Growing up in Oakland, California, Victor Rios’ life seemed preordained. His father abandoned the family before he was even born. Rios was in juvenile detention three times by age 15, with three criminal felonies to his name. He stole cars, dropped out of school and joined a gang. To outsiders, he was such a stereotype of a troubled urban youth that he was featured in a 1994 PBS "Frontline" episode about the failures of school integration.

Twenty-five years later, PBS is revisiting Rios, who went on to graduate college, earn a doctorate, and become an acclaimed speaker and educator. Rios, 42, is now a tenured professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

For Rios, it took a drastic event — the murder of his best friend — to change his path. He was able to turn his life around in part because he had one high school teacher, Flora Russ, who encouraged him to return to school. “She believed in me so much,” Rios says in his TED Talk, “that she tricked me into believing in myself.”

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