Section A · Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, September 23, 1997
Single mom returns to Harvard after legal battle
The Associated Press
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — For Gina Ocon, the choice was easy.
The unmarried 21-year-old mother could stay at home in Southern California with her infant daughter, scraping by on welfare. Or she and little Bailey could return to Massachusetts and a $35,000 scholarship to Harvard University.
But the father of her child wanted Ocon to stay in California so he could be near his daughter.
Now, after months of rancor and court battles, Ocon and Bailey are back at Harvard, settling into a routine of classes and daycare.
Being a single parent, she said,
has put Harvard in perspective.
"There are more important things than just getting straight A's and going to the best law school in the country," she said.
Ocon had just finished her freshman year at Harvard when she returned to her native Lakewood, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb, in 1995. She was looking for a fun romance after a tough academic year. She found it in Tommaso Maggiore, a high school acquaintance and community college student who worked in his family's Italian restaurant.
When the summer ended, the couple decided to date long-dis
Ocon withdrew from school and returned to California to have the baby. Her Harvard friends said that she was crazy and that she was going to ruin her life.
tance, and Ocon returned to Harvard. She didn't realize she was pregnant until October.
After Bailey was born in June 1996, the relationship between the baby's parents began to unravel. Ocon resented that she was still in California and not back at school. Maggiore filed for custody.
The case went to trial. Ocon went on welfare.
Maggiori argued that he and his family could better care for Bailey in California. And he called his ex-girlfriend selfish for wanting to move their child to Massachusetts. A court ruled in Ocon's favor.
Ocon has sole custody. Maggiore can see Bailey during school vacations. The parents split Bailey's daycare costs, and Maggiore pays $214 a month in child support.
Harvard agreed to increase the scholarship package Ocon was receiving, providing additional money for living expenses, a one-bedroom unfurnished graduate student apartment overlooking the Charles River and health insurance for the baby.
Youth uses his toothbrush to flee detention center
The Associated Press
NEW ULM, Minn. — A 16-year-old boy escaped from a juvenile detention center by holding a sharpened toothbrush to a jailer's throat. He then attacked a man with a golf club before being recaptured yesterday, police said.
The teen-ager, whose name was not released, had been at the detention center on attempted murder charges for allegedly shooting a police officer at a
high school Sept. 11. The officer was grazed on the forehead.
Investigators said the student had apparently gone to the school to kill someone or take hostages.
On Sunday night the boy held a sharpened toothbrush to a jailer's throat and demanded her car keys, but the woman had taken her bicycle to work that day, police Sgt. Erv Weinkauf said. The teen-ager got another worker to let him out, released the jailer and ran off.
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