Outstanding Teen Service

If we listed every service project with which Cordova High Senior Kylie Chang was involved since she became a teenager, we’d be here all night.

But the name of this award is “Outstanding Teen Service,” so we will give it a go.

A true Lancer for Life, Kylie did not grow up here. She was born and spent the first years of her life in San Francisco. Like many families in the mid-2000s, hers moved away from the city because they wanted to live in a house. They had never lived in a house before and Rancho Cordova’s Stone Creek neighborhood welcomed them with open arms.  

Kylie is young, but she has made an impression. This ball of energy is a remarkable combination of talent and commitment and the breadth of her activities is exhausting.

An engaged scholar-athlete, Kylie is a Cordova Lancers cheerleader who also plays violin in the Cordova High orchestra. An excellent student, she has qualified to be a member of the California Scholarship Federation for all four of years of high school.

Not surprisingly, Kylie has emerged as a leader among her peers. She served as president of the Cordova High School Interact Club, allowing her to combine her leadership skills with a desire for service. She was selected to participate in the Rotary Youth Leadership Camp for promising high school seniors, learning how to perfect her personal style of leadership.

Dedicated to community service, and a believer in the Rotary credo of “Service Above Self,” Kylie became a familiar figure around Rancho Cordova as a small-but-mighty hands-on volunteer. She was an established leader of high school students who assist at the Rancho Cordova Rotary Club Crab Feed and Easter Egg Hunt, the Rancho Cordova Fourth of July, Kids Day in the Park, iFest International Festival and Christmas Tree Lighting. 

At Interact, Kyle led projects ranging in focus from polio vaccinations to senior care to water and sanitation, expanding her vision from her high school to a more global perspective. She and her comrades have partnered with other schools and clubs to plant trees – a lot of them – matching the strength and robustness of youth with the needs of the environment around her.

Her Dance Club was a Cordova High student favorite and she loved performing for her fellow students. She thinks of herself as quiet, but said making other people feel good makes her feel good, too.

With excellent grades, a reputation for organization and compassion, it is not a surprise to learn that adults sometimes look to her for help. Mature, confident and always on the go, you might say that Kylie basically “won high school.”

Kylie shines as a student leader who will make the world better as she moves through it, because she instinctively knows that it is through service to others that a great life is lived. It is a wonderful characteristic in one so young and makes those of us who are older optimistic about the future.

Kylie, we salute our undeniable record of student service and look forward to seeing where it takes you in the future. Because there is one thing we know, and it is this:

The two most important days in your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why. 

Please join me in honoring the wonderful Kylie Chang, the 2020-21 honoree for Distinguished Teen Service.