DemiDec Dan is a legend in Academic Decathlon's rarefied world ALBUQUERQUE - As he strode into the hotel ballroom, scores of high school students swarmed the man they know as DemiDec Dan, a legend in the world of Academic Decathlon. The students, competing for the national decathlon title, clamored for the chance to shake his hand. They posed for pictures with him. They reached out for one of the colorful wool finger puppets he has turned into the unofficial mascot of the academic competition. "I'm meeting DemiDec Dan!" one boy exclaimed. "Look at your adoring fans!" said another. Daniel Berdichevsky is an Academic Decathlon star. He once set a record for the highest individual score in the grueling, 10-subject competition. But that wasn't all that set him apart from the crowd of teenage admirers. Berdichevsky is 35. He achieved his record in 1993, before many of the students in the ballroom that day were born. Since then, he has parlayed his love for the event and nostalgia for his glory days into a livelihood. He started a test preparation company, DemiDec, while still a student at Taft High School in Woodland Hills and has since launched an international variation of the decathlon called the World Scholar's Cup. He travels so much - racking up 350,000 frequent flier miles a year by his count - that he gave up his apartment and crashes in his old bedroom at his parents' home in the San Fernando Valley. Wherever he goes, students greet him like a rock star. They know about his high score and have used his phone-book-size study guides. In February, students waiting to compete in a decathlon event at Roybal Learning Center in Echo Park dropped their DemiDec guides and ran to him. Some bowed. Weeks later in the United Arab Emirates, a 14-year-old girl handed Berdichevsky a handwritten biography, bound in yarn, so detailed that it touched on his student days at Stanford University and included a childhood photo of him with an alpaca. "I think I am a professional decathlete," he said. I wouldn't have imagined it, but I'm glad it has turned out this way. Years ago, friends and mentors foresaw a different future for Berdichevsky. "I would have loved if Daniel had been a doctor or a lawyer," said Arthur Berchin, the longtime decathlon coach at Taft High. He would have been successful in any of the professions. He chose decathlon. "The high school cheerleader gets to go to college and do a little cheer, and she's done," said Jennifer Berdichevsky, his sister. Decathlon "has become his life. It's a way of living that every day of his life, and he didn't have to let go. To understand the cult-figure status of Daniel Berdichevsky, you have to know a little about decathlon. It isn't the kind of extracurricular activity in which students can get by with the occasional after-school meeting; it's a lifestyle.