Car winner set goal for herself

Randi Albertson is used to driving a 1988 Pontiac Bonneville.

Now, after months of hard work and a little stroke of luck, the 18-year-old Spokane Valley High School graduate will be cruising around town in a brand new yellow sports car.

Albertson is the winner of Hallmark Hyundai’s It’s Cool to Stay in School contest. For not missing a single day of school this year, she walked away from Saturday’s Spokane Indians game as the owner of a 2004 Hyundai Tiburon.

“It’s a really nice car; it drives real nice,” Albertson said Tuesday. “I set a goal for myself at the beginning of the year, and it paid off.”

She was selected from a group of 27 Spokane area high school students who qualified for the car, simply by going to school each day.

For Albertson, the goal was especially difficult.

She has a 1-year-old son she is raising on her own, and she participated in the Running Start program, taking college level courses at Spokane Community College while still enrolled in high school.

In addition to never missing a day of classes, Albertson was the valedictorian at Spokane Valley High School, an alternative school in the West Valley School District.

Albertson is now studying to be a chemical laboratory technician at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake.

“At the beginning of the last school year they had the commercials on the radio…so I drove by (the car dealership), wondering what it was,” Albertson said about the contest. “I drove by and saw the car, and said, ‘Man, that’s a nice looking car, and I want it.’ “

The car was free but Albertson has to pay the tax and licensing.