Alameda Whiz Kid: Kaleigh Thorp

Name and Age: Kaleigh Thorp, 18

School: Encinal High School

Accomplishments: Kaleigh is an actress and model who devotes herself to community service:

• She currently has over 1,700 community service hours logged on the President's Volunteer Service Awards website
• She is a regular contributing author to an online teen news outlet (www.teennewspaper.com)
• She is the youngest fall 2009 intern for "Organizing for America"
• She sponsors Marines and soldiers through anymarine.com, Soldiers' Angels and Soldiers' Bakers ,where she collects and sends care packages, correspondence, and cookies to "adopted" service members
• She is a former Miss Alameda County, Miss California National Teenager, Miss California Junior National Teenager, Miss Southwestern States, Junior Miss Global Ambassador
• She was appointed one of two team members for the San Francisco Nordstrom's Fashion Board
• She ranks in top 5 percent of her graduating class
• She has earned over 40 college units through concurrent enrollment and AP classes.
• She is a member of Mensa, International High IQ Society, Intertel, Top One Percent Society
• She has ranked in the top 3 in league for girls' shotput and discus since freshman year
• She is two-time winner of the City's Season for Nonviolence Speech contest
• She is a winner of the Alameda Rotary Youth Speech contest, finishing in the top five in Northern California
• As an actress, she has appeared in Encinal High School productions of Carousel, RENT, West Side Story, Diary of Anne Frank and Dead Man Walking and she will appear in the spring production of Seussical. And she has worked as a paid actress in several public service announcements, educational videos and a national commercial for Rexona (in Mexico). She's also a fit model for the Marla Dell Agency.

Key to Awesomeness: "Kaleigh is unique in that she excels in so many different areas," writes mom,  Kathleen. "She's been doing community service since she was a little girl because she really enjoys doing it. She wasn't thinking that it would be a requirement later on or even that it would garner her scholarship money as she applies to college. Through pageants, she earned $40,000 in college scholarships and has been offered $71,000 in scholarships through just two of the schools she's applied to this year."

If you know of an Alameda young person you think we should feature in coming weeks, send to eve@patch.com. Include: the nominee's name, age, school, accomplishment(s), and what you think is the key to their awesomeness.