Saratoga News

Cover Story

Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

The message on the balloon says it all. The members of the Saratoga High School class of 2006 'did it,' and they finished their high school careers by walking in commencement ceremonies on June 16.

Class Act

Saratoga High 2006 graduates were in a class by themselves

By Michele Leung

Parents looked on with pride while their sons and daughters beamed, squealed and soaked in the fact that the moment they've been looking forward to for four years had finally arrived.

More than 300 Saratoga seniors marched across the stage on June 16 to receive their high school diplomas. They smiled and waved to their families, lost in a cacophonous din of air horns, drums and pots and pans.

Graduates had high hopes for their class. Jason Chou, in his graduation speech, expected his classmates to one day grace magazine covers, become Olympians and win Nobel prizes, Tonys and Grammies.

Laura Reeve urged her fellow graduates to blaze new trails in college and onward.

While the students were ecstatic to finally hold their diplomas in their hands, some said the evening was tinged with bittersweet feelings. Meredith Olson said she'd remember the Grad Night because "that's when I say goodbye to my friends and my teachers. I'm between sad and happy," she said.

For Kelly Burke, it was the sentiment of unity that made her graduation memorable.

"We're here as one class," she said. "It's the camaraderie. We all made it, and we're here together."

As the graduates sought each other out for congratulatory hugs, some parents were ready with their cameras, while others quietly stepped back and watched. Several couldn't help but think about their children leaving home soon.

Paul Chu said he was proud of his son, Austin, adding that there were pros and cons to his leaving Saratoga for Harvard.

"He will take good care of himself," Chu said.

In the end, bouquets and balloons spilled out of the students' arms.

"It was so much fun. I didn't want it to end," Amir Mehdizadeh said. Half an hour after the ceremony ended, he said he still hadn't found his family because he was busy mugging for friends' cameras.

But good things must always come to an end. The sun set, the field emptied, and crushed water bottles and streamers were left behind.

High school is now a thing of the past for these graduates, but the next chapter of their lives is ripe for the taking.

Baker is a Bell, and it made
'a huge difference in his life'

By Jennifer McLain

Two roads diverged and Phillip Baker, like the poet Robert Frost, took the one less traveled. And just as Frost concluded in The Road Not Taken, Phillip realizes this choice has made all the difference.

The Saratoga resident could have chosen to go to a public school, where many of his friends were. But he opted for Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys Catholic school that boasts both exceptional academics and extracurricular activities.

"The decision to go to Bellarmine has made a huge difference in my life," said the 18-year-old, who graduated from the private school just three weeks ago. "I love Bellarmine."

But, he added, "I'm definitely glad it's over."

Phillip will travel across the country to attend the University of Pennsylvania. There, he will pursue a double major in economics and engineering, two subjects he imagines can take him anywhere.

Those who know Phillip, however, are convinced that it is his demonstrated leadership skills, work ethic and maturity that will take him to great heights. After all, those are the tools he used on the Saratoga Youth Commission, in Boy Scouts and on Bellarmine's speech and debate team.

"He's a natural leader. He's very mature and intelligent, and he has the ability to give direction to his peers," said Adam Henig, Saratoga Recreation supervisor, who has known Phillip for 2 1/2 years. "He's just an all-around amazing person."

Phillip became involved with the youth commission, which works in collaboration with the recreation department and the Saratoga City Council, when he was in eighth grade. The commissioners worked to provide dances for middle schools, concerts and lecture series.

He also got a firsthand look at the effects of working with public policy.

"It's been interesting to see how slow government can move," he said.

While Phillip can't say at this point whether he will consider public office in the future, he quickly rose to the occasion on the youth commission, serving as chairman the past two years.

In fact, this was a theme throughout much of Phillip's high school career. Under Phillip's lead as president of the speech and debate team, the squad clinched the state championship. This, Phillip says, is his proudest high school moment.

"We were the underdog, and we really pulled together as a team," Phillip said, adding it was expected James Logan High of Union City would take first. "We beat them, just neck and neck."

His involvement in speech and debate taught him how to research, he says, and also exposed him to many "very bright and interesting people."

Phillip, the middle of three boys, was born in Pasadena to Abby and Tom Baker. With many role models to choose from, Phillip says he has always looked up to Albert Einstein for thinking outside of the box.

Phillip went into high school assuming he would compete in cross country. A foot injury, however, prevented him from pursuing the sport, which freed up his schedule for more volunteer activities.

Henig says what makes Phillip so special is that he knows a time to be serious, and a time to have fun.

"He comes off so serious and intellectual, but when you get to know him, you see the goofiness," Henig said.

