Tillamook High School Charity Drive 2018 Court
Top left: Freshman Princess: Gabriela Palominos. Sophmore Princess: Maleah Upton. Junior Princess: Mackenzie Guarcell. Senior Princess: Mercy Aziere Allen.
Bottom left: Freshman Prince: Colton Harmon. Sophmore Prince: Henry Tarply. Junior Prince: Mathew Silveria. Senior Prince: Vincent Fox.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We are pleased to announce that THS students will be providing coverage for the Tillamook County Pioneer of Charity Drive and other THS events, stories and happenings. This “kickoff” story is way for us to kickoff our partnership working with the THS yearbook staff. If you have stories about happenings at THS, please email the Pioneer at editor@tillamookcountypioneer.net. And welcome our newest writers!
By Naomi Hartrampf, THS student and yearbook editor
Kick-Offs are hard to, well, kick off; but those involved in the 2018 Charity Drive Kick-Off assembly on Tuesday February 6th gave an extremely effective kick-off. This kick off assembly started right after second period, and after everyone got settled, the Chamber Choir sang the National Anthem, the beautiful song ringing through the air. Kurt Mize – The man who founded Act In Kindness (AIK) (more info at www.wendyandshelby.com) came and shared how appreciative he was for the Tillamook High School’s ASB putting together AIK week (Feb. 5-9) for the entire school (this included passing out goody bags, teacher appreciation day, handing out cards for people to fill out and give to others).
Directly after he left the stage, Cassady Kennabeck (a director at Kids Making Miracles) shared, among other things, that since the school had started, 65 years ago, the high school had risen about $2.5 million! After the THS staff and students were given this amazing news, there was a slight change in direction from then on.
Breezy Robenett came onto the stage and talked about Josh Apacicio, a seventh grader with high risk B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He had originally beat the cancer, however, it came back and he is currently fighting the same cancer as before. The donations brought in by the Charity Drive are helping with not only his (and others) medical bills but helps fund research for cures and treatments for multitudes of illnesses.
After Breezy, Kayla Lind came onto the stage and described her own personal experience, after being told by seemingly countless amounts of doctors in Tillamook, one (in Rockaway) finally took a blood test and sent her immediately to Doernbechers because her blood platelets were at ten instead in the 150’s. Luckily, even with some health issues remaining (such as bone degeneration) Doernbechers helped cure her cancer.
After this terrific story, a video was displayed to show how Doernbechers, and through them the Charity Drive, not only helped kids around the hospital but kids in our own high school community. Click here to view the video. (Video produced by Stephanie Verdrin)
After this heart-warming video, the Charity Drive Tapping began. (For those of you that don’t know what Charity Drive Tapping is, here’s a brief explanation: All classes vote for a prince and princess to represent their class and in the kick-off assembly they are tapped, and they go onto the stage and get “crowned”) After some pretty upbeat music for each of the four classes, the Princesses and Princes were all accounted for
How’s that for a kick-off?!