For girls involved in scouting, the Silver Award is the top honor that can be achieved, and six cadets/senior girls from Girl Scout Troop 461 of Saratoga earned just such honors this summer.

In a special ceremony by the Girl Scouts of Santa Clara County on June 4 entitled "All That Glitters," Lisa Burley, Andrea Aquino, Elizabeth Berg, Laura Rauschmayer, Katherine Rea and Sarah Thermond were recognized for their individual projects and presented with their awards. In addition, three girls from the troop received their 10-year pins in the ceremony—Becky Crawford, and Silver Award recipients Sarah and Lisa.

For her Silver Award project, Laura Rauschmayer took charge of the sewing of the service unit quilt for the Saratoga Library. It includes a square for each Girl Scout in Saratoga, which proved to be quite a project—the quilt had more than 300 squares when it was finished. Laura said she started by handing out fliers to recruit people to help with the sewing, giving them to other Girl Scout troops and people who she knew had sewing skills.

"I thought the quilt would make a good project. The quilt is how all of the Girl Scouts are shown to the community, and someone needed to put it together, so I volunteered," she said. Laura was also on hand at the unveiling of the quilt in the library's Orchard Room when it was complete.

Scouts Katherine Rea and Sarah Thermond chose to organize the auditions for the spring musical The Music Man at Redwood Middle School for their project. Sarah and Katherine had both performed in many of the school's musicals when they were students there.

Sarah said she still takes voice lessons from the school's music director, and Katherine's mother was a producer for the show, so that was how the two heard the production needed help organizing the auditions.

The two put together sign-up sheets, which adults working on the show passed out around the school. Once students had signed up, Katherine and Sarah set about calling all the hopefuls and organizing appointments for them to come for their auditions at various times over one weekend. On the audition days, the two girls were on hand to check people in and have them fill out forms they had designed, asking them about previous theater experience. After the adults had made their choices for the show's roles, they posted the cast list up at the school.

"I enjoyed helping out with what I knew was going to be a great show, and it was," said Sarah.

Said Katherine, "It was interesting, helping to lead something I had once participated in myself."

Troop member Lisa Burley decided to go it on her own.

"I never knew where I could go to look for projects in this area," Lisa remembered. So, she decided to gather information on various volunteer opportunities for students and create a website.

"I found a site that shows kids how to do HTML," she explained. "Then I went on Yahoo! Geocities and set up one of their free websites. It was pretty easy, and it was fun, too." Now Lisa's site can help young people for years to come.

Scouts Elizabeth Berg and Andrea Aquino are also fans of the theater and found themselves a project helping out with costumes for Saratoga High School's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Due to budget constraints, the school could not afford to buy all the costumes needed for the musical, so Elizabeth and Andrea's project was a big help. It was also no small feat. Andrea sewed vests for a group of 11 brothers in the cast, in addition to other costumes. Elizabeth was in charge of 22 dresses for a dance sequence, as well as organizing a group to make a series of Egyptian collars for another scene. Elizabeth did all this in addition to performing in the musical as a wife, a dreamgirl, and singing a duet with another cast member.

"It was fun because we got to know people better that we hadn't talked to much before, and really got to interact with them," said Andrea. She said she seriously started sewing about a year or two ago, and likes to make her own Halloween costumes. Andrea said this project was also fun because it tested and improved her sewing skills.

All six girls will be sophomores at Saratoga High School in the fall.