[00:00:00] Walter: The hearts of gold podcast is brought to you by the grow and share network produced by off the Walter media.
[00:00:11] Sheryl: Welcome to hearts of gold. Today we have Sammie with us. Hi, Sammie.
[00:00:15] Sammie: Hi, how are you?
[00:00:17] Sheryl: I’m great. Can you tell us about your Girl Scout Gold Award project?
[00:00:22] Sammie: I most definitely can. So I started my project when I was 15.
[00:00:27] It would have been summer of 2022 following the shooting at Robb Elementary School. I had not wanted to originally do this for my Gold Award project. It didn’t start as my Gold Award project. It just started as a toy drive I wanted to create. So I founded Sammie’s Toy Drive and I collected toys for the survivors of the shooting.
[00:00:47] And it was a very slow growing project, I actually did not complete the project until a year and a half after the shooting, so it would have been November of 23. I like to help communities that are dealing with gun violence in schools through healing events. Uvalde, it’s a very divided community, especially after the shooting.
[00:01:12] So I like To go into the town with these healing events, just to do community building. and build friendships with the children. Can you share what one of these healing events looks like? Yeah. So we have, we’ve only had one so far. We’re doing another one in October of this year. We do the events at the library and we have therapy dogs, a pinata, and of course like the toys that the kids can take home.
[00:01:38] This year’s event, we’re trying to double the size of it. So we’re going to have bounce houses, a face painter, food trucks, all these different kinds of things that the kids have requested from the last event.
[00:01:50] Sheryl: How is the community connection that you’re building through these healing events, specifically giving back to those who were affected by the shooting?
[00:02:01] Sammie: It’s amazing. These community members that I have met have become friends that I would even call family. It was a type of response that I didn’t expect from the community, but when I have families that lost their child in the shooting coming up to me saying, you’re Sammie’s Toy Drive, I know about you and giving me a hug, it’s It’s why I do it.
[00:02:25] It’s so worth it to know that this in some way brings them joy.
[00:02:29] Sheryl: Can you talk about the toy drive itself a bit and how that happens?
[00:02:35] Sammie: Yeah, definitely. So I’m an official 501 C three now. So I’m official nonprofit. The toy drive works in the way of. We accept donations through an Amazon wishlist or we take like cash donations, different stuff like that.
[00:02:50] And those donations come in. And we prioritize whether we need to do like, activities at the event, or if we need more toys. We also, like, do sponsorships and stuff like that, which is something I’m working on a lot. And also with the toy drive, I do a lot of advocacy work of, like, remembering
[00:03:10] victims of gun violence because that is something that definitely gets kind of swept under the rug. Because what I say at Sammie’s Toy Drive is we’re honoring the 21 one toy at a time because they are the reasoning for everything. Just with the toy drive, we do the annual event we plan it all year and me and my mom travel to Uvalde twice a year.
[00:03:32] We visit on the mark of the shooting every year for the vigil that the families host. And then we also travel for the event which we work with the library. So it definitely helps having the library connection.
[00:03:47] Sheryl: Can you share some of your stories about the 21?
[00:03:51] Sammie: I would absolutely love to actually. I have my binder here, my Uvalde binder.
[00:03:55] Let me grab this real quick that has pictures of them because I would love to talk about them. So here are the 21. And I’m actually, I’m wearing button pigeons. We have Ellie Garcia. She was nine years old. We have Leila Salazar. She was 11. And then over here we have Jackie Cazares, she was nine. And then I have a green converse pin which represents 10 year old Maite Rodriguez and her green converse with the heart on the right toe.
[00:04:26] So with these pictures, let’s see, where’s Amory? You have 10 year old Amory Jo Garza. She had just turned 10 about two weeks before the shooting, and she was a Girl Scout. She was a junior Girl Scout, and for her heroic action, she actually earned her bronze cross as she was killed when she was trying to call 911 when the shooter entered her classroom.
[00:04:48] And then we have 10 year old Alithia Ramirez, and she was a Girl Scout in kindergarten, and she was a Daisy, but she didn’t continue with it because she just had some issues making friends and just wasn’t comfortable with it. But it’s like each and every one of them, I know almost all of their families.
[00:05:05] Now I visited the cemetery on May 24th of this year. So the two year mark of the shooting and families that I didn’t think knew me. They knew me and they gave me a hug at the cemetery and it was just, it was beautiful. I have two stories with Jackie Cazares. I’m really close with her family.
