After reading his two-page outline on diabetes, his teacher Lori Roque realized that her 14-year-old daughter had several of the symptoms.

"We just hadn't put two-and-two together," she said.

Days later, she took her daughter Hope Escalante to see a doctor who diagnosed the 14-year-old with juvenile diabetes and caught her dangerously high blood-sugar level.

Hope's blood-sugar level was more than 400, well above the 70 to 120 normal range. The Crowley eighth grader spent several days at Cook Children's Medical Center.

"I'm glad that I read it when I did," Roque said. "If I would have gone up at 12 [or] 1 O'clock, she could have been in a coma. She could have been gone."

Before the winter break, Roque's pre-Advanced Placement biology students were required to write an outline about a disease that affects multiple organ systems.

Trinh picked diabetes, because his father and uncles suffer from the health condition. The experience allowed him to finish the assignment before the due date.

"I thought it would be easy," the 15-year-old said.

But save someone's life?

He never imagined.

"It surprised me," he said. "It's not like an every day thing that just cause you did your homework, you saved someone's life. I was speechless at that moment."

Hope said she never figured out what tipped her mother off until she heard her mother tell the story.

Like nearly everyone else, she didn't expect a homework assignment to be a life saver.

"It was kind of weird and scary," she said.

Hope said she now is paying closer attention to her diabetes and what she eats. She is already feeling the benefits.

"I don't always feel tired," she said with a smile.

Trinh's feeling pretty good too.

He got that A.

And Roque's happy that he didn't say his dog ate his homework