Student of Merit: Teen is the force behind her success

By: ADAM KAYE - Staff Writer | Friday, June 3, 2005 11:27 PM PDT ∞

ENCINITAS ---- If Sunset High School students are immersed in a community project, chances are Danielle Humphreys is the quiet force behind it.

When the Students Helping Others group travels across town to tutor middle school students, looking over the shoulders of the younger students is Danielle.

When the Student Environmental Action Leadership Club appeared at City Hall or boardrooms to demand a ban on the mass release of helium balloons, Danielle helped apply the pressure.

When students from the modest school collected half a ton of food for the North County Food Bank, Danielle applied herself to that project.

"When anything needs to be done, she's just there," said Terry Hendlin, Danielle's teacher. "You look up, and there she is."

For her accomplishments, Danielle is one of 10 North County Times Students of Merit.

The honor includes a $1,000 award, which includes a 50 percent match from the Biogen Idec company. Biogen employees, educators and newspaper staffers culled 10 winners from nearly 200 nominations based on academic success, community service, extracurricular activities and general strength of character.

According to Hendlin, Danielle has only herself to thank for her success. Danielle is 17 and has supported herself since moving to a friend's house in 2003.

Danielle wakes herself up in the morning. She does her own cooking. She buys and washes her own clothing. She pays rent, insurance and utility bills and labors to keep an aging car on the road.

No one needs to force Danielle to do homework. Sometime between school and work at a bakery in Carlsbad, she finds time for the assignments.

She earns As and Bs at Sunset, a school she chose to attend as a freshman because of the positive experience her two sisters had there.

She began ninth grade at La Costa Canyon High School, but soon felt the sprawling campus was an impersonal place.

"I just felt like a number there," she said.

She opted instead for Sunset, a low-key collection of portables tucked in a eucalyptus grove, where students and teachers work, rejoice, argue and cry together like a family.

Danielle says she loves her sisters and her young nephew. She said she loves her mother in spite of the "difficulties" she has experienced. She requested that those difficulties remain private.

Danielle's self-determination has conquered personal adversity.

In addition to bagging the Student of Merit award, Danielle as a junior won a $7,000 Chargers Champion scholarship, which comes with a computer.

More recently, Health Care Communicators of San Diego and AMN Healthcare Inc. awarded her a $1,000 scholarship.

Danielle's next big step is to begin a nursing program at Sonoma State University this fall. As a nurse, she said, she can spend every day helping other people.

One day she hopes to be a mom.

With that monumental job, and any other one she faces, Danielle will apply a tested formula for success.

"You can't sit there and wish your life is different," she said. "You have to take what you have and make the best of it."

Contact staff writer Adam Kaye at (760) 943-2312 or akaye@nctimes.com.