[00:05:25] It’s the most amazing people I’ve ever met. And The first one was that we were visiting Robb Elementary on the two year mark, and it was in the time frame that the shooting would have taken place. And me and my mom pulled up in our car and got out, we immediately went up to her mom and she was standing directly in front of the building that her daughter was killed in.
[00:05:51] And she immediately, she held me and she was just sobbing and she just held me in her arms and she looked at me and she goes, how are you doing today? And it’s like in that moment when she’s experiencing that, she asks me how I’m doing. And they’re just the most amazing people. And later that day, we visited the cemetery and we visited Jackie’s grave.
[00:06:17] And one thing about Jackie is she was a little trickster. She was just figuring out how to leave the house in one outfit and come home in a different outfit. that her parents didn’t want her wearing. So she, she just always has this little smirk, a smirk on her face. Like she has her mural in New Valley and she just has this little smirk and it’s her and it’s precious.
[00:06:40] So we visited the cemetery and her whole family was there. And there’s like a little fence around her grave and I had a bouquet to put on her grave and I was just kind of walking around it and about to sit down and her mom looks at me. She goes, Oh, it’s okay. You can go in with her. You can go on there.
[00:06:57] So I do. And as I’m stepping over the little fence. My foot gets caught and I trip on it and I was mortified, absolutely mortified. I just thought everything I’d worked on for two years to build these connections was gone. Her mom is just cracking up. Absolutely cracking up. And she goes, Oh, Jackie loves to trip people.
[00:07:19] And I just was like, okay, so now it’s like, I feel like I have that little bond with Jackie. If she tripped me but she absolutely cracks me up. Like that little girl, she wanted to go to Paris one day and she wanted to be a veterinarian and she had five dogs and she loved her dogs. I met the family of Uzziah Garcia.
[00:07:42] He was 10 years old. His family describes him as an energizer bunny. He was non stop, just loved his trampoline, he loved his video games, everything. And his dad actually gave me, it’s like a little Pokemon card kind of thing of Uzziah. And on it, it says, Uzziah wanted to be a cop so that he could help people.
[00:08:03] By receiving this card, he reaches and helps another person. And it also said, as long as you have this card in your possession, Uzziah’s love will protect you. I had talked to his dad in the past just kind of like so he could get to know who I was but I did not expect the immediate hug and just like 25 minute conversation that followed when I met him.
[00:08:25] Something I didn’t expect was just the I guess the change in the community from having support, because they do not have the support from their own community. So having out of state support is huge. It’s building community connections across state lines, is what I like to say.
[00:08:44] Sheryl: Can you dive into how you personally change projects to connect?
[00:08:51] Sammie: With this event that happened and what root cause you identified, why it speaks to you so personally, and all of those things that go into picking a project that’s really important to you.
[00:09:06] I don’t know why it spoke to me so much. Honestly, I, I’ll never forget that Tuesday though. I was standing in my living room and my mom yelled downstairs.
[00:09:16] To turn on the TV and just watching that scene unfold that entire day. And the one thing that I think touched me the most was when I saw the picture of Emery Joe Garza. She was the second victim that was named and then hearing that she was a Girl Scout. I think that’s when it really sunk in for me of this.
[00:09:38] This is too close. This hits too close. So, my original Gold Award project was not the toy drive. I was going to do a patch program. To honor the kids to where it’d be like each one would have a bio and a project to do for them. And it would be different for each age group. So it’d be more age appropriate. That project ended up being turned down by the Southwest Texas council, which all I can say was that was the most heartbreaking day of my life.
[00:10:10] I was in Uvalde when I got the call. And where I was sat in my car, there was a mural to my left and eight murals behind me of the kids. And I was just sitting there, and all I could think was, I failed them. Because this is what I was supposed to do, and I failed them. So then I immediately, after kind of grieving that idea, I turn to, wait, I have this toy drive.
[00:10:36] I guess I can use that as my project. So the way that I made it work for my Gold Orb project was, of course, identifying my root cause was the way that the aftermath of gun violence is handled because it’s very sterile with how it’s handled. It’s very stigmatized. People don’t want to talk about it. And when it’s handled in the legal system and in the government.
[00:11:00] It’s very sterile. You don’t think of 10 year old Caitlin Gonzalez who survived in the classroom across the hall and how all she does is miss her best friends and her cousin. So it’s, people very much forget about the lives that were lost and the survivors. It’s very much if you just think of the shooting in a whole.
