains and 2 1/2 hours to get there. Perez knew he'd have to start no later than 6:30 a.m.

Just talking about it the other day made him sound like a man beating his chest.

"I was on time," he said with a big grin.

Such determination is what made Jeffrey Toebe, vice president of estimating at McCarthy, notice Perez weeks earlier.

The two met in late May when Toebe was invited to judge design projects for the Studio for Creative Inquiry, a program designed to expose minority high school students like Perez to the fields of architecture, design and construction.

Toebe liked Perez's design, but the thing that impressed him the most, perhaps, was the student's determination.

For two weeks, he worked on the project, but "I kept messing up," he said.

Perez also said that he didn't get many of the supplies he needed until the eleventh hour because he didn't have the money.

He told the judges during his presentation that he'd worked until 4 that morning to complete his project.

Toebe could relate. He said it's not unusual for his team to do the same preparing bids for construction projects, crunching numbers at the eleventh hour.

Offering an internship to one of the students hadn't figured into his plan that day, but Toebe said he appreciated the program's mission.

"Some of the government projects we bid on have to have minority subcontractors and suppliers," Toebe said.

"We deal with that day to day. Getting women and minorities involved on the front side will help the industry."

The Atlanta program is the brainchild of Oscar Harris, the 64-year-old founder and CEO of Turner Associates Architects and Planners in downtown Atlanta.

Harris modeled the program after a similar one at Carnegie Mellon University, his alma mater and one of his program's sponsors.

After 31 years in the industry, he was considered an expert in his field. He was the architect behind such projects as the light tower in Centennial Olympic Park and Concourse E and the atrium at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

"After you've been in this thing so long, you want to reach back and bring others along with you," Harris said.

He was also concerned about the lack of diversity and wanted to bring other minorities "into this profession I loved so much."

The program, started in 2004, attracts about 20 students annually and teaches them architecture and engineering classes and exposes them to colleges, architectural and engineering firms, and construction sites. Students then must turn their design ideas into scale models.

"The creativity of these kids is unbelievable," Harris said. "They just need the opportunity to see what's possible."

Perez was nervous the first few days at McCarthy, then "I realized these are people just like me," he said.

They are and they aren't. Few of the people at McCarthy grew up poor like Perez, Toebe said. Most had both of their parents to look after them.

And not only were they provided what they needed, they got much of what they wanted, too.

What they do have in common with Perez, perhaps, is their drive.

"Somebody in the family has to be successful," he said. "I'm going to work my hardest to make my life better."

And you believe him because Alex Perez has already proved he's more than willing to go the extra mile to make it.

For now, though, he doesn't have to get up so early.

Toebe and the others at McCarthy take turns picking him up.

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