I was also a mediocre student because I was usually out with friends or in front of a computer... although I did somehow end up going to UCSD - you must be talking about the solana beach amtrak station in the article right? :) I took the Surfliner home to Ventura county many times during my 4 years in SD.

Either way though, I just think (could be wrong) it's much more rare to find high school kids doing "real" work these days, like admining production servers or writing software that ships to customers.