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By Elizabeth Wendt |
New York, January 13, 2002: In her work, Sharon Franklin occasionally worries.
The Quest for Kids mentoring program site coordinator sees a lot of students in a school year, some of them savvy and determined, others troubled and struggling with their studies.
Anita Petit-Homme, however, never gives Franklin any cause for pause. When Franklin met the 16-year-old Naples High School junior two years ago, she said, she had an immediate idea of the kind of person Petit-Homme would be.
"When she opened her mouth, I knew right then," Franklin said.
Focused. Motivated. Intelligent. Energetic. And able.
Petit-Homme, Franklin said, is all of those, a girl who "can take the ball and run with it - possibly all the way to Duke University in Durham, N.C., where Petit-Homme hopes to attend college.
"I have no doubt that she's going to make it," Franklin said. "If Duke is where she wants to go, she'll be there."
If Petit-Homme is accepted, she will have familiar company: three other female minority students from Naples High have been accepted to Duke since 2000 - Marguerite Pierre-Louis, Tristan Byrd and Danielle James.
Petit-Homme would be the fourth, an honor she hungers for. The reputation of Duke
's
medical program is especially attractive to Petit-Homme, who
aspires to be a doctor. Someday, when her schooling is completed,
she would like to visit her mother's country, Haiti, and to offer
her medical services to the people there. "There are so many fields of medicine, so many ways you can help people," Petit-Homme said, counting off all the areas of medicine she is interested in pursuing.
It is a big dream, and Petit-Homme knows it. She hesitates to call her upbringing "poor," but it hasn't always been financially easy, either. Quest for Kids graduates can expect to have their educations paid for by the program if they stay at a Florida school.
But Petit-Homme has her heart set on going to Duke and on being among the best young minds in her future field.
Her grades and her extracurricular activities suggest she has a solid chance. Petit-Homme's grade point average is a 4.7 out of 4.0 - well above an ordinary "A." Her GPA is above a 4.0, in part, because she's enrolled in advancement placement courses.
She takes evening classes at Edison Community College, and has volunteered in the summers at Naples Community Hospital and doctors' offices, too.
Petit-Homme also works part-time in a retail store during the school year and tutors other students. That, she said, is one of the most rewarding parts of her life.
"When I started tutoring, it felt so good," she said, "especially when people would come back and say, 'Anita, I got an 'A' and it's because of you, girl.' "
In the next few months she will be readying herself to take the SAT and ACT exams and looking into the pre-college medical internships that are offered across the country. Petit-Homme has never left the state of Florida, so going off to an internship and possibly Duke will be a change, but one she is ready to try.
Beyond the support of her mother, Sarilia Francois, who works at the Registry Resort and her stepfather, Jacquelin Francois, a construction worker, Petit-Homme is quick to thank the Quest for Kids program for her academic success - and for helping her to believe that a medical education is a possibility.
Quest for Kids is a program that helps students with financial, social and other challenges to achieve their academic, social and career goals.
Petit-Homme remembers a time when she didn't think she would have an opportunity to pursue a Duke education. It would be too costly, too ambitious. But, she said, her mentor in the program, Wally Abbott, has helped her to see there are a multitude of opportunities awaiting her if she applies herself.
"Her horizons are a lot broader than she thought," said Abbott, a former senior vice president of Procter & Gamble.
He described Petit-Homme as "a real joy to spend time with." He has been her mentor since the sixth grade.
And, Petit-Homme added, her faith has been a source of strength, too. She counts her blessings daily, and sometimes still sneaks a prayer before an important test.
But the opportunity to help others through medicine remains one of Petit-Homme's biggest inspirations. She never tires of reading her biology books, and of finding out something new about genetics or nerve cells or skin membrane - "the possibilities of the body," she said.
Wherever she chooses to attend college, it will be with the same ultimate goal: to be happy and to live a life full of helping and healing. "That would be my ruler to my measure of success," she said.