He is so likeable he was unanimously voted by the other 12 youth commissioners to return as chairman for a second year.

"He is just a great person who will do great things," Henig added.

He recently received the Eagle Award, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts.

"The award demonstrates that you've showed leadership ability, shown that you could lead other Scouts, and that you have done so for several years," Phillip said.

He has participated in scouting for almost eight years, and along with it being a lot of fun and giving him a chance to be outdoors; program director Dave Lavelle says Phillip is a natural at it.

Phillip worked with Lavelle at a summer camp, and it was there Lavelle got a feeling for what kind of young man he was dealing with.

"The whole time, we would ask him if he could take on another challenge, and he would say, 'Thank you sir, I'd like another.' He would rise to the occasion like a champ on each challenge," Lavelle said.

Even with his participation in the youth commission, speech and debate and Boy Scouts, Phillip found time to do his schoolwork, earning between a 3.9 and 4.0 grade point average.

But Phillip says he does have priorities.

"I always have time to relax," he said, adding that he likes to play ultimate Frisbee and basketball with his friends.

Lavelle adds one of Phillip's greatest qualities is that he knows how to communicate with a variety of people.

"He's great with interacting with adults and kids, and he seems to really be able to talk and connect with people," Lavelle said. "He's a really sharp kid."

Now he looks forward to a new, less-traveled road.

"I'm really excited about going to college," Phillip said, "and I'm looking forward to new weather, new people, new personalities and new challenges."

Chill, dude ... Turkan takes a new 'language' home

By Michele Leung

She mastered the idiosyncrasies of American slang and trained her palate to get used to new and different flavors. While Turkan Zeynalzada was a world away from her home, her new home of Saratoga eventually grew to be just as homey and familiar.

Turkan, 17, traveled from her native Azerbaijan to spend a year as a foreign exchange student at Prospect High School. It was the first time she flew on a plane to leave her country, located next to the Caspian Sea and wedged between Russia and Iran.

"I learned to be ready," she said. "Sometimes your parents won't be there, so when you make a decision you have to be strong at that moment."

While having to live with a new family can be challenging, Turkan said she was glad to have been placed with the Haider family, who practice the Muslim faith as she does. Even though the Haiders are originally from Pakistan, she found many similarities in how they live, such as the respect young people show their elders.

"I learned to pray," Turkan said. "My [host] sister helped me a lot. I have grown up and matured in my faith."

Turkan didn't have the easiest of trips when she crossed oceans to get to Saratoga last August. Not only did her luggage not arrive at the same time, her original host family in Pennsylvania had to drop out at the last minute because of a family emergency. When leaders of the exchange program got wind of this, Turkan was headed to Frankfurt with nowhere to go.

During this time, Aysha Haider, the Saratoga mother of three grown children and one high school student, received an email about a foreign exchange student looking for a Muslim family to stay with. She said she made up her mind to host Turkan just a day before she arrived. While she hadn't had time to break the news to her own family yet, the mother said it was the right thing to do.

"We are Muslim. We have to help her," Aysha said of her decision. "How can we turn our back on someone who comes from us?"

Turkan said it took awhile for her to get acclimated in Saratoga. She ate bread and oranges for the first four days because food tasted different. Strangers waving to each other on the street was another strange custom.

School was also a challenge. Turkan enjoyed her English 3 honors, French 1, computer application and math classes, but she initially found the school day to be too long and the class periods too draining.

"It was a different way of learning," Turkan said. "The first day was really hard. I got really tired."

But Turkan adjusted and got solid grades in her classes, which she found to be easy.

"The teachers work hard to make you understand," she said, "but some kids don't want to understand. I didn't study really hard, but I still got A's and good grades."

One highlight of her stay in America was sightseeing in the historical cities, such as Boston and New York City, which she dubbed "the best city in the world." She saw famous landmarks and other mosques, as well as colleges on the East Coast. These locales look different than how they appear in books and TV, she said.

"I went to see America itself," she said. "Now, I know how it smells there."

After a year of living in Saratoga, Turkan said she is particularly fond of the words "dude" and "chill."

"I use them a lot. I like them so much," she said.

She is so used to thinking in English that when she communicated with her parents in Azerbaijan, she unknowingly peppered her native tongue of Azeri with English.

"I lost my skills," she said of speaking in Azeri.

Turkan left Saratoga before the school year was out so she could board a plane for a 22-hour flight home in time to graduate with her class. However, she promises to return for more education. Her hope is to take the SAT in Azerbaijan and get accepted into an Ivy League school.

