ROYAL CITY - Two of the men who, in 2004 as kids, beat MIT and everybody else in a robotics competition, will come to Royal City the night of Feb. 12 to attend a special screening of the movie "Spare Parts", which is about their lives.

Dr. Eric Carlson, the science teacher at Royal High, made the arrangements for the visit, and he's excited about what this could mean to the student population he serves. The four boys who made up the Hayden Community High School team were the children of undocumented farm working immigrants from Mexico.

"To the amazement of all involved, they won first place, beating the team from MIT by one point," Carlson said.

This incredible story was told in a documentary titled "Underwater Dreams," released in July. Actor George Lopez is a character in and a producer of the movie "Spare Parts", which is set to come out this year.

The movie is about the only four boys out of an entire high school to answer the call to compete. One was on the verge of joining the gang life.

Their story doesn't have the ending you might suspect. The boys did not go on to be scientists or work in robotics.

Lorenzo Santillan, Luis Aranda, Oscar Vazquez, and Cristian Arcega have gone on to ordinary lives. Two run a catering business in Phoenix. One works for a local business. One served in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army. Only one has a college degree.

But, in their mid-20s, it's likely that none of them has seen the end of his story. They can all still go on to additional accomplishments. They proved that in 2004 when they shocked the robotics world.

There will be two public screenings of the movie, one in Spanish and one in English, at the Royal High School gymnasium, Carlson said. Oscar and Lorenzo will be present to speak and field questions.

According to Carlson, this educational event is being sponsored primarily by Washington Fruit and Produce Company, which funds pre-school in Royal City. Substantial assistance comes from the Royal Boosters.

Spare Parts relates how the sons of undocumented Mexican immigrants learned how to build an underwater robot from used car parts and Home Depot materials and bested engineering giant MIT.

Two science teachers at Hayden Community High School, on a whim, decided to enter their school of impoverished youngsters into a sophisticated underwater robotics competition sponsored by the NASA and the Office of Naval Research.

Only Vazquez, Santillan, Aranda and Arcega signed up. They started calling oceanic engineers and military contractors. They were advised that their underwater robot would require glass syntactic flotation foam. Short on money, all they could afford was PVC pipe from Home Depot. And some duct tape.

Their robot wasn't pretty, especially compared to those of the competition. They were going up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team from MIT backed by a $10,000 grant from ExxonMobil. The Phoenix teenagers had scraped together less than $1,000 and built their robot out of scavenged parts.

After a few test runs of their robot - Stinky - the team was confident that they would not come in last at the event, so they all piled into a beat up van to head to the competition at UCSB in California.

The boys put Stinky in the water for a test run. The PVC did not hold up. The robot leaked and sank.

The boys put their heads together. Twelve hours later, armed with eight super-plus tampons to plug the leak in Stinky's mechanical housing, the robot was lowered into the pool again. Stinky performed admirably.

No one had ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to much. Now their story is being told and retold. You may mistake it for "Stand and Deliver."

Joshua Davis's book "Spare Parts" is a story about overcoming insurmountable odds.

"Nobody thought they could do it - not even them," Davis wrote.

The four teens entered a world-class underwater robot competition expecting to learn a lot and have a great time, just hoping to avoid last place.

In the book, Davis chronicles the preparations for the 2004 Marine Advanced Technology Education Remotely Operated Vehicle Competition. The four, who arrived illegally in the United States, came together in their school's amateur robotics club.

Each student brought his own natural talents to the table. There was Cristian Arcega, the geek with a head for engineering and science. Lorenzo Santillan was the wild one - a teen on the edge of joining a gang who instead found a home on the robot team.

Luis Aranda, the silent giant, was recruited largely for his size but was found to have an intellect to match. Capping off the team was Oscar Vazquez, a natural leader who would shape their talents into a force to be reckoned with.