Inspiring Service to Others

Inspiring S vice

Pictured: Derek Dolfi e, 2009 Oak Ridge High School graduate (left) and Emilee Johnson, 2021 Ponderosa High School graduate (right)

S vice Oth sTO

LOCAL GRADS GIVING BACK

by BILL ROMANELLI photography by CHARLENE TAYLOR / CHARM PHOTOGRAPHY

It’s well documented that participating in extracurricular activities, particularly in high school, plays an important role in a student’s overall academic success, but what kind of impact can involvement in a club have on young adults and their communities after they graduate? For the students, the impacts are predictable and easily summed up as valuable life skills. e community benefi ts however, can be even more far-reaching.

Two local examples are Emilee Johnson, who graduated from Ponderosa High School in Shingle Springs last year, and Derek Dolfi e, who graduated from El Dorado Hills-based Oak Ridge High School in 2009.

Johnson is a self-professed overachiever with a 4.3 GPA who is entering her freshman year at University of California, Davis this fall, where she’ll study aerospace engineering. She made news last year when, as a Girl Scout, she created and launched a tutoring website: zoomingintotutoring.com. She developed the program that led her to becoming a Gold Award Girl Scout. is honor is notably the highest award in Girl Scouts, but her inspiration came from working with the El Dorado Hills-based nonprofi t Hands 4Hope—Youth Making A Diff erence when she was at Ponderosa. Hands4Hope—Youth Making A Diff erence inspires youth in leadership and service by giving them a voice, and an opportunity, to address issues aff ecting their communities.

“What I le ned this is that if y can give s ething back, y sh ld,” Emilee Johns says. “It doesn’t need to take all kinds of time m ey—an h r a week can be all it takes. It may not seem like much, but it can make a huge diff ence f s e e else,” she says.

“I started with Hands4Hope my junior year and got involved in a variety of projects, a lot of which did outreach with foster kids,” Johnson says. “It got me thinking about foster kids as a group, what they needed, and what I could do to help them. e biggest need I saw was for tutoring.”

For the next two years, Johnson taught herself how to be a tutor and she created an online tool to help other people learn how to be tutors and to connect students in need with tutoring volunteers. She made cold calls to foster agencies serving families she thought might want her services, and she worked through yet another school club—the California Scholarship Federation (CSF)—to recruit student volunteers. By the time she graduated, she had 15 fellow high school students signed up and helping other kids.

Now that she’s graduated and moving on, she’s handing the Zooming Into Tutoring reins over to CSF to continue giving Ponderosa students the opportunity to teach others. As for her, Johnson looks forward to engaging in more community service in her future.

“What I learned from this is that if you can give something back, you should,” Johnson says. “It doesn’t need to take all kinds of time or money—an hour a week can be all it takes. It may not seem like much, but it can make a huge diff erence for someone else,” she says. A perfect example of that is Derek Dolfi e, the Oak Ridge graduate from 2009. After high school, he studied political science at San Diego State University and then earned a Master of Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine. In 2016, he was hired by the League of California Cities, where he’s now a lobbyist on environmental quality policy matters of concern to cities throughout California.

He’s done well for himself. He loves his career, and he gives all the credit for that to the YMCA’s Youth and Government™ program he joined while he was a student at Oak Ridge. e Youth and Government™ program helps high school students learn about state government and how it works, and it creates a mock model legislature and court system that supports that learning.

“What’s great about being in Sacramento is our club actually goes to the Capitol and debates policy and legislation on the Senate and Assembly floors,” Dolfie says. “Doing that, I fell in love with government, and for me the rest is history.”

Dolfie is more than just a lobbyist. e Youth and Government™ program had such an impact on him that he’s now an adult volunteer with the program, serving as lead advisor for the El Dorado delegation. ey meet every week with the youth on campus and participate in three conferences a year.

As a working lobbyist, Dolfie takes a lot of pride in working with legislators to create policies that make California better, but it goes to another level when he knows he’s giving young people direct, working knowledge of the legislative process, and perhaps helping to shape their future careers in government.

“Kids in high school are at a pivotal point in life and are looking for guidance, even if they don’t admit it,” Dolfie says. “Something I like to tell adults is, ‘be the person you wish you had in your life when you were 16.’ I was lucky I had good adults around me. For so many kids today, having that kind of mentor and advisor can really help them lead a fruitful and rewarding life.”