Seventeen-year-old Krista Warner of Randolph is not your typical high school senior.
She holds down four jobs. She spends five days a week as a cashier at Kmart in West Lebanon, N.H. She collects money and golf balls at the local driving range at least one day a week. She runs the cash register, does maintenance and cooks a couple nights a week at her parents’ Randolph bowling alley, Valley Bowl. And she busses tables at her grandparents’ Berlin restaurant, Sambel’s.
She’s enrolled in the adult education program in Randolph – offered during non-tradition school hours – to be able to fit it all in.
So it stands to reason that her senior project would be atypical as well.
Rather than learning to spin the potter’s wheel or play a musical instrument, Warner learned how to help others through fund-raising. The “others” Warner wanted to help were breast care patients at her local hospital, Gifford Medical Center, and she came through big.
She raised a total of $1,094 for the Woman to Woman Fund at Gifford, which assists low-income women with mammogram costs not covered by other assistance programs and also pays for Woman’s Touch MammoPads, a soft cushion placed on the medical center’s mammography machine to make mammograms more comfortable for all.
She raised about half the money – $594 – from a bowling tournament she organized on April 25 at her family’s bowling alley. About 60 people participated, supporting Warner’s cause through an entrance fee, others gave cash and still others donated prizes for the tournaments’ winners and for door prizes.
An additional $500 is coming from the Women’s Bowling Association.
Warner chose the cause because breast cancer has touched her life.
“My gram had breast cancer before my dad was born,” she says. A great-grandmother also had the disease.
Both got treatment and got well. Helping others do the same, and the amazing turnout at her fund-raiser, had Warner in tears when she announced the tournament’s first place winner.
“I’m really happy. I was expecting 25 to 30 people. I was really happy with everyone who came and the amount of money that was raised,” the teen said. “It was amazing.”
Gifford staff members Jane Harrness and Ashley Lincoln, who accepted Warner’s generous gift at the hospital on May 26 were in full agreement.
“Krista came to me asking if she could help,” says Harrness, Gifford’s breast care coordinator. “Not often does a high school student do that. She seemed very interested and she is very pleased with the result, as am I.”
As director of Development, Marketing and Public Relations at Gifford, Lincoln oversees fund-raising at the non-profit medical center.
“The generosity in the communities we serve continues to amaze me,” Lincoln says. “Krista’s senior project is selfless and will give back to the women in her hometown and the many communities Gifford serves. She is truly making a difference.”
To keep the tradition of non-tradition – and making a difference – going, Warner is planning an unexpected education and career. She plans to attend college with her mother, Karen, to study psychology. When the duo is through, they hope to open a joint practice together and continue to help the people of their community.
