Student Already Is Making a Difference

Mater Dei senior Kathleen (Katie) Michels has amassed a list of extracurricular activities that would make other 17-year-olds cringe with envy.

Drill team, dance team, Junior Statesmen of America, student council, baton team--all these, plus a part-time job at a Westminster video store.

But beyond the ebullient personality and mile-wide smile is a young woman with a deadly serious take on the world and an opinion on how to change it.

“Even when there is the means to make change, people are too apathetic to do it,” she said forcefully, seated in her school’s campus ministry office. “That is why it is so important to get young people involved early, so they will grow up to be not so apathetic.”

Katie already has done more than her share to make a difference. As part of the private school’s Christian Service Program, students are required to complete 80 hours of community volunteer work before graduation. Katie has put in more than 375 hours--and counting--of volunteer time.

She is a board member of the Youth Volunteer Center of Orange County and a block representative for her Fountain Valley Neighborhood Watch program. She has organized youth blood drives for the Red Cross and holiday food drives for the poor, and has participated in an adopt-a-grandparent program, the Mater Dei Special Olympics and the Volunteer Center AIDS Project.

Most recently Katie enlisted the aid of several of her friends and organized a Halloween party for homeless families at the Anaheim Interfaith Shelter.

“By my doing something, I’ve gotten a lot of other friends involved who wouldn’t otherwise be doing anything,” said Katie, explaining her theory of the domino effect.

She currently is trying to persuade the manager of the video store where she works to “adopt” a school, perhaps by offering grants to students who attain perfect attendance records or perform community deeds.

“I talked to my dad about it and he said, ‘Don’t talk to me, talk to the manager.’ So that’s what I did.”

Katie credits her parents with much of her enthusiasm for and sensitivity to community issues surrounding her.

Both work for the Los Angeles Unified School District--her mother, Sheila, teaches the physically handicapped, and her father, Mark, is a counselor for special needs children.

“From the very beginning it was not how much money we had or what kind of car we drove but what we could do for to others,” Katie said of her family, which includes a brother, John, 18, and 13-year-old sister, Tricia.

Her parents also inspired her ambition to become a history teacher.

“That is really where I belong, working with children and helping those who have less than I do,” she said.

Kathleen (Katie) Michels, 17

Occupation: Student, Mater Dei High School

Organization: Youth Volunteer Council of Orange County, c/o Volunteer Center of Orange County, 1000 E. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana, Calif. 92701. (714) 953-5757.