Computers pull Eagle Point grad

"We're going to write down all the steps," the Eagle Point High School senior said.

"If you don't understand how something works in your head, it's 10 times harder to understand it in a computer language."

After two hands of cards, Cox sent the students back to their computers to write their portion of the program they were creating that day -- a blackjack game.

They saved their work on a disk and projected the results onto a classroom wall. Students watched with interest as Cox worked out the bugs in the program.

But when the bell rang, the "teacher" became a student again and rushed off to physics.

The self-taught computer programmer will walk down the aisle in Eagle Point's graduation ceremony June 11. After he receives his diploma, he's bound for University of Nevada in Reno, where he will study computer programming and repair. He wants to write code for a computer game or software company and eventually start his own business.

"I want to have enough money to not worry about whether the company does really well or not before I even think of starting on my own," Cox said.

Former Eagle Point computer teacher Dan Swanson says he has no doubt that Cox will fulfill his dream.

"He's turned into a confident, outgoing person who will be successful," said Swanson, now network administrator at George Fox University.

"It's great to see a kid get turned on to something like computers and turn it into a career."

Cox said he didn't know how to use a computer when he transferred to Eagle Point from Henley High his sophomore year.

Swanson taught him the programming languages "Q-basic" and Turbo Pascal. But Swanson moved to Newberg last year and his position wasn't replaced. That left Cox without a teacher for C++, another programming language.

So he taught himself, using the Internet, books and his former teacher. He learned the language so well that he began instructing about a dozen students this year in a teacher-supervised classroom.

"We started off by making a Space Invaders clone. I wanted to show them what they could do," Cox said.

"I wanted to make the game visually interesting -- not just text and numbers -- because I wanted to get their interest."

Eagle Point computer student Adam Chapman said he liked having Cox for a teacher.

"He explains it and then I understand it," Chapman said.

Besides his volunteer teaching job, Cox works part time for his accountant parents, Rebecca and Gary Rhinehart, owners of Jackson County Accounting.

Cox spends his free time with his 1-year-old daughter, Genesis Tepper, and her mother, Timra, who is working on her diploma. He also plays in the punk band Vexation.

Eagle Point High English teacher Samantha Steele moved Cox into an advanced English class after she saw his name on a list of English students with discipline problems.

"Once he was around kids who were focused, he became focused," Steele said.

"When Chris starting taking himself more seriously and when people started treating him with respect, he made decisions about what he wanted to be."

Now he hopes his bent for computers (and teaching) will catch the eye of a future employer.

"I don't want to see any of my potential go to waste," Cox said.