"I really want to come back," she said. "I like how they teach."

In the nine months that Turkan has lived in Saratoga, she made an impression on her host family and pledges to keep in touch with them.

"We only have one daughter, and we always wanted to have another daughter," said Aysha Haider. "She is an excellent daughter. She calls us Mom and Dad. The kids love her. She is just like their sibling."

She added it was not a coincidence good things have happened to the Haider family while Turkan has been living with them. After wanting for many years to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Aysha was finally able to go this year. The Haiders also welcomed their first grandchild, and their daughter was recently accepted to law school.

"She brought good luck to us," said Aysha's husband, Muzaffer.

Slabaugh avoids dead ends to reach success in high school

By Michele Leung

The road to success is not always a smooth ride up the freeway with just one exit to go. There can be well-meaning friends who add detours to the trip. Other times, the map isn't clear, and the route becomes fuzzy.

Kelly Slabaugh's ride through high school was beset by many setbacks, but with the right mentors along the way, she steered herself out of deadends and is finding her way to success.

Kelly's four years at Saratoga High School did not start on a positive note. Just before her freshman year, she, along with her younger brother, moved from Rockford, Ill., to Saratoga. Her parents had gone through a rocky divorce. Kelly first lived with her mother in Illinois, but followed her father out two years later in search of a fresh start.

"I was having a disagreement with my best friend at the time," said Kelly, 18. "I was still a loner. I just thought moving would solve a lot of my problems."

Moving also meant getting used to a new culture.

"In Illinois, more people are laid back," she said. "Everyone goes to community college."

But soon after she arrived in Saratoga, her father made it clear he expected her to work hard in school.

"When I lived in Illinois, Kelly was in the accelerated program. She was an outstanding student in her grade school years," said Mark Slabaugh, her father. "The reason that we are in Saratoga is because of the outstanding high school out here. Both of my children were in a very nice private school in Illinois, but I couldn't afford private schools [here]."

However, Kelly wasn't ready to get on board. Desperate for friends, she sought out teens who participated whose activities she knew were wrong.

"The shock of my parents splitting and the move was overwhelming," she said. "I found my own way of dealing. My friends pulled me down a lot."

Drugs and alcohol were a reality in her circle, she said.

Kelly also tried to find an identity in being chameleon-like, coloring her hair every hue of the rainbow. Her frequent change in appearance was to spite her father, she said.

"My father didn't like it," she said "He didn't want to be known as the father of the child with the blue hair."

Kelly characterized her first two years of high school as her angry years. While she was the team captain and MVP of the school's water polo team her sophomore year, the rest of her personal life was turbulent. She lied frequently to her father because she wanted to sneak out, had a friend commit suicide while on the phone, was arrested once for shoplifting--though nothing was noted on her record--and made poor choices with friends about drugs and alcohol, among other incidents. She said the anger was directed at herself.

"These were not good friends," she said. "I was letting them decide what to do with my life."

But through the chaos that surrounded her, one source of encouragement came from her younger brother, Chase, who just completed seventh grade at Redwood Middle School. Kelly gladly chauffeurs him around, does his laundry and makes sure his homework is completed each night. To Kelly, her brother is more of a son.

Kelly helped raise Chase, which led to her childhood aspiration of becoming a teacher. When the pair was younger, she'd teach him the math she was doing at school and gave him her math problems to do. When she saw he was doing them correctly, she began to teach him in earnest and give him homework.

Chase has been absorbing what his older sister is teaching him, advancing past his grade level and even mastering algebra in middle school.

"He learned really fast," Kelly said. "He got there because I kept persisting. He's really smart, but I'd like to think that I gave him a kick-start."

Kelly's change of attitude about her own studies came in her junior year, when she blossomed in her child psychology class under the tutelage of teacher Jill McFarlen. Twice a week, students work with the toddlers who attend World of Discovery Preschool, the school that meets on the high school campus. The students become big buddies to the tots and are responsible for devising lesson plans. McFarlen said Kelly is able to think on her feet and come up with teaching ideas and activities for the preschoolers.

"She feels important in there," McFarlen said. "The children look up to her, and the students look up to her."

McFarlen remembered when she first had Kelly as a freshman in her driver's training class.

"She wasn't obnoxious, but she was a bit intense," she said. "She wanted to prove her uniqueness by dressing differently and doing her hair. She was always nice, but not always as happy and cheerful as she is now."

Kelly has been working with the preschool program for two years and found working with young children gave her less to be angry about.

"I wanted to be a good role model," she said.

