Marin's Alpert, Peterson Among Nation's 1st Female Eagle Scouts

MILL VALLEY, CA — For more than a century, Mill Valley’s Boy Scouts of America chapter has through its Eagle Scout program worked to instill confidence and character the group says serve as the building blocks of leadership, service, community.

And for more than a century, that group has excluded females.

No more.

Two Mill Valley high school students shattered that glass ceiling as they became among the nation’s first females to achieve the prestigious rank of Eagle Scout.

Abby Alpert and Cassie Peterson, both Tamalpais High School seniors, started blazing the trail for others when they started the program in February 2019. That's when Boy Scouts of America became Scouts BSA and started allowing girls to participate in the program.

Not even a pandemic could stop Alpert and Peterson from earning the rank of Eagle before their 18th birthdays.

Both completed all the requirements without exemptions, including serving as troop leaders, demonstrating scout skills, performing community service, earning 21 merit badges and completing all requirements including their final Eagle Project, which is considered the most daunting.

Alpert and Peterson contributed a combined 435 volunteer hours on their roads to Eagle.

For Alpert’s project she coordinated with a kindergarten and a first-grade teacher, designing three blacktop games for the kindergarten play area at Edna Maguire Elementary School to support the curriculum taught in the classroom.

With the help of Scouts in Troop 1G, she painted the games on the blacktop so that the students could continue their social-emotional learning in the play area.

The project required over 144 volunteer hours.

Peterson’s project was to create 40 "fidget blankets" for patients with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco and Bello Gardens Assisted Living in San Anselmo.

Fidget blankets are lap blankets that provide sensory and tactile stimulation for the restless hands of senior citizens with these diseases.

Peterson had 25 volunteers helping with a total of 291 hours.

Alpert and Peterson are both headed to college this fall.

Alpert will attend Washington University in St. Louis and Peterson is headed to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“Having worked with Abby and Cassie since founding the girls’ troop, I am truly impressed by their creativity, organization skills and generous spirit. They take great effort to teach the younger scouts their scout skills, making sure all of the girls continue to advance on their own Trail to Eagle,” Assistant Scoutmaster and Troop 1 Committee Chair Lisa Gilmore said in a statement.

“They both exemplify the Scout Oath and Law in their daily lives.”

Alpert and Peterson plan to serve as adult leaders for their troop this summer, mentoring younger girls on week-long camps to Marin Sierra in Tahoe and Camp Emerald Bay on Catalina Island.

“As Scoutmaster of Mill Valley Troop Girls, I could not have hoped to enjoy a better duo in leadership,” Troop 1 Scoutmaster Robert Del Secco said in a statement.

“Kudos to Abby and Cassie for their dedication and determination to make the troop such a glowing success! I look forward to seeing and hearing about these ladies as they move through their endeavors in the coming future.”