Welcome to California Inc., the weekly newsletter of the L.A. Times Business Section. Data breaches remain a dark cloud over the business world. On Friday, Whole Foods became the latest company to report getting hacked. Days earlier, the burger chain Sonic said it too had been hit. And Equifax continues making news with its mega-breach involving 143 million consumers.

Twelve years ago, I met four impoverished teenagers at a high school in Arizona. They were born in Mexico, brought to the United States as children, and attended school in Phoenix. Without residency papers, their future job prospects were severely limited, but they nonetheless decided to enter an underwater robotics contest sponsored by NASA and the US Navy. They went up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team from MIT. They built their robot out of junk and cheap plastic pipe, named their creation Stinky, and went on to win the championship.