[00:11:21] So I wanted to try to help that stigma by helping the kids and helping them feel safe to talk. And To make friends with kids that went through that same situation. And I also wrote a toy drive manual to help other people that want to do kind of the same thing as I do. So it’s just like a breakdown of how to start all the way through how to run the event, and how to not get discouraged, and how to not give up and to take breaks.
[00:11:55] You have to take lots of breaks.
[00:11:57] Sheryl: How can people get a hold of that manual?
[00:12:00] Sammie: I’m working on getting it put on my website right now. Currently, I’ve just been kind of posting like on social media, like, hey, reach out to me. I can email it to you because it’s just been very busy the last couple of months since I received my gold award, but it’ll be available on my website, sammiestoydrive. com.
[00:12:18] Sheryl: What was your biggest challenge during your project and how did you overcome it?
[00:12:22] Sammie: I had two challenges of really just like dealing with this intense grief because it’s a lot of death to work in. I’ve been doing it for two years now and it’s like, I don’t want to say I’m used to it because you never get used to it, but you get better dealing with it.
[00:12:43] I’m even starting to move into working with families that have lost their children to suicide. So it’s, it’s a lot of death when I was 15 years old and trying to navigate what I felt safe doing. like mentally safe doing and what I needed to do and learn to help the community. And then another challenge would of course be having my original project turned down because I just, I loved it so much.
[00:13:10] And all I can say to other Gold Wart Girl Scouts that are working on getting their Gold Warts, just take breaks. I took a six month break after that to just grieve and To try to put the pieces back together because breaks are so important or you will burn yourself out like that.
[00:13:30] Sheryl: Other than really having this intense feeling of wanting to do something for the community, what brought you back and gave you the energy to try submitting a second proposal after your first one was denied?
[00:13:47] Sammie: It’s 100% the kids, the 21. I would not have continued without them. They were the push that kept me going because again, it’s honoring the 21 1 to at a time. With the Gold War, I always say you have to find a project that is beyond yourself.
[00:14:02] It can’t just be something you want to do for you. It has to be beyond yourself. Of, it’s, you love something so much and you’re so passionate about something that you, you do it for them, not yourself. By the end of my gold award, I was telling my advisor, I really don’t care about getting the gold award for myself.
[00:14:26] I want to do it for these kids so I can dedicate it to them. And so at the ceremony, I wore a red sash that had pins on it of each of the kids. And it’s like, that’s why I did this. So people have to look at their pictures and have to hear their names and hear their stories because they, They deserve to be remembered.
[00:14:47] Sheryl: What did you learn from your submission of your first promote proposal and that denial and writing your second proposal that helped you be successful with that second proposal that could help other Girl Scouts as they try navigating the proposal process?
[00:15:03] Sammie: On my first project, I actually never made it to the proposal.
[00:15:07] I Was just trying to get approval from Southwest Texas and it was turned down. But when I was writing my proposal for the toy drive project, really just taking your time and Digging into, like, day one of your project, when you first thought of it, all the way up until then, and just those small details hold so much power, is what’s important.
[00:15:32] Something that you might not think much of. Like, what I did a lot was, I would look back in my camera roll, all the way back to the day I started and be like, Okay, wait. What was I doing in this moment? What was I thinking in this moment?
[00:15:44] Sheryl: Is there anything else about the Gold Award process itself that you can remember that you learned that could also be helpful for other Gold Award Girl Scout candidates?
[00:15:53] Sammie: Patience is key. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with the process. It took me two years to earn mine from the, from when I started my project, not when I officially started my gold award. At that point, it would have been probably a year and a half. Just patience is everything. It takes time and again, take breaks, take breaks.
[00:16:16] Sheryl: Who was on your team and how did they support you?
[00:16:19] Sammie: My friends were, I had three of my friends on my team, which of course my mom was big on my team, but I can’t have her like officially on the Cold War team. But I had some of my friends just kind of help me with like budgeting and with numbers because not my strong suit.
[00:16:38] Because, you know, me, if I get a donation, I’m like, I want to add all this stuff. And they’re like, okay, you can’t do that. You cannot do that. So they helped me with keeping me sane a bit, telling me to take breaks and they just helped me. One of my friends that helped me, she’s two years younger than me. So she’s closer to the age of the kids.
