‘Mega-Badge’ Gets Pinned On Reluctant Scout

Sitting at the kitchen table, the Woman of Distinction has her hands full: a neighbor’s 2-year-old daughter scribbling with marking pens, the media clamoring for her story and the phone ringing to irritation.

Two-thirds of the hubbub stemmed from Stacy Kirk’s trip to the nation’s capital. There the Girl Scouts of America awarded her its highest honor, a kind of mega-badge given in 2001 to only 11 young women in the nation.

Kirk and her fellow winners of the Gold Award Women of Distinction toured Washington, met members of Congress, visited the White House, and spent time with mentors from government, medicine and industry. Among the mentors were former Girl Scouts, including Dr. Susan Blumenthal, assistant surgeon general.

Not bad for someone who had been a reluctant Scout, especially about the camping part. “Sleeping on the ground, I didn’t want to do that,” she recalled. But after awhile, she said, Scouting “had its advantages.”

It certainly did. It was a mentoring program in Compton that earned Kirk the Gold Award. She recruited adult mentors, each of whom she paired with children 7 to 17 years old.

Volunteers meet with the young people alone and in groups to nudge them along in schoolwork. Most participants came from her family’s church, Christian Unity Baptist in Inglewood. Kirk solicited donations of materials from businesses to help run the program and motivate members.

She also staged career days for young people. When she planned her “gold” project, she said, she decided to “do something positive for kids. I never had a mentor, so I thought that might be good.”

“Her project had a significant impact in her community,” said Michele Landa, spokeswoman for Girl Scouts of the United States of America. “It was considered exemplary.”

At the church where Kirk launched her program, Pastor Lois Williams said the single biggest challenge for her 210-member congregation is overcoming the disconnection between parents and their teenagers. Many of her congregants are single mothers with their parenting plates filled to overflowing.

“A lot of times,” she said, “parents think they are listening, but they’re not hearing. That’s why Kirk’s mentoring program is helpful. If children of the community could get involved in something like this, it could change a lot of things.”

Consider Aubri Apacanis. The 12-year-old has excelled in the months since he teamed up with mentor Roger Watkins, says his mother, Chanda. The two spend every Sunday together and talk frequently on the telephone.

It can be hard, she said, to teach your children about values and coping with peer pressure and what it takes to succeed in life. When delivered by a non-parent, that information may be taken more seriously, she said.

“His mentor is really helping him with that,” Apacanis said. “Now he’s taking more responsibility for his actions; it’s not ‘I don’t know’ all the time. So we’re getting sentences instead of one-word answers,” she added, laughing. “He’s doing better in school, also. He was making Cs at first; now he’s making As and Bs.”

Another volunteer is Vanessa Younger, who works with Oriana King, 10. Younger said Kirk has inspired youths beyond the program, and serves as a role model for what one person can do from scratch.

“She is wonderful. She is a mentor,” Younger said of Kirk. “Not only for the little ones, but for the adults. For someone that young to do as many things as she’s done, and still get good grades in school, [is] wonderful. She’s such a caring person that sometimes, even if you want to say no, you can’t, because of her personality.”

Which perhaps explains not just how Kirk created the program, but why she handles so many things--like the scribbling toddler and ringing phone--with such poise. Right after the Washington trip came another sojourn: to China--for a medical conference. She handled that with poise, too. Her parents say she’s always been that way, and from birth had a sunny disposition.

Her father, Stanley, is a math teacher. Her mother, Gazella, works as an accountant for a religious bookstore. They’re especially proud of Kirk’s honor and national acclaim within the Girl Scout organization, which has 3.8 million members around the world.

Kirk, 18, has outgrown Scouting. Members must retire their sash when they turn 18 or finish high school. She graduated from a public high school called California Academy of Mathematics and Science and will start classes this week at the University of La Verne. She hopes to transfer to Cal State Long Beach, where she will pursue a career as a nurse practitioner, specializing in neonatology.

Given her success in both experiences, it is hard to believe that Kirk disliked high school, where she was an honor student, and that she was a reluctant Girl Scout.

She had joined at her mother’s prodding, but shuddered at the idea of wearing the uniform: Nerd meets park ranger. Then there was the thought of being seen at the mall, in that uniform, selling cookies.

“But then I saw how it could help me do what I wanted to do,” Kirk said. “It was another leadership opportunity.”

The week in Washington in June prompted some intense career focusing, years after Kirk began doing it on her own. She had volunteered as a candy striper and, through Young Black Scholars, spent two weeks at a hospital in San Francisco, pressing her nose against the glass of the neonatal nursery.

One of her secret weapons is the handwritten thank you, something she never fails to send to anyone who has helped her with even the smallest gesture. It is part of the good manners she learned from her parents that she has passed on to the mentor program youths.

Her new Palm Pilot is filling fast with phone numbers and contacts that she might one day network; she has a notebook of business cards for those who have helped her or might do so in the future.

“Can I have one of your cards?” she asks about halfway through her interview. “You never know.”