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Westminster Christian School senior Carli Schmidt is president and a founder of Cooking for a Cause.
“I founded it with Lucas Stefano two years ago, but he already graduated,” she says.
Schmidt works closely with club vice president is Nina Valdes.
“Originally Lucas had the idea,” she says. “He loved to cook. He wanted to use it for good. The purpose was to spread service through meals. We are all involved in community service.”
Two years ago, they put together a Thanksgiving event at a home for the elderly. They’ve also conducted a casserole drive, Christmas and Noche Buena events.
Recently they conducted a drive to help teen moms who attend COPE South.
“The girls wanted to learn how to cook for themselves and their children,” she says.
Club members collected just over $600 dollars. Schmidt and Valdes used the money to buy the food and utensils on a list provided by the cooking class teacher.
“They haven’t had the money to start to physically cooking,” Schmidt says. “We bought eggs, bacon, pancake mix and syrup. We ended up having way more money than we needed, so we were able to get lunch items and dinner items for the girls.”
She and Valdes took the items to COPE so the girls could have them before Christmas. The next big project may be creating a cookbook.
“Which is something we started last year with Lucas,” she says.
Schmidt had another important reason to want a cooking club.
“I have celiac, so I have to be gluten free,” she says.
Because of her health issues, she plans to major in biology on a pre-med track. Her goal is to work as a medicine researcher at a pharmaceutical company.
“I’ve always been to a lot of doctors trying to find what the problem is,” she says. “I’m asymptomatic. My voice is a little deeper or raspier than most people.”
Her theater teacher suggested she be checked for nodules. Tests ruled out vocal cord nodules, but the tests showed a thickening of the vocal cords.
A follow up endoscopy uncovered signs of celiac which was confirmed by blood tests. Schmidt says she doesn’t become sick immediately from eating gluten, but there are consequences.
“It’s very difficult,” she says. “Which is why I try to come up with recipes so the food tastes the same. It’s been over 10 years now.”
She’s applied to Florida State, the University of Tennessee, Clemson, Southern Methodist University, Alabama, Georgia, Tulane, the University of Miami, Florida, and FIU.
At Westminster, Schmidt is a member of the National Honor Society, the National Dance Honor Society, the National Science Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta, Rho Kappa, the National English Honor Society, and the World Language Honor Society.
She is a member of the Westminster dance team.
At Westminster, she’s a member of Student Council. She played basketball until her senior season.
“I’m the chairman of the Spirit Committee, the committee that plans proms and homecoming, pep rallies and the Junior Senior Brunch,” she says.
Outside of school, she has gone on two Blue Mission trips. The first trip brought water to a remote village in the Dominican Republic. On the second trip, she built latrines.
“I loved those trips,” she says.
She found it amazing how happy the people in the village were even though they had so little.
“You come back, and you feel so changed,” she says.
She hopes to go on a mission trip sponsored by the school club Smiles for All.
“They go to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic,” she says.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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