When GiGi was 14 years old, the IRS unearthed a small discrepancy in the accounts of her parents' small party supply store in downtown Palo Alto.
A small error with her mom's accounting left the family with $7,000 in missed taxes, penalties, and fees — the equivalent of nearly $20,000 in today's dollars — that sent the store down a path from which it was unable to recover.
While her parents lost their business, what GiGi lost was arguably much worse.
She'd been IQ tested a few years before the IRS came into her parents' life and scored well above genius level. Her parents were supportive, and working together they saw GiGi graduate high school with honors at 14 and get accepted to Stanford.
With the scholarship money, grants, and loans against the collateral from her family's store would provide, GiGi prepared herself to launch into the world with everything she had. Unfortunately, with the IRS lien on the store and penalties piling up as her parents struggled to pay, GiGi never got the money she needed to make Stanford a reality.
The closest she ever got to Stanford after that was sleeping on the San Jose Number 22 bus as it plied its way from Palo Alo to San Jose, then back again; a run it makes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which earned it the designation Hotel 22 from the areas
When GiGi was done telling Business Insider her story, she broke out a bent cigarette and said: "I don't need a handout, but I really could use a hand up."