DAVID MIRHADI Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Sunday, March 2, 2008 12:00 am
He's led his team to a state championship in football.
Davis Fay proved to college recruiters that he's an ace in the classroom as well.
That's exactly what the Jackson Hole High School senior did on the ACT test this winter. He aced the test.
And get this: He's one of just 39 in the country out of 370,000 who took the test on Dec. 8, the Jackson Hole News and Guide reported in its Feb. 27 edition.
He scored a 36, the highest score attainable. It's like bowling a 300 perfect game. Or a hole-in-one on a par-3 golf hole. Or reciting the entire Gettysburg Address from memory.
Yup, he's that good.
Fay told the paper he credits his score for his penchant for trivia.
"If I bother to learn something," he told the paper, "I can usually recall it later."
He's also an Eagle Scout and a thespian, too.
"He is by no means perfect," said Fay's mom, Linda Hanlon. "He is a human boy."
Fay's counselor, Julie Stayner, told the paper that in the 17 years she's been doing her job, she's never seen anyone who's aced the ACT like Fay did.
All we can say is, college recruiters better start sharpening their pencils.
Do as I say, not as you did
You would think that Laura Vanderberg would have an ax to grind.
After all, her yoga studio was burglarized late last month, so you figure there might be some bitterness.
Not so fast, my friends.
The Cody Enterprise reported in its Feb. 18 edition of a 180-degree turnaround by the business owner.
"It's a horrible feeling," she told the paper. "The tendency would be to close our hearts off, but we need to keep our hearts open."
Vanderberg is asking people in the community and members of her dance studio to perform random acts of kindness in response, the paper reported.
This is after a Feb. 13 incident when Vanderberg went to her studio, opened the cash box and discovered it empty. Four hundred dollars, gone.
"It makes me sad that these things happen and sadder that someone was in a place where they think they can help themselves to something that doesn't belong to them," she told the paper.
Good luck, Ms. Vanderberg.
Welcome to the 20th century, rural Rawlins
In Wyoming, it's often not uncommon to give addresses that sound more like a step back in time than an actual address. In some communities, getting to "the Wilkerson's place" means taking a left at the old water pump, driving past the old hunk of baling wire, making a right turn at the four-way stop and then proceeding two minutes past the rusty horse trailer.
We're mostly kidding, of course, but there are places where numbered addresses are an afterthought, and those kinds of directions make the most sense.
In Rawlins, that's about to change.
The Rawlins Daily Times reported in its Feb. 22 edition of a plan by Carbon County's rural addressing plan to assign 1,176 homes addresses.
It's largely so emergency responders know where to go in case of an emergency at the unmarked places, the paper reported.
The addresses don't look like conventional ones, however. For emergency responders, it might look something like this - 2 CR 456, meaning that the house is two-tenths of a mile from Carbon County Road 456.
It might be complicated, the paper noted, but it's still the "simplest system we could come up with that tells you how to get there," Karen Larsen told the paper.
Most times, apparently, the old way will do just fine.
Young hero hits TV talk-show circuit
It's a long way from the Big Horn Basin to the Second City, but Mathew Rissler deserves this trip. The five-year-old from Worland was in Chicago on Feb. 18 for a taping of the nationally syndicated "Steve Wilkos Show" on NBC to retell the story of how he helped save his mother after she began choking on some nachos on Feb. 11, the (Worland) Northern Wyoming Daily News reported Feb. 22. His mom, Sandy, instructed the boy to call 911. He talked to the operators and let police into the home, where they were able to perform the Heimlich maneuver.
Wilkos rose to fame as chief of security for the Jerry Springer TV show.
"It was really cool talking to Steve," she said.
They replayed the 911 tape on the show, too.
Mathew received a wagon full of toys and a check for $3,500. "It was really fun being on TV," Sandy told the paper. "We had a blast."
Leaping for joy on their birthday
And now, we celebrate people for whom a birthday comes just once every four years.
The (Newcastle) News Letter Journal celebrates the birthday of Jack Holwell, who turned 80 on Friday.
The Buffalo Bulletin in its Feb. 28 edition celebrated Danielle Barent's birthday on the 29th, too.
Barent told the paper she often has two birthday celebrations each year - on Feb. 28, and another on the following day, which 75 percent of the time is on March 1.
The Thermopolis Independent Record reported that Adele Fillman also celebrated her 24th birthday - or, perhaps her sixth - on Friday.
"People will ask me my age and I'll tell them I'm five," she told the paper one day before her unusual birthday. "They don't believe me, and I'll show them my ID."
Once, on her 16th birthday, she ate for the kids' price at a buffet in Casper.
Ah, the perks of just acting your age.