IT TOOK two key interviews to get the story. Gerardo Cortez went first, followed by some golfer named Tiger.
Gerardo was animated, his big, brown eyes flashing with excitement, his squeaky little voice in full pitch.
Gerardo was describing how to match fingerprints at a crime site, how you establish the properties of DNA: "You look at the nucleus, and Gerardo is 10. He is in fifth grade.
The golfer, Tiger, is a little older - 30 to be exact.
He was a pretty good student in fifth grade, growing up in Cypress, California, and he kept it going well enough to get into Stanford, no less.
When Tiger heard how excited Gerardo had been, he got excited, too. The infectious smile that has been bursting onto television screens in homes around the world for the past 10 years, usually late on Sunday afternoons while he is standing near a trophy, lit up again.
"Isn't it great how happy they are there?" he said.
It wasn't really a question.
Nobody knows better than he does. He created it. The address of the Tiger Woods Learning Centre is 1 Tiger Woods Way, Anaheim, California.
It is at Crescent Avenue and Gilbert Street, just off the Santa Ana Freeway and a short walk earned.
It has been open for only a year, so what it is and what it does remains vague to people, assuming they even know it exists. Most important is what it is not.
The Tiger Woods Learning Centre is not a golf school. It is not a day-care centre. It is not a remedial learning centre.
It is, when all is said and done, a $US10 million ($12.75 opulent testimonial to caring. It's a message of giving back, making a difference, contributing to society - all cliches most common to people who talk and don't do.
Tiger Woods did.
It began, Woods said, two days after the tragedy of September 11.
"I was driving back from St Louis," he said.
"It took a couple days. No planes flying, so you drove, and you had plenty of time on your hands, time to reflect on life and family."
By then, Woods had become the best player in the game and one of the most famous sportsmen in the world.
The year before, he had won nine tournaments, including three of the four majors. Life was good, and there was a Tiger Woods Foundation already in place.
"We did a lot of junior clinics, workshops," he said.
"But we were like a travelling circus - here today, gone tomorrow."
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