Grace Thomas is driven and accomplished. A two-sport cheerleader, she also tackled six rigorous Advanced Placement classes at Lakeside High School in Nine Mile Falls and plans to attend Western Washington University this fall.
Ask a trivia question about any major world event since 1914, and Lake City High School senior Khristian Paul can give you answers. Paul, 18, is passionate about history, or in his words, he’s a bit of a nerd on the subject.
Before Jennifer Bashoor moved with her parents from Florida to Spokane during her junior year of high school, she had never been further west than Kansas. Leaving the life she knew was scary, but her fears quickly subsided once she enrolled at Lewis and Clark High School.
As a high school sophomore, Sam Thompson suffered a tragedy most people couldn’t imagine. For Thompson, the massive mudslide that devastated communities near Oso, Washington, hit close to his home in Spokane, too.
When William Harrington, 18, was a child just starting school, he did not get along with his peers. “I felt they were too childish,” said the young man about to graduate from Map High School, a Spokane Public Schools alternative school.
When Polly Officer was born, she was placed in temporary foster care to give her birth mother a chance to deal with drug and alcohol issues. But on a scheduled visit, her birth mother ran away with the infant, leaving foster parents Debbie and Barry Officer distraught over the fate of the child they had bonded with.
When Scarlett Hwang came to the United States three and a half years ago, she was a Korean city girl lost in the rural community that surrounded Northwest Christian.
Cameron Dunlap was diagnosed with Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy at the age of 5, and by 7, he couldn’t walk. As he gets older, he adapts to muscle atrophy, and the list of activities he can participate in steadily dwindles.
Trying to be quicker and stronger turned into an eating disorder for Olivia Kinnick, who was just over 70 pounds when she was admitted to the hospital.
When Nick Katruska was a freshman at Shadle Park High School, it began to look as if he’d follow the family tradition of not graduating from high school. His attendance was sporadic and his academic work poor.
The quinceanera is an important tradition in the lives of many young women of Latin American heritage. For Diana Ramirez-Torres, 18, it became an interstate and international event that finally wound up with a celebration of 250 family and friends in Santa Rosa, California.
