Scholarships Awarded to Local Girls

The Corte Madera Women’s Improvement Club has awarded scholarships to two graduating seniors from Redwood High School in Larkspur, CA. The scholarships are awarded for demonstrated, sustained community service, assessed largely through essays written by the applicants.

This is the tenth year that the CMWIC has awarded scholarships to college-bound seniors in the Larkspur-Corte Madera area.

The recipients are Lauren Knott of Larkspur and Stephanie Oh of Corte Madera.

The 2017 Kimberly Powell Memorial Scholarship Recipient is LAUREN KNOTT

Lauren Knott is an 18-year-old senior at Redwood High School with loads of energy and a positively buoyant outlook. She’s an excellent student, holds a part-time restaurant job, and is a volunteer member of the Marin County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue (SAR) team, where she and her team save lives.

Over the nearly three years that she’s been in Search and Rescue, she has spent more than 1,000 hours on searches, in public events, and in training, becoming certified as an Emergency Medical Responder, in Mountain Search and Rescue, and in Snow and Avalanche Search and Rescue. As she has gained experience and her proficiency has sharpened, she has become a team leader, managing searches and coordinating training.

She has participated in searches in Yosemite, on Mount Whitney, and in Bolinas. She can get a call to ship out because someone is in trouble at any time, including after midnight, during a storm. When called, she is eager to get to the command station and get to work. It’s deeply gratifying to save someone. But that’s not always the outcome of a search. Sometimes, they find the missing person dead, or the person can’t be found at all, perhaps because they’re covered in snow and despite everyone’s best efforts, closure for loved ones won’t come until spring, when the snow melts.

The Marin SAR team is about 100 people strong, 15-20 of them in the youth program. Each SAR volunteer attends, at minimum, two general meetings and one full day of training each month.

In addition to the CMWIC scholarship, Lauren has been awarded Explorer of the Year by the Marin Council, Boy Scouts of America, and is a talented vocalist. She is one of the lead singers in the Performance Workshop music program at Redwood; sings jazz, country and pop in several groups; and frequently is selected to sing the Star-Spangled Banner for events, including last week's opening for the MCAL basketball championships.

Lauren lives in Larkspur with her mother, Jill; her father, Larry, a Senior Principal Engineer at Autodesk; and her brother Philip, a sophomore at Redwood whose areas of interest are technology and music.

Lauren plans to major in Engineering at Cal Poly.

STEPHANIE OH

The Corte Madera Women’s Improvement Club is awarding a scholarship to Redwood High School senior Stephanie Oh to recognize her dedication to community service by sharing her musical talents with young people through the nonprofit organization Enriching Lives through Music (or ELM).

More than 120 students from San Rafael’s Canal neighborhood get to learn music for free through ELM’s programs. The students work with excellent teachers, mentors, and musicians in intensive programs in which they can progress from playing a tune on the recorder to performing on a classical instrument.

Stephanie, who has lived in Corte Madera for 17 of her 18 years, has a passion for music. She has played violin with the Marin Symphony Youth Orchestra (MSYO) for 5 years. She also plays the flute, ukulele, and basic piano.

Music is central to her family. Her father, Dennis, plays the trumpet; her mother, June, chairs Dominican University’s Department of Music, Dance and Performing Arts; and her younger sister, Natalie, a 7th-grader at Hall Middle School, plays cello and flute.

Participating in community service is a requirement for students in the Tam High District, and Stephanie learned about ELM when she was investigating ways of fulfilling this requirement, and it has become a force in her life. Stephanie has recruited friends to intern at ELM with her, and they are actively searching for good people to replace themselves in internships as they move on to college.

Stephanie has yet to decide which college she’ll attend in the fall.

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