News

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Santa Barbara High student Robert Salazar, Los Angeles County 2010 Youth Volunteer of the Year

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, Second District; Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, Fifth District; Robert Salazar; Supervisor Don Knabe, Fourth District; and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Third District (photo courtesy Los Angeles County Workplace Programs)

Robert Salazar’s earlybird class at Santa Barbara High School begins at 7a.m. and on some days, when he attends class at Santa Barbara City College, his school day doesn’t end until 7:30p.m. At a time when graduating high school seniors push themselves to take 20-25 units per semester, Robert is currently taking an unheard of 70 units this semester. He acknowledges that he has a lot of catching up to do.

When Robert enrolled in Santa Barbara High last fall he was one entire semester short on credits. Santa Barbara High is Robert’s fifth high school; one of them was in the Los Angeles area and three in San Bernardino. After years of problems at home—divorce, custody battles, multiple moves, bounced from school to school, homeless when he was in the tenth grade—and problems at school, Robert is seemingly unaffected by the cycles of upheaval in his life. He is again bracing up to lose his home, with no alternative in sight, and yet he notes that his past experiences have given him an “unyielding determination” to survive whatever hardships come his way.

A quiet, pensive young man, Robert credits part of his “unyielding determination” and focus to having been an active member of the California Cadet Corps, an organization akin to the ROTC, for six years. Robert was very active and served as a captain and most decorated cadet in the California Cadet Corps, an activity he misses since Santa Barbara does not have a cadet unit. As a cadet, Robert received three awards from the California State Assembly and three awards from the California State Senate for exceptional achievement in the California Cadet Corps and for being in the top half of one percent of cadets statewide to compete in the Individual Major Awards Competition.

On Monday, April 12, 2010, Robert was honored by the County of Los Angeles, Board of Supervisors, as a 2010 Youth Volunteer of the Year. About 400 people, including department heads and judges from the Los Angeles Superior Court, attended the 28th annual observance of National Volunteer Week, held in the Grand Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Los Angeles County holds the event to honor outstanding contributions of residents to community-based agencies, neighborhood projects, nonprofit organizations, and local government. Twenty-five youth and 46 adult volunteer honorees were introduced at the “Volunteers Build Bridges” recognition and awards luncheon attended by Los Angeles county’s five supervisors: Gloria Molina, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Zev Yaroslavsky, Don Knabe, and Mark Antonovich. Robert was recognized for his extraordinary volunteer work for the Museum of Natural History, George C. Page Museum.

Robert Salazar at the La Brea Tar Pits (photo courtesy George C. Page Museum)

Every Saturday, Robert volunteers eight hours at the museum’s Paleo lab. It is a 200-mile roundtrip from Santa Barbara, which adds an additional six hours of travel time to his day. Robert’s journey starts at 6:45 a.m. in Santa Barbara when he walks to the closest MTD bus stop, switches buses for a Greyhound to Los Angeles, takes the city bus, and then finishes the journey by scooter. After his eight-hour shift at the La Brea Tar Pits, Robert begins the transportation process in reverse, finally reaching home at about 9:00 p.m. He has rarely missed a Saturday. As of April 21, his museum supervisor reports that Robert has given 191 volunteer hours to the museum, a commitment he relishes.

“Robert is a remarkable young man who has made a real contribution to our efforts here at the Tar Pits. He is inquisitive, creative, and has an endless thirst for knowledge,” said Shelley Cox, laboratory supervisor, George C. Page Museum in Los Angeles.

The printed program from the April 12 luncheon provides insight into Robert’s selection: “His weekly commute to the volunteer assignment at the Page Museum’s Paleo lab exceeds six hours, yet it has not deterred this Santa Barbara High School student. He found a way to make the trek…when his family moved from Porter Ranch to Santa Barbara…He spends Saturdays in the lab performing a range of duties, from cleaning the lower jaw of an Ice Age Bison to looking through sediments with a magnifying glass for ‘micro’ fossils. When he joined the excavation crews, the quality of his work and young age amazed the seasoned veterans.” Robert is currently working on uncovering the tibia of one of the largest mammoths ever discovered, called Zed.

Why does Robert do it, in spite of the challenges? “Being a volunteer is doing what you love to do,” Robert said. He added that he enjoys “working hard for the satisfaction of a job well done and the gratitude shown by others.”

It is no surprise that Robert chose to volunteer at the Page Museum. “I have been interested in paleontology since the day I was born. I have known since the age of four, once I knew what the word meant, that that’s what I wanted to do,” he said.

Currently, Robert’s classes include Construction Technology, English, Environmental Science, Economics, Physics, Health Science, and Adult Education, where he is taking intensive instruction courses to amass the necessary units to graduate. He is also enrolled in Japanese two days a week at Santa Barbara City College.

Why Japanese? “There is a reason for everything and I feel that if anything ever comes up three times, then I have to study it.” With an interest in origami, Japanese just seemed like the right thing to do.

Robert Salazar, seated at Santa Barbara High School with origami in the foreground (photo Santa Barbara School Districts)

Robert has been drawn to origami since the age of eight. In his backpack he carries a small box containing a thick stack of square origami paper, his most prized being two 5”x5” squares that his aunt gave him following her trip to Hiroshima when Robert was eight. “When you practice origami, you can appreciate form and capture movement.”

Robert’s love of paleontology and origami are a perfect blend. He is drawn to prehistoric life forms and has coined the term paleo-origami to describe his small folded paper figures of the Pleistocene epoch Dire Wolf, saber-toothed tigers, and mastodons. Robert does not add to, or cut, the origami squares to achieve the desired effect. It is all in the folding of a single piece of paper. Most of his works fit compactly in the palm of one’s hands.

Robert’s origami is currently on display at Santa Barbara City College, Humanities Building, third floor. He also has a 10” origami sabre-toothed tiger and mammoth on display at the Page Museum. With a little coaxing Robert will consider parting with some of his intricately folded origami figures. His asking price for intricately folded cranes, prehistoric animals, trees, and flowers is about $12-25+ per figure, depending on the time and complexity of the piece. He is proud of the fact that about half of his work is now self-designed and half is based on the works of other origami artists.

As for the future, Robert’s goal is to earn the credits needed to graduate with his class and “walk down the hill,” a time-honored tradition at Santa Barbara High. He hopes to continue his studies at Santa Barbara City College and then transfer to UCSB, majoring in ecology and ultimately earning a doctorate. “Mine is the pursuit of fascination. I want to go to school until the day I stop breathing.”