RUMFORD – For most Olympic athletes, going for the gold means devoting hundreds of hours to training, travel and competitions.

For 17-year-old Heidi Roy of Mexico, a Mountain Valley High School senior, going for the gold meant years of community service work and a mastery of hand puppets.

On Saturday, Roy, an independently registered Girl Scout with the Telstar Service Unit, won the Girl Scouts Gold Award, the highest achievement in girl scouting, for her work in helping to convert a room in the former Children’s Museum of Rumford into a shelter for homeless women and children.

It also marked the first time in nine years that a girl from the Rumford area had received the prestigious recognition, said Roy’s mother Sally.

“I’m very proud of myself,” Heidi Roy said. “You can’t earn anything else. It does feel good because of what services I’ve done and what the Gold Award represents. Like the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve done something that will positively affect your community.”

To go for the Gold Award, Heidi Roy, who has been a Girl Scout since the age of 5, said she had to decide upon a course of action at the beginning of high school.

The award has five requirements, all of which demand efficient organizational, time management and leadership skills.

The requirements include earning:

• Four interest project patches on topics related to the Gold Award Project.

• The Career Exploration Pin.

• The Senior Girl Scout Leadership Award by spending at least 30 hours serving in a school and community related leadership role.

• The Girl Scout Challenge of developing one’s potential, relating to others, developing values for living, contributing to society, and helping others learn about girl scouting.

• Plan and implement a Gold Project that requires 50 hours of work that has a positive and lasting impact on the community and submit a final written report to the Girl Scout Council.

For Heidi Roy, it was an easy decision to go for the gold because she’d been doing community service projects since the seventh grade.

“I decided I wanted to do it my freshman year because I got the second highest award in eighth grade,” she said.

Her interest project badges, all of which were achieved in her freshman and sophomore years, included cooking (home improvement), ways to preserve the environment (eco-action) – she made a model of a solar home and showed how it worked – being a clarinet player in the MVHS band (music), and leadership.

Since the seventh grade, Heidi Roy has used toddler-sized hand puppets in the Kids On the Block Puppet Troupe to teach youngsters and adults of all ages about health-related issues like drug abuse, bicycle and automobile safety.

“Acting behind a puppet makes me feel more confident,” she said. She’s been doing puppet shows five to six times a year.

Roy earned the pin by writing a resume in her sophomore year and determining that her job-related interests were in the pharmaceutical field because “helping people get better when they’re sick is important to me.”

Despite getting a four-year scholarship to the University of Maine, Roy decided to pursue a pharmacy degree by enrolling in a six-year program at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, R.I.

She earned the leadership award by putting more than 30 hours into the puppet program.

Not only did Roy spend more than 50 hours working to help create a shelter for homeless women and children in the Rumford area but, as a senior, she also organized a community group at the middle school level to help stock the shelter’s pantry.

“It felt nice to be able to make a difference,” added Roy, who is the daughter of Tim and Sally Roy of Mexico.

On Saturday, Heidi Roy, the MVHS valedictorian, also graduated from high school.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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