Her two years with McFarlen have cemented her interest in teaching, which she will pursue after graduating from UC-Santa Cruz. She plans to spend two years at West Valley College before transferring to major in psychology and work in child development.

While she said she has the test scores and the grades to head straight to the UC, she wasn't ready to leave Chase just yet.

"I'm not ready to go away," she said. "The main reason I'm staying here is to help him out in his transition to high school."

Even with the outlet she found in working at the preschool, Kelly's personal life still took a toll. She and her father continued to butt heads, and when she turned 18 she was determined to move out of the house and live on her own. To become self-sufficient, she worked 30 hours a week at two jobs, teaching swimming lessons at the Southwest YMCA and lifeguarding at the Campbell Community Center.

She never did move out and eventually realized doing so would not have been a smart decision for her. But she continued to work at the two jobs, squeezing in homework whenever she had a free minute, such as during lunch or after 10 p.m. when she returned home.

She also became more serious at school and relied on her teachers for advice. She sought economics teacher Todd Dwyer out for tips on jobs.

"She's a great kid with a lot of pluck," he said. "She's going to do fine at whatever college she winds up at. She has real grit and determination to overcome whatever comes her way."

Because of her work hours, Kelly said she sometimes had to swallow her pride and ask for extensions on projects, even though she hated the extra help. English teacher Paul Page was one teacher who accommodated her.

"I'm more than happy to give her some slack," Page said. "She's very inquisitive, articulate and a deep thinker. She expresses herself well in her writing. She's not a frivolous type of individual."

Kelly's efforts to improve and get on the right track at school have not gone unnoticed. She received a Turnaround Scholarship given by the Kiwanis Club. At first, Kelly wasn't sure she wanted the scholarship, she said, thinking her father would be ashamed because the scholarship would be an acknowledgement of her not-so-stellar beginning. But on the contrary, Dad was proud.

"Kelly worked hard to straighten out," her father said. "It was a large confidence- builder for Kelly."

While it took Kelly a few years to find success in her life, she said she doesn't regret the valleys she trudged through. All the difficulties have helped shape her character, she said. She has also made it a point to be more involved with her class, participate in school social activities and display more school spirit.

"High school will end before I experience it," Kelly said of her decision.

Working two jobs never allowed time for much socializing, but Kelly recently quit her lifeguard job to make room for friends and to be prepared for college. She said she missed out on her childhood, but raising her brother and working with toddlers has taught her to look at life with a newfound child-like appreciation. Taking care of Chase is a feat she is most proud of.

"I feel I accomplished something," she said. "I'm not going to be upset if he doesn't acknowledge me, but I have the joy that he's gotten so much farther and that I gave him a great opportunity to learn, grow, have a childhood and not have to grow up so quickly."

The teenager who described herself as frustrated for two years now has a sunny attitude. She and her father still don't always see eye to eye, but they are able to discuss problems more calmly. Dad is happy at her turnaround, and that the holes in her pierced ears are filling in. The blond-haired, blue-eyed girl with the sun-kissed shoulders has finally found where she is supposed to be and is looking ahead at her next destination.

"I'm happy as to where I am," she said. "I'm not afraid about the future. With all these obstacles, I can do anything."

Westmont seniors graduate with awards for their acheivements

By Dick Sparrer

Graduation is a special time for high school seniors, especially those who are marching off with special awards.

Caitlin Ayer, Nathaniel Brengle, Veesta Falahati, Erica Chase and Amy Harmer all know the feeling. The five Westmont seniors were honored with special awards at last week's graduation ceremonies.

Brengle was the male recipient of the Principal's Cup and Ayer, Falahati and Chase shared female honors as winners of the Principal's Cup, presented each year "to the top boy and girl student based on academic excellence, citizenship and contribution to the school," according to Westmont Principal Owen Hege.

The school also recognized Harmer, presenting her with the Laurance Hill Award that is given each spring "to the student who has performed the greatest school service," added Hege.

Ayer was also among the 15 students who shared the valedictorian role at the Westmont graduation, an honor bestowed on those graduates who post a 4.0-plus grade point average. Other Westmont valedictorians were Victoria Marie Bommarito, Jenny Yuen Ting Chan, Erica Kathryn Chase, Veesta Falahati, Dominique Sum Yhee Fong, Ngoc-Diem Thi Hoang, Hana Kim, Sahar Maali, Jennifer K. Nguyen, Sarah Christine Orlando, Laudan Lacey Siahpolo, Emily Elizabeth Ufheil-Somers, Jessica Barbara Wacker and Lindsay Michelle Wilkinson.

PDF: Download the Saratoga News newspaper (13 MB) fro a list of graduates