Arun Thottumkara says it with a laugh — but then he walks it back, because he doesn't really believe it was the water.

He believes it was the community.

A 2004 graduate of Macomb High School, Thottumkara has spent the past two decades building a career at the far edge of medical science. He holds a chemistry degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from Stanford University, and for the last eleven years he has worked in biotechnology, helping companies discover new medicines for cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease. He lives in San Diego now with his wife, Lauren, their toddler son, and their dog.

He will tell you, without hesitation, that the foundation for all of it was poured in Macomb.

"My life in Macomb — my education, just living there — was really the foundation for me for a lot of things," he said. "I just felt so connected to everyone, and I knew everyone was rooting for me and everyone else. Everyone was rooting for shared success."

That sense of shared investment, he says, isn't as common as people assume. He's lived in enough places now to know the difference.

Part of Macomb's texture came from Western Illinois University, whose faculty and international presence gave the town an intellectual dimension unusual for a community of its size. Thottumkara experienced that directly — his father was a chemistry professor at Western, and brought his son into the lab early. Research projects, scientific conversations, a front-row seat to a life built around discovery. It made an impression.

But what drove Thottumkara forward wasn't only the environment. It was temperament.

"I was always competitive with myself," he said. Always pushing to find the edge of what was possible, always asking what else he could do. He describes it as a kind of internal testing — not against others, but against his own potential. When asked how his classmates might have described him, he said: studious, yes. But also someone who got along with a lot of people, who never felt the social sorting that high school can produce.

"I never felt like my group was against that group," he said. "I truly felt like I was always rooting for other people and they were always rooting for me."

It was, as he put it, a positive feedback loop — the community's belief in its young people translated into confidence, and confidence translated into reach.

"The only way you can go out and do stuff in the world is to feel confident and to feel safe," he said. "And I think Macomb helps install that in you — because you feel the confidence, but you also know that if something doesn't go right, these guys are going to still have your back. That's pretty great."

The reach has been remarkable. Thottumkara tells a story about his first week at a new job in the Bay Area — meeting a colleague who, it turned out, had grown up in Macomb, graduated from Macomb High School, and gone on to become a neurologist trained at Stanford Medical School. Later, after relocating to San Diego, he reconnected with Crystal Martin, a classmate from the graduating class of 2003, who had also found her way to Southern California. The connections keep surfacing. He and his friends have a name for it: the Macombie Homies.

"It's crazy to think that this small town has produced people with such impact," he said. "And I kind of think it comes down to community — the confidence it gives you, knowing that people are coming out for the football games, knowing that someone's on your side."

His parents still live in Macomb. His closest friends — many of them not scientists, he notes, but people drawn more to the humanities and arts — are still the ones he grew up with. The texts continue. The friendships hold.

"My best friends are still the guys I grew up with," he said.

When he goes back, something settles in him. He describes it simply: the ability to let your guard down, to be exactly who you are, to walk around a town where people remember you.

"I still feel a deep connection to the community," he said. "Even now, almost 22 years later."

That connection, he'll tell you, isn't nostalgia. It's infrastructure.