Phucas was ‘‘pretty rough,” as a freshman, Maxey recalled. ‘‘Her grades were terrible. She was in trouble all the time.”
Phucas said Maxey and Assistant Principal Judith P. Scott saw her potential abilities and encouraged her to use them.
‘‘They’re just very supportive and personal with the students,” Phucas said. ‘‘If you just talk in a respectful manner, they’ll listen to anything you have to say.”
Ahead by a mile
Rafi Moersen graduated on Tuesday from Walter Johnson High School and when he did, he left behind an unusual legacy.
‘‘I’m the Burrito Mile guy,” the 18-year-old from Bethesda said.
The Burrito Mile has become an annual tradition and fundraiser that Moersen started as a junior. It’s a race in which participants must eat a 1.5-pound burrito and then run a mile. The event, sponsored by the SGA, raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
‘‘With the Burrito Mile, Rafi had an important cause and came up with a creative way to energize the kids and raised a huge amount of money,” said Walter Johnson Principal Christopher Garran. In its two years, the event raised more than $5,300.
But the charity race that garners such an elite, if not questionable, title is not Moersen’s only claim to fame while at Walter Johnson. In fact, Moersen has spent the last four years combining his love of running with his love for his school.
‘‘He has dedicated his four years here to making it a better place,” Garran said.
He’s a member of the cross county and indoor and outdoor track teams. And to earn his Eagle Scout badge, Moersen repaired the quarter-mile trail at Cabin John Regional Park, where the school’s cross-country team practices and holds meets.
Moersen, who was a sophomore at the time, had to meet with county park officials, and then organize a group of volunteers to help clear the trail that had become eroded and overgrown. It took three days and more than 100 hours to complete the project.
‘‘We have won on it ever since,” Moersen said of the team’s record.
He’s served as a class officer and treasurer for the SGA. He’s a member of the Spanish Honor Society. And he started a new club at the school in his junior year called the Four Square Club.
‘‘You know, the game you played in fifth grade where you hit the ball into the squares,” he said. ‘‘We played every afternoon at lunch.”
Moersen was elected Most Spirited in his graduating class.
So while his infamous Burrito Mile is becoming well known, attracts crowds, raises money and even generates some negative reaction, Moersen values all his high school experiences.
He knows it will serve him well as a business student at George Washington University in the fall and in the future.
Moersen’s school activities have taught him organization, time management and public speaking — all ‘‘qualities you need to make it,” he said.
Finding inspiration
Shannon Krehbiel knew she wanted to pursue a medical career after graduating from Sherwood High School this week. But she didn’t know exactly which one until living through a family tragedy that occurred just as she was starting her senior year.
Her father Dave Krehbiel suffered a severe spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed below his shoulders during a family vacation in Ocean City last August. He has endured several surgeries and months of therapy, and still remains hospitalized.
From his hospital bed, her father has remained an inspiration. It has been through his and her family’s struggle that Krehbiel discovered a desire to become an occupational therapist.
In the fall, she will enter the University of Maryland, College Park.
‘‘He always kept on me about my grades, and he wanted me to keep doing everything to have the best senior year possible,” she said of her father. ‘‘I can’t say I missed out on anything or did things any differently because of his injury.”
Throughout the challenges of her father’s recuperation, Krehbiel remained committed to schoolwork and activities, which include serving as SGA president.
‘‘I like to be busy,” the 17-year-old Olney resident said. ‘‘I like to have a lot on my plate. All my activities kept my mind off things and helped me escape from what was going on in my home life.”
Principal William Gregory believes Krehbiel ‘‘embodies the Sherwood spirit.”
‘‘She loves being a Sherwood Warrior and is involved in academic, athletic and other events that promote the positive spirit of our school,” he said.
Among Krehbiel’s activities are the volleyball and swim teams, the Rock and Roll Revival, the National Honor Society and the National Spanish Honor Society.
She also participated in the medical careers program at Sherwood, through which she became a certified nursing assistant and completed an internship at Montgomery General Hospital.
Krehbiel said she would take many things from her years at Sherwood, including leadership skills, her love of sports, friendships and learning to step outside her comfort zone.
‘‘Throughout this year, I have watched Shannon grow,” Gregory said. ‘‘She is a kid who sees the challenges of life and adjusts to them. She is a fine student, a leader and is a friend to all.”
A part of the whole
The Essicks know they will be remembered most often as the quadruplets of Paint Branch High School’s Class of 2008. They also know they are as much individuals as they are a group.
The Essicks — Nick, Tim, Zach and Danielle, 18 — have attended school together since kindergarten. All of them took high school honors classes, and this year, the three boys shared four of five classes.
Zach said having the same teachers meant he and his siblings weren’t always seen as individuals.
