Gaspar Marcos is an 18-year-old sophomore at Los Angeles’ Belmont High School, where “nearly 1 in 4 of the school’s estimated 1,000 students came from Central America – many of them as unaccompanied minors.” In a video posted Friday, the Los Angeles Times follows Marcos, an unaccompanied minor in Los Angeles, through a full day of high school and a late night at work. Marcos grew up in an indigenous village in Guatemala and became an orphan at 5. He was taken in by a neighbor, but was on his own at the age of 12. Now 18 in Los Angeles, he remains positive about life, despite the long hours at work and school with very little sleep. Marcos says, “I tell my friends that we can’t fall back. This is the life that we were dealt. We have to overcome it, by any means possible.”