3 Students Win Honors in Essay Contest

Three Covina-area students have claimed top local honors in an essay contest sponsored by Optimist International.

First place went to Kimberly Stabile, a senior at South Hills High School in West Covina. Dominic Tu, a junior at Sierra Vista High School in Baldwin Park, placed second, and Jim Gleason, a junior at Covina High School finished third.

The students’ essay topic was “Freedom: A Right or Privilege.”

Stabile’s essay recounted a surrealistic dream that included high-tech skyscrapers, a scene from the Old West and a battlefield strewed with bodies. She sketched it into a parable on both the value and tenuous nature of freedom.

“I realize that here in America, my freedom is not a right,” she concluded. “If it were, other places would have those rights. No, my freedom is a privilege: a privilege I will appreciate till the day I die.”

The winners received medallions and certificates during a banquet Tuesday, said Leo Holinstat of the Covina Optimist Club.

Stabile’s essay will compete with those of other local winners. District winners will be announced Feb. 9 in Victorville at a district board meeting of Optimist groups. Two rounds away is the grand prize, a free trip to the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, Pa., for a four-day seminar on freedom and leadership.