‘‘We’re known as the Essicks,” he said.
Nick and Tim echoed his sentiments, saying most people who meet them don’t take the time to ask about them individually.
But Danielle disagreed. ‘‘I’ve always been myself, and my brothers have always been themselves,” she said.
‘‘You can tell they’re related,” said Eileen Greenberg, a math resources teacher who has taught three of them. ‘‘But they all have very distinctive personalities.”
Danielle is the most involved in school activities. She’s been to every homecoming and prom, events her brothers usually skipped. She is one of nine seniors in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps to complete all four years.
Nick is the tallest, and according to him, the most studious. Tim is the movie fan who works at a theater to see films for free. And Zach, the youngest by three minutes, is a sports fanatic, and his mother’s ‘‘little rebel,” despite his 3.75 GPA. All three boys were on the junior varsity football team.
Principal Jeanette Dixon said the Burtonsville quadruplets have been positive role models.
‘‘They’ve been involved through sports, the ROTC program and they’ve been good students,” she said.
But because of their sheer number — and busy and varied schedules — the siblings have had to learn how to make sacrifices from sharing cars to making college decisions.
Although Danielle and Nick were accepted to private out-of-state colleges, they’ll be attending an in-state school.
Tim, Zach and Danielle will attend the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in Catonsville. Nick will be attending University of Maryland at College Park, where he would like to study sports management and ‘‘get away” from his siblings.
While Zach is unsure what he wants to study, his mother said he’s destined to be a sports broadcaster. Danielle in interested in pre-med and Tim would like to pursue law enforcement.
Financing college for four isn’t easy. Each will need to live at home for at least the first year.
And while parenting quadruplets hasn’t been easy either, their mom Cindy Essick said that in 18 years neither she nor her husband has never been called into the principal’s office.
‘‘Never once have they given me heartache or trouble,” she said, knocking on the wooden kitchen table.
Bringing worlds together
Freddy Mancilla is viewed by peers and faculty as the all-around student at Albert Einstein High School, and as a new graduate will be sorely missed for his ability to bridge worlds at the Kensington school.
‘‘Freddy is well liked and respected by the students; he’s respected by the administration and is a good connector between the two,” said Natasha Harrison, senior class adviser.
When Einstein was faced with a several-hour lockdown in April after some students attempted to sell guns in a school bathroom and one accidentally fired, it was Mancilla who took the lead in making sure people knew the incident did not represent the entire school.
Mancilla wrote a press release that challenged what he thought were negative portrayals of life at Einstein, Harrison said. He agreed to media interviews and made sure reporters knew the many good things about what he called the vast majority of Einstein students.
‘‘There were some people who were foolish in the way they portrayed the school,” Mancilla said.
The 18-year-old from Rockville graduated on Friday. During his tenure at Einstein he was active in the International Baccalaureate program, played on the tennis team, served as SGA vice president, managed the girls tennis team, starred in the fall production of ‘‘Stephanie Hero” and earned an outstanding senior award from his peers in the Einstein Stage Club.
‘‘Freddy is just a doer and has been that way his whole time here,” said Principal James Fernandez. ‘‘He’s just an Einstein guy.”
Fernandez said that while there are many outstanding students at Einstein, Mancilla has a rare ability to connect with lots of different groups.
Mancilla is passionate about the diversity in the school’s student body, and says it has had a significant impact on him.
‘‘This school has shaped who I am from the way I look at the world to how I talk to different people,” Mancilla said. ‘‘Not only that, but I’ve learned to love every single one of my classmates.”
In the fall, Mancilla plans to attend Eugene Lang College The New School for Social Research in New York. He hopes to study drama and gender studies.
‘‘I’m such an Einstein cheerleader, there was a phase where I only wore Einstein articles of clothing,” he said. ‘‘I’ve toned it down quite a bit now, but I can’t help it. I love this school.”
A lesson in civics
After she graduates today from Thomas S. Wootton High School, Naomi Kim hopes her work with the student government will have encouraged younger students to get involved with civic activism — even if they aren’t old enough to vote.
Each year, student government members organize a spring project. As vice president of Wootton’s SGA, Kim helped plan a week of activities focused on civic involvement.
During the week in April, SGA members created curriculums to explore critical election-year issues, such as the environment, health care and immigration, and led student discussions on the subjects. They also organized a volunteer fair in the hopes of getting more students, especially those not old enough to vote, involved with local causes.
The week, which culminated in a ‘‘Rock-the Vote”-style concert put on by the Gym Class Heroes and the Pat McGee Band, was met with enthusiasm and rave reviews.
‘‘I think we opened it up in a different way by talking about how politics directly affects students our age,” Kim said. ‘‘It’s just about being aware of what’s going on around you ... and being involved so you can make your own opinion.”
