5th-Grader’s Essay Earns a Spot at Winners’ Table

When Paul-Emile Desrosiers’ mother was pregnant with him, she also had cancer, and doctors told her that pregnancy would be risky. Despite the warning, Letitia Desrosiers stopped her chemotherapy treatments and gave birth to a healthy Paul-Emile in 1988.

Her cancer went into remission until 1995, when it returned and she resumed treatments.

“When [my mom] got sick the first time, God gave her a miracle by letting her live and have me,” wrote Paul-Emile, now 10 and a student at Superior Street Elementary in Chatsworth, in an essay on American heroes.

Earlier this month, his essay was one of 30 winners selected from 2,000 submissions to a contest for fifth-graders at 30 elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The winners will be honored at a Sunday luncheon at Taix, a French restaurant in Los Angeles. The contest’s sponsors, Assembly Speaker Antonio R. Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) and Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer, will attend, along with the winners’ family members, school principals and teachers.

The group of 30 will be narrowed to 10 grand prize winners, who will receive a trip to Sacramento, and a tour of the capital.

The contest produced essays that named heroes ranging from relatives to well-known figures such as Rosa Parks.

“The purpose of this contest was to help students realize that even in a city as diverse as Los Angeles, we all have a great deal in common, regardless of our ethnicity or our socioeconomic background,” said Jimmy Blackman, assistant to Villaraigosa.

The essays were judged by the staffs of Villaraigosa and Feuer, Blackman said.

The 30 participating schools were chosen from Feuer’s and Villaraigosa’s districts.

“The response from the students has been overwhelming,” Blackman said. “Based on this year’s response, it is likely that we will do the contest again next year, and possibly even expand it to include more schools.”