Clovis Unified senior spent over 1,000 hours of his time giving back to others

CLOVIS, Calif. (KFSN) -- Alexander Ewing will be graduating from Buchanan High School on Wednesday. Not only as a member of the National Honor Society, but with over 1,400 hours of community service.

"What I did was I went out and I gave food to the homeless, or I would volunteer for outreach events for robotics."

Ewing said he thought his hours would only total to 200 or 300, but was shocked after he added them up.

Ewing tells us his passion to give back to his community began when his robotics team made it to the world championships in the 4th grade. He said his team would not have been able to make it without mentors from Buchanan.

"Ever since then I always thought it was really amazing we were able to do that with the support of the mentors, and so I thought that I would go out and try to help other people too."

The Clovis Unified senior said he would not be where he is today without his family.

"They've always driven me to try to do something better than what I've already done, and so I mostly just put that into school," said Ewing.

Ewing said he has received about 10 scholarships so far, totaling close to $10,000. He will be going to Fresno State in the fall and said his decision to go there was made after spending time in Fresno State's Cancer Research Lab during an internship there.

"We were growing breast cancer cells for drug testing and then I was also working on pancreatic cancer bio-markers."

Ewing said he eventually wants to get his PhD in synthetic biology and conduct cancer research.