Cool Kid Michael Dominguez helps students, teachers and senior citizens with computers

SANTA FE SPRINGS, Calif. (KABC) -- Our ABC7 Cool Kid for April 12 is Michael Dominguez, who may be just 17 years old, but is helping students and teachers build, repair, network and program computers.

"Now, the world is kind of moving toward the technological side," Dominguez said. "So the more computer programmers we have, the more we'll be able to control the technology."

This Santa Fe High School senior volunteered more than 200 hours this year serving as the school's Business Academy IT Specialist and Secretary, where he's responsible for managing, servicing, setting up computers and presentation equipment for events.

"All the technology that we do in four of our classrooms, we've got 160 computers we support. Michael takes the lead," said Dave Miller, director of the Business Academy at Santa Fe High School. "He is one of our best!"

Dominguez is also taking courses at Rio Hondo Community College, works with future business leaders for the city of Santa Fe Springs Chamber of Commerce and finds time to help senior citizens with their computer problems and fixes.

"One woman I helped, I went up to her house to install her printer because she wasn't sure what was wrong with it," Dominguez said. "It was jamming the paper, and there was a pen that her cat threw inside the paper feed. So, when it was going through there, the pen was crumbling up the paper and wasn't letting it go through. I fished that out for her with a ruler."

This Cool Kid was pursuing a career in music, until he realized his love of video games could lead to a whole new world in computer science. Now, he dreams of rivaling innovators Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

"Not a lot of people want to deal with all the waste that we produce," Dominguez said. "So I want to create artificial intelligence that will take care of that for us."