[00:17:00] So she was able to help me and like, Hey, I think. Like this kind of stuff at the event would be helpful to them. And I think buying these kind of gifts for them would be interesting to them. So that definitely helped having someone closer in age to them.
[00:17:18] Sheryl: Who is your project advisor and how did you connect with them?
[00:17:21] Sammie: They are a family friend that lives in Texas. Actually. My parents have known her for years. And she was able to help me, she’s an author and she’s a business owner, so she was able to help me like writing the toy drive manual and giving me advice in the writing aspect of it. And she was able to help me just in like making partners in it because that’s not my strong suit.
[00:17:49] So having someone that owns a business, like she was really able to help me in that realm of things. Yes.
[00:17:57] Sheryl: What skills can you, looking back, see that you expanded on by doing your Gold Award project?
[00:18:05] Sammie: Empathy, definitely. Because when you’re working with survivors and when you’re working with families that lost their children, you definitely have to put yourself at their level of, like, this is where they’re at.
[00:18:20] And this is what you need to do for them. So I definitely learned a lot about kind of slowing down and really like just taking a breath. I really learned how to enjoy silence and letting the conversation happen instead of just having to constantly be like, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. You know, I learned how to just sit in a peaceful silence because that’s really what the families need.
[00:18:49] Sheryl: I understand you’re also thinking about writing a book. Can you tell us about that?
[00:18:54] Sammie: Yes. So I am working with another activist who works a lot in gun violence prevention, and we are working on writing a book together about victims of gun violence. So we’re going to go all the way back to Columbine up until the most recent, which would be, I believe, Perry, Iowa.
[00:19:15] And we’re just going to write a page about each of the kids that were lost and just pictures of them and stories. We’re going to interview their families and just make sure that they’re memorialized and remembered as they should be.
[00:19:31] Sheryl: You’ve also earned your bronze and silver awards. Can you tell us about those projects?
[00:19:36] Sammie: I actually don’t remember my bronze award. I know I did something with my troop. I think we did something for the local homeless shelter. I think we. Did blankets for them, if I’m not mistaken. And for my silver award, I collected donations for a local animal shelter.
[00:19:56] Sheryl: It’s often that we don’t remember our bronze award projects because at that, at that award level, the leaders are so integrated and it’s a full troop
[00:20:06] event. So it’s so different than the gold award process. I guarantee you still learned a lot that helped you be successful with the gold award by doing your bronze and silver awards.
[00:20:16] Sammie: Oh, yes.
[00:20:17] Sheryl: What other Girl Scout memories do you have that you’d like to share?
[00:20:20] Sammie: I’ve been a part of two different troops. I joined my troop that I’m currently in when I was 13 or 14, I think, because my old troop just kind of dissolved.
[00:20:30] Unfortunately, I have loved doing twilight camp. Like I’ve only done it twice though, because my troop doesn’t do it anymore, but I loved being an owl at the twilight camps. My first year I was 12 and I had. eight kindergartners, which was a little overwhelming, but it was so fun. Like just the memories. I learned how much I love kayaking and all that kind of stuff.
[00:20:56] And then I had last year I had a group of eight second graders and I had a co leader this time. So that definitely helped, but I just kinda, I learned a lot about myself and different things that I love in that situation. But I just Twilight camp is like, so, so dear to my heart.
[00:21:16] Sheryl: Do you have a camp name?
[00:21:18] Sammie: Yes. So my original camp name when I was 12 was Kitty Sparkles, which then we later changed when I was 16 to Froggy.
[00:21:29] Sheryl: And what’s the story behind Froggy?
[00:21:31] Sammie: I love frogs. I love frogs so much. And we had our camp hats. They’re just like baseball caps. And I made a frog out of pom poms and put it on the top of my hat.
[00:21:41] Sheryl: What plans do you have for your future at this point?
[00:21:44] Sammie: Technically, I’m supposed to be a senior this fall, but I graduated a year early. And I will be attending trade school in the fall to be an esthetician.
[00:21:53] Sheryl: And in case somebody doesn’t know, an esthetician is?
[00:21:57] Sammie: I will be kind of working in a spa type situation.
[00:22:00] It’s kind of like the sister to cosmetology. So different stuff like that, like facials and like all that kind of fancy stuff. Kind of all this, the pretty stuff.
[00:22:10] Sheryl: What draw you to esthetician school?