Kim, along with the rest of the SGA, spent about five months organizing the project.
The 18-year-old North Potomac resident juggled her SGA duties and schoolwork, while maintaining her calm, said Wootton Principal Michael Doran.
‘‘She’s always smiling, always productive, and has a real social conscience, too,” he said. ‘‘She’s one of those people that takes care of business. If you tell Naomi to do something, or she says she’s going to do it, you know it’s going to get done.”
As a freshman, Kim said a SGA project on diversity made an impact on her. She recalled a student from a French-speaking country in Africa talking about how she felt marginalized when students would only seek her out for help with French homework.
‘‘She ended up breaking down and crying, and that really affected me,” Kim said.
Kim, who will attend University of Maryland at College Park in the fall, hopes her spring project will also have a lasting impact.
‘‘I think the freshmen will still remember it in four years when they’re able to vote,” Kim said.
Determination is key
Joseph Umanzor arrived in Gaithersburg two years ago, barely speaking a word of English when he enrolled for his junior year at Watkins Mill High School.
Yet as he envisions striding across the stage June 11 to take the podium as Watkins Mill’s valedictorian, the 18-year-old from Gaithersburg never doubted himself in his journey that has taken him from a childhood in California and El Salvador to an Ivy League school this fall on full scholarship.
Though it was daunting to see his grades plummet from all A’s to a spattering of C’s and B’s upon arriving in Maryland, he was determined, he said, having learned from his parents that education is ‘‘the only way” to escape economic hardship. Never mind that it meant studying almost non-stop: Home from school at 3 p.m., taking just an hour’s break and then hitting the books for seven hours a night without fail
In the beginning, ‘‘just reading a book became a big, big problem,” he said. ‘‘I was reading so slow, and didn’t really know how to take notes.”
Together with his brother Andy, who also entered Watkins Mill as a junior, he began to find his footing, learning to be better organized, how to be a student in a different academic system, in a different language.
‘‘By the time we ended that [first] year, I learned how to read that book,” he said.
Now he has a 4.0 grade point average (if weighted by rigor, a 4.6). And with the support of teachers and a counselor who vouched for his merits, he is now a Gates Millennium Scholar, through a $1 billion initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that aims to tear down the financial barriers that exceptional minority students face in going to college.
The scholarship will cover all expenses at the University of Pennsylvania, where he wants to study biology or chemistry on the way to pre-med, with a minor in economics for a measure of balance.
The first time that social studies teacher Allison Whitman met Umanzor, he was tutoring other students in calculus — in Spanish.
She went on to be one of several teachers who wrote recommendations for the Gates scholarship. In addition to his academic feats, Whitman said Umanzor is mature beyond his years, respectful of everyone and never flamboyant with his intellect. He stands as an example of the heights that can be reached if you are dedicated.
‘‘He is a role model to every ESOL student that walks into our school. He’s proof that if you apply yourself, you can compete with everyone,” Whitman said.
His walk for his diploma will be even sweeter by having his younger brother, who is also graduating next week and headed to University of Maryland at College Park, at his side.
Umanzor said he never felt overwhelmed — he didn’t have time. ‘‘Determination and never giving up” on an opportunity is how it happened, he said, ‘‘because that’s the only way you can really understand who you are, and what your limits are. I think that worked for me.”
Find a way to capitalize
While looking for a college this past year, Holton-Arms senior Rachel McDonald found herself being pulled into small coffee shops along the way.
This interest, and a general love of the caffeinated concoctions they create, sparked an idea in the 18-year-old Bethesda resident’s head.
“I guess I just thought it would be cool to start a coffee shop,“ McDonald said.
And so she did. As her senior project, a requirement at Holton-Arms, McDonald researched the coffee business, bought a $175 espresso machine on eBay, and opened The Holton Grind in a student lounge at the private Bethesda school. While the java joint was only open for seven days at the end of the school year, it took in more than $1,100.
Lattes sold for $2, and regular coffee and baked goods for $1. Everyone at the school, from grade school teachers to building workers, visited the Grind, which also hosted folk music performances and an open mic event.
“It taught me so much about how to deal with people,“ she said. “The first day we opened the doors at 3:30, and we had a line out the door. I learned how to deal with that because I couldn’t freak out and quit.“
In addition to her burgeoning coffee business, McDonald also found time over the course of the year for dancing, singing and painting. In the fall she will attend Bowdoin College in Maine, where she is undecided on her major.
Whatever it is though, school officials say she will succeed.
“She has a passion and enthusiasm that is infectious,“ said Marsha Scherbel, McDonald’s English teacher and adviser.
“We’re all trying to convince her to take a gap year to keep the coffee shop open,“ Scherbel added with a laugh.
