Grad hears one last roll call

Not many recent high school graduates have new cars sitting in their driveways, but West Valley High School’s Tim Nikkola does, thanks to a year of perfect attendance and a program run by Hallmark Hyundai.

Every year the auto dealership gives a new car to a local high school graduate with perfect attendance their senior year. This year Nikkola’s name was thrown in with 38 others.

But Nikkola’s feat actually began before his senior year. “I’ve had perfect attendance all 13 years of school,” he said. “My mom was kind of the driving force behind it. I guess I can thank her for that now. I won a car.”

Nikkola admits that there were days when he begged to skip school to go skiing with buddies, but his mother held firm. Over the years she also made it a point to schedule dentist and doctor appointments before or after school.

The new Hyundai Accent will come in handy when he drives to work and commutes to Eastern Washington University in the fall. “I have a ’77 Ford 250 that gets about eight miles a gallon,” he said. “This one gets 32 (mpg) highway. That’s a huge hunk of money I don’t have to spend. Almost every paycheck I got I had to spend a lot of that on gas. This is going to be so much nicer.”

Still, Nikkola plans to hang onto the truck, mostly because he and his father built it together. It will also come in handy during bad winter weather. “I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of that truck,” he said.

The car was awarded at the end of the Spokane Indians’ opening-night baseball game last week. Nikkola joined the other eligible students on the field to hear the name of the winner. “I didn’t think I had a chance to get the car,” he said.

The one thing yet to be determined is whether he will have perfect attendance at EWU as he studies to become an art teacher. He says it’s likely “if my mom has something to do with it.”