Spokane Valley High School: After many moves, Alexis Reyes finds her place

Spokane Valley High School senior Alexis Reyes had a childhood marked with multiple disruptive moves that made settling in difficult.

She was born in Omak, then moved to Spokane with her mother and brother when she was 4. They moved around town several times, then to Texas for a while before coming back to Spokane. When she was in the eighth grade, she returned to Omak for part of the year before coming back again to Spokane.

Reyes said she had been a social child who made friends at each new school, but it got harder to leave her new friends over and over again. Soon, she withdrew and stopped making friends.

Now, she said, she can appreciate her moves “because I got to meet so many different people,” she said. “In elementary school, it was a lot harder.”

By the end of her eighth grade year, she said she was unmotivated and skipp ed school. That was also a year of tough family and health issues. “I just wasn’t feeling it,” she said.

One of her teachers at Centennial Middle School suggested she look into Spokane Valley High School. She liked that it was small and that she would be in classes four days a week and have Fridays off.

“I loved the idea of having small, personal classes,” she said. “It’s not a huge school. I figured I’d try it out. I ended up loving it.”

During her sophomore year, her family moved to north Spokane. Reyes said her mother wanted her to go to the neighborhood school, Rogers High School, but she didn’t want to.

“I really fought with her to stay at Spokane Valley High School,” she said. “We figured it out.”

She’s been involved with Future Business Leaders of America and is the president this year. She serves as a student representative on the West Valley School Board and also serves on the Ronald McDonald House teen board.

Reyes is an enrolled member of the Colville Tribe and helps out at the Salish School, a Salish language immersion school. She helps provide babysitting for the evening language classes for parents of enrolled students. Her younger sister is currently enrolled in the school.

School counselor Elise Barlow said Reyes works hard. “Alexis embodies Spokane Valley High School and the values we uphold,” she said. “Alexis is a young adult who I believe really will make a positive change in the world around her as she continues to grow and mature.”

This year, however, Reyes doesn’t attend Spokane Valley High School full time. She attends part-time while also attending the NEWTech Skills Center’s nursing assistant program. She’s currently doing clinical work at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Center.

Reyes said she’s been thinking about becoming a nurse and saw the NEWTech program as a way to test whether she would like it.

“I just wanted to know if nursing is the thing for me,” she said. “It really reassured me that nursing is what I want to do.”

She plans to attend Whitworth University for her bachelor’s degree in nursing, then work for five years as either an emergency room or ICU nurse. Her ultimate goal is to work as a nurse with Life Flight.

Reyes said she will be the first in her family to attend college. “Things are really looking up,” she said. “That’s helped motivate me.”