The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Editor's Note: This is the last of our profiles about the winners of this year's Times $500 Community Service scholarships to students from Prescott, Dayton and Waitsburg. Senior Christy Poirier is the scholarship winner from Waitsburg High School.

WAI T SBURG - For Christy Poirier, giving back started when she was about five.

She would accompany her dad, Roy, on service projects for the Christian Church of Waitsburg.

Handing him tools or nails, or helping him put in an elevator for elderly members of the congregation, Poirier learned early that a situation, a project, a life is what you make it.

"When Sunday came, I felt tremendous joy when the elevator my dad and I had helped to install brought people to church who had not been able to attend for many years due to their inability to walk up the staircase to the sanctuary.

"From that moment on, I knew that even as a young person, I could be a part of big and meaningful things," the senior Cardinal said.

To say that Poirier has been a part of big and meaningful things since those young years would be an understatement.

As her mentor and FFA advisor, Nicole Wright, puts it: "She's literally in every event. She truly knows what it means to help others."

During her four years in high school, Poirier served more than 140 hours as a community volunteer, being busy with everything from collecting food for needy families in Waitsburg to serving as a DARE role model.

Through her older sister Bertha, she became particularly enthralled with the Ann Weatherill Bike Ride, volunteering to help bring awareness about biker safety in the area.

The ride is in memory of a local teacher and cyclist who was killed by a motorist while cycling with friends in 2004.

She served on the pit station crew, handing out food, helping repair flats and providing directions on the route.

The money from the rides went towards the installation and maintenance of Share the Road signs throughout Walla Walla County. Poirier also volunteers every year at the Tour of Walla Walla.

Last year, she organized a team of high school class mates to take part in the Relay for Life, raising money for cancer research.

As an officer of the National Honor Society, she took part in cleaning up trash along Highway 12 outside Waitsburg. She also volunteered at the Waitsburg Food Bank, now called the Waitsburg Resource Center.

But Poirier is perhaps best known for serving her FFA community.

That began because her parents raise beef cattle on the family's 200-acre farm on North Fork Coppei Road. Being in 4H, then later FFA, was a family tradition. As a freshman, Poirier attended the state FFA convention and was immediately inspired to take an active role in the organization, which helps prospective farmers with technical training and career development.

Her own "career" in FFA culminated this year with her election as State Sentinel, a year-long position that will see her travel thousands of miles to help teach younger FFA members skills, leadership, communication and teamwork at high schools throughout the state.

In January, she will join FFA officers from all over the country on a 10-day agricultural tour of China.

"This will be a year that will teach me a lot," Poirier said. "This is something I have always wanted to do: represent my state and my roots."

Before she was elected by thousands of her FFA peers to be a sentinel, Poirier had planned to attend Washington

State University to study ag education with the ultimate goal of becoming an ag teacher like Wright, her Waitburg mentor and role model.

That goal hasn't changed, but the timing has. She will now go to college starting in the fall of 2012. As a testament to her promise as a student, a leader and a contributor to society, her list of scholarships read during graduation Friday night was one of the longest of among the 30 graduates: Robert J. Handy Memorial Scholarship, Cougar Commitment, Washington State Potato Foundation, Mc- Gregor Standing Tall For Agricultural Scholarship, Washington State Future Cougars of Color Scholarship, Far West Agribusiness Association, Odako, Koinania Club, Waitsburg American Legion and Legion Auxiliary and, of course, the Times Community Service scholarship. Altogether, her third-party educational support is worth almost $11,000.

Once a Cougar, Poirier already plans to contribute to her new community as a volunteer, including the Pullman Food Bank and to different campus events.

Poirier will make some family history with her higher education plans.

"I will only be the second person in my entire extended family to have earned a college education," she said, explaining that her mother immigrated from Mexico. "This is a big milestone in my family since my father has a high school diploma and my mother only has a second-grade education."

This humble background made Poirier's speech as Class Speaker at graduation all the more personal and powerful.

" Dream your greatest dream," she told her classmates. "Don't be afraid to start up your mountain."

We wish Christy the best on her adventure of the state and China, and in her years as a Cougar. Congratulations with your many accomplishments. We're proud to be a small part of your success.

The staff of the Times: Bob Nowell, Norma Bessey, Tracy Daniel and Imbert Matthee.