He is the first Muslim American to receive such an honor.
The Jaycee organization was established in 1920 to provide opportunities for young men to develop personal and leadership skills through service to others. The California Jaycees adopted the Outstanding Young program in the late 1950s.
Some of the previous Jaycee honorees are Steve Garvey, Arthur Ashe, Elvis Presley, Henry Ford II, and Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Ford and Bill Clinton.
Moon is a cancer survivor. He was born with Neuroblastoma, a cancer of the spinal cord.
He was given no chance of survival.
After three surgeries at the tender age of one month, he was left paralyzed from the waist down and became wheelchair bound.
He went to endure three additional surgeries in later years to stabilize his spinal cord, which resulted in an 18- inch steel rod attached to his spinal cord.
After graduating from Palos Verdes Peninsula High School with 4.0 grade poiint average, he attended UCLA and graduated in 2007 with a degree in economics.
Moon worked every summer while at UCLA. He was selected as a White House intern in the fall of 2006 and spent three months in Washington, D.C.
He also interned at Fox Sports Net and with the Los Angeles Kings in their marketing and promotion department. In 2007, he joined NBC, where he is currently working and living an independent life, which has been a goal of his.
Moon has excelled as a wheelchair tennis player.
He began in 1991 at the age of six. It took him seven years before he won his first major tournament.
However, he persisted and never gave up. Since then, he has been ranked among the top junior wheelchair tennis players in the nation.
He was ranked 21st in the United States in 2003 and got as high as No. 7 in 2004.
He was able to achieve these rankings without the use of a coach or a mentor.
Sheer persistent and tenacity earned Moon these accolades.
Along the way, Atif has participated at the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge’s Living Independently in Los Angeles project and is now a role model by living independently in his own apartment in the NoHo Arts District in Los Angeles.
Atif was a board member of Muslim Student Association UCLA and also volunteered at UMMA clinic while at UCLA.
