Spirit Shines Through : Award: A blind 9-year-old Oceanside girl does her best to make life better for others--and herself.

Lisamaria Martinez is a lot like other third-graders. She likes to talk, loves animals, wears braces and laughs a lot.

But, in her spare time, this 9-year-old from Oceanside has done some things few third-graders would even think of doing. She has started up drives collecting canned goods for the homeless and poor during holidays and delivered Christmas treats to the elderly in the hospital. She also spearheaded an anti-litter campaign at her school, San Luis Rey Elementary.

For this she was recently named California’s winner of the Jefferson Awards for students, which is handed out to youngsters from kindergarten to sixth grade who do outstanding volunteer work and public service. Lisamaria was cited for “her help in promoting food drives for the needy and for her environmental concerns.”

Lisamaria said she enjoys going the extra mile for people who need a helping hand because she knows what it’s like.

Lisamaria has been blind since age 5.

“When I first got blind, I thought my whole world was ending, but look at me now,” Lisamaria said.

She said it was hard at first, but she bounced back. In the four years since she lost her eyesight she placed first in a national Braille reading contest, where she read more than 2,000 Braille pages in three months.

On Monday, she flies to the nation’s capital on a three-day trip with her mother to receive the Jefferson Award, along with 39 other students from across the nation, each representing a state.

“The way I got the award was for helping out the community, like in Brownies,” Lisamaria said. “I also like to keep my school clean, so I pick up trash.”

Although the Jefferson Awards for students is in its first year, other Jefferson Awards for public service have been given out to adults, including former President Jimmy Carter and celebrities like Bob Hope, since it was established 18 years ago by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Sen. Robert Taft Jr.

“There are lots of things I don’t expect my kid to do, and she pops up and does it,” Lisamaria’s mother, Maria, said. “We’re very proud of her. Even though her eyesight is gone, God gave her another way where she can be outstanding and help other people out.”

Although there is hope that one day Lisamaria will regain her eyesight if experimental surgery techniques prove fruitful, she approaches her Braille and mobility lessons with gusto. “My mobility teacher teaches me, with my cane, to cross lighted streets and things like that,” Lisamaria said.

Along with her regular class work, Lisamaria spends five hours a week in a class for the visually impaired with three other blind students, two hours a week in mobility lessons and two hours a week in classes for the gifted and talented.

“She’s an achiever,” said Mary Tiesen, the school’s teacher for the visually impaired. “Her blindness hasn’t slowed her down at all. It’s just changed how she does things.”

Lisamaria’s third-grade teacher, Mary Helper, nominated her for the award.

“I knew that, if anybody deserved to win it, she did,” Helper said. “I think she’s done a lot for a kid that’s just 9 years old. Her blindness is secondary in winning that award.”

Lisamaria was honored by Oceanside Pacific Kiwanis last year as a student of the month and was given a Hope of America Award.

The Oceanside Unified School District’s Board of Education also recognized her achievements in February when she attended a meeting to demonstrate a Braille writer she uses at school, which types in Braille and simultaneously makes a computer print for her teacher. Not only has Lisamaria mastered her six-button Braille writer, but she also learned to type on a regular typewriter.

Lisamaria wears swimming goggles to protect her eyes from infection. “She has to wear them 24 hours a day because she doesn’t have any tears, or moisture, in her eyes. So, if she took them off, her eyes would dry up,” her mother said.

She can now see shadows and colors, although four years ago, her mother said, she could not tell the difference between night and day. “She would wake up at 3 a.m. in the morning thinking it would be time to get up,” her mother said.

At age 5, Lisamaria contracted the rare Stevens-Johnson syndrome, an illness generally triggered by an allergic reaction that causes scar tissue to form over the eyes. As far as recovery is concerned, doctors say no one can predict whether she will see again, although Lisamaria has normal eyes under the scar tissue caused by the disease.

“She had some sort of allergic reaction to something she ate, drank, or medication. That’s what made her blind,” her mother said. “To this day, they don’t know what the allergic reaction was to.”

Lisamaria has planned a busy summer. She will spend a month taking classes for the visually impaired and will spend another month taking art classes.

“We didn’t force her to go to summer school. She wanted to do it,” Lisamaria’s father, Greg, said. But, before she takes on summer school, Lisamaria said, she will spend some time vacationing with her grandparents, who are visiting for the first time in four years from Puerto Rico, and with her 6-year-old sister, Glorivette, and foster brother, Gregory, who is 5 months old.

Lisamaria has faced some setbacks. She said she can’t check out books at the local public library because they don’t have a collection of Braille books or cassettes for children. Also, the Braille watch the Kiwanis Club gave her broke, and no one in town can repair it. But she said she still looks forward to a brighter future.

“Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I can’t do anything else, except see,” Lisamaria said. “That’s what I always say.”