Where to write about hardship in a college application

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office develop a reflex against anything that sounds like self-promotion, and it catches students who have genuinely done remarkable things. Consider a student who wants to study computer science. For two summers he ran a small ice cream business, working long days. During the school year he works evenings and weekends at a restaurant to help his single mother, and he is the oldest child and the first in his family headed to college. He has straight A's. Every fact there is impressive, and if he writes all of it into his essay at full volume, the effect shrinks. The facts belong in the file, and the question is how to put them there without setting off the reflex.