[00:22:12] Sammie: I’m not a very academic person. I mean, I like school stuff, but I could never see myself going to college.
[00:22:19] ever. For a while I wanted to do journalism, but then last minute I was like, I don’t want to go to college. So I originally looked at cosmetology. But then decided against it last minute for honestly, no reason, but I just started doing research on aestheticians and I was like, that sounds like fun and I love working with people and just like it’s fun to be able to like make people like feel their most beautiful and I love being able to do that to boost people’s confidence.
[00:22:50] Sheryl: And for our Girl Scouts who maybe aren’t looking at what, what goes on after high school can you tell us why trade school truly feels better to you than going to college, which requires, I’m going to just do a little lead in here, which requires general education, which means more math, more science, more English, more of the things that you did in high school how can trade school be a great alternative?
[00:23:19] Sammie: Trade school is honestly awesome because you’re learning a specific trade. It’s not like, which I mean, college is great. It just, it’s not the path for a lot of people and I’m one of those people but you’re learning a specific trade that not a lot of people know. It’s not like you’re getting a business degree, which so many people have.
[00:23:43] You can get like a specific trade to be an electrician or to be like, Oh gosh, I’m trying to think of all the different ones, a mechanic, like different stuff like that, or cosmetology esthetician. It’s a specific thing that you’re learning that. You have to have special certifications for, and other perks.
[00:24:02] It’s a lot cheaper and a lot quicker.
[00:24:06] Sheryl: Definitely some selling points there. There are definitely some selling points. I’ll just share a personal story. My daughter went to technical school, which is very similar to trade school to be a medical assistant. And when she chose that path my entire family expected her to go to a four year school, come away with a bachelor’s degree, and she chose this other path.
[00:24:29] And medical assistant is also a one year program, so a shorter program, very focused on the skills that you need to be a medical assistant. And she came out of that and went into the workforce. And looking back, that was the best decision she ever made because she also would not have been a good candidate for a four year Thank you.
[00:24:51] the, the general, general eds and the other courses that would have had to gone along with it. They, they would have, they, she wouldn’t have been successful. And so it was also a very good path for her. And I’m proud to say, and this is true with a lot of trade schools and. Other programs that there are also other paths after you get out where you can continue to grow and learn and further educate yourself because my daughter is now an RN.
[00:25:22] So she did choose to go back to school. But she would have never been an RN right out of high school. So I applaud you. I’m glad that you’re sharing that part of your story. I think it’s really important for other students to, to know that there are other options.
[00:25:37] Sammie: Yes. College is not the only option, which it seems like it is, but it is not.
[00:25:44] Lots of other options.
[00:25:46] Sheryl: What else would you like to share with the audience?
[00:25:49] Sammie: Don’t forget about, like, victims of gun violence, because it is something that we do often turn away from, because it is hard to deal with, like, when you see a school shooting on the news. Like you want to follow it at first, but then as soon as the headlines are gone, it’s forgotten.
[00:26:07] And all I can say is two years later, Uvalde is not okay. Six years later, Parkland, Florida is not okay. 12 years later, Sandy Hook is not okay. Grief is a forever thing, especially when it’s such a tragic way of losing a child. So just like, don’t forget them. Don’t forget their families. And find ways that you can help them.
[00:26:30] Sheryl: How do you make your s’mores?
[00:26:32] Sammie: It really depends because like when I’m going all out, I do the whole bonfire thing and I like them to just be like where they’re just slightly turning brown to where it’s like really gooey on the inside and it’s got that little bit of crust on the outside. Perfect. But, When I’m being lazy and I’m at home, I just, I popped them in the oven.
[00:26:53] I do my little graham cracker and the marshmallow and chocolate, pop it in the oven. It’s great for sleepovers too. But. Yeah. It just, it has to be that perfect, like, golden brown. It’s so good that way.
[00:27:05] Sheryl: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Sammie.
[00:27:08] Sammie: Well, thank you for having me. I had a lot of fun.
[00:27:11] Sheryl: Make sure to click follow or subscribe so you always know when new episodes are released. Power your passion. and conquer your challenges.
[00:27:21] Walter: Thank you for listening. If you’d like to be on the show to share your story of how you earned your gold award, reach out and send an email to growandshare@outlook.Com.
[00:27:31] Be sure to catch up on our previous shows on any of your favorite podcasting platforms, as well as view the full video versions at youtube.com/SherylMRobinson. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you next time.