Attempting to stay out of the limelight of his dad’s $8 million cancer center ground breaking Friday, Dr. Amarjit Dhaliwal’s 11-year-old son Amrit is already a success in his own right with an eye to the future of becoming a surgeon.

The sixth grade student has become involved in three basketball teams – two at school and another on a traveling team as point guard.  Asked about the greatest number of baskets he has made in any one game, he recalled a traveling team competition in Arizona where he actually scored 45 points himself.

The youngest of four children in the family, both dad and Amarjit work on basketball moves at home for an hour or two every night after the senior Dhaliwal gets home.

Amarjit said he was encouraged to be a surgeon – to be the best he can be – by his fifth grade teacher at St. Stanislaus School in Modesto last year.  

As a fifth grader he said his favorite class was algebraic addition. He is hoping he can make a difference someday like his dad.

Talking with his father about medicine is something he has been doing as well.  Amrit said just yesterday he had asked his dad about the splitting of a cell that spreads into cancer as to where the cancer locates.  Is it at the site the bad cell it originated from or does the cancer spread to a random area, he asked.

He remembered his dad telling him that it is at the site of the original cell split that leads to the cancer growth and where the cancer locates.  As for school he said he enjoys science and math the most.

Dr. Dhaliwal said his son is “very regimented,” noting when they finish their one-on-one evening practice sessions, he goes right into the house and tackles his homework.

After the conclusion of the ground-breaking ceremonies Friday, Amrit was given a memento he hoped to take home that would probably be put in his room – one of 15 gold-painted shovels used in the ceremonial dig.

Amrit has one older brother and two sisters.  The brother is a working professional at Morgan Stanley in New York.