She’s Run Up a List of Achievements : Education: Trisha Phillips is headed for Stanford after graduating first in her class at Locke High.
Every morning, every evening, all summer long, you can find Trisha Phillips running through the hilly streets of her San Pedro neighborhood. Two miles in the morning; two miles at night, a schedule chosen to accommodate her summer job and avoid the season’s muggy heat.
In the fall, she expects to be running on the track team at Stanford University, where she will be a freshman with plans to become a pediatrician.
“I’ve learned to be very disciplined,” said the soft-spoken Phillips, who in June graduated first in her class at Locke High School in South-Central Los Angeles. Her grade point average was 4.16, boosted by high marks in the college-level, or “advanced placement,” courses she completed in calculus (“my favorite subject”), English, economics and government.
A member of the school’s track and cross-country team, she was the 1989 city champion in the girls’ 800-meter run and made it to the state finals this year. She also found time for playing the violin, swimming and writing, was elected class corresponding secretary, sang in her church choir and did volunteer work in the district office of Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson).
“We kid her a lot,” said John Mandell, one of her high school counselors. “We tell her we keep looking for something wrong with her.”
Phillips credits her parents and older sister for encouraging her to try her best at whatever interested her.
Her mother, a psychologist, and her father, a chemical analyst for a firm in Torrance, were strict, always insisting on completed homework, thorough practice, strong commitment in every endeavor.
“They also always patted me on the back, and it has all helped tremendously,” Phillips said one morning shortly before she graduated in June. “A lot of kids here have no parental support, and that has made me realize how important it is.”
She concedes that her family was stunned when, fresh out of junior high, she announced she wanted to leave the friends and familiar surroundings of her comfortable suburban community to attend high school in one of Los Angeles’ toughest neighborhoods.
“I wanted to see what life was like at an inner-city school. I wanted to see if it was really as bad as people said, to see if there were some solutions to making it better,” she recalled. Seeing her determination, her parents relented, and her mother spent the next three years driving her back and forth between home and school.
“When I first got here I got scared that I wouldn’t make it, but the people were so cordial I soon felt I had a lot of new friends,” Phillips recalled.
“Sure, there are gangs here and people have a lot of problems. But there are so many positives as well. People are very close. They care about each other. It’s a real community,” said Phillips, adding that the tight-knit aura extends to the campus.
“The students are really friendly, and the school has a lot of excellent teachers who have been here a long time. They really get to know the kids, and they really care about them. So do the administrators and counselors. They’re like family.”
In her graduation speech, Phillips told her classmates, about half of whom are black and half are Latino, that they can overcome the struggles facing minorities by striving to excel.
“If we unite and put our education to good use, we can rearrange society’s views on how life for us will be,” said Phillips. “Instead of messing up, we will fight to build up our community. . . . They will see.”
