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Palmer Trinity School senior Carolina Segredo raised more than $17,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society last year.
“I did it with two of my friends, Valentina Erigoyen and Miranda Martel,” she says. “It’s part of the Students of the Year Campaign.”
While Segredo and her friends raised $17,000, as a whole, much more was raised when all the funds raised by the teams around the state were combined.
Segredo and her friends did fundraisers at Chill-N, both in Pinecrest and South Miami. They also did a fundraiser at Anthony’s.
“A lot of money came from family and friends,” she said. “We had our parents reach out to people. We had a lot of connections and our parent’s connections. Our friends reached out to their friends to see if they would like to donate.”
This year, Segredo says they are planning ahead, and they all have siblings who are joining the effort. They are already going after corporate sponsorships.
“Our goal is to work hard to do the best we can,” she says. “Everyone has been touched by cancer. We all know someone. My friends and I wanted to do the team together. Our goal was to raise $10,000, we surpassed that fairly quickly. Our final goal was $20,000 which we were close.”
The next campaign starts at the end of January.
At Palmer Trinity she initiated two school supply drives for Miami Southridge High School.
They collected supplies and took them to the public high school. This year they are looking at other ways to support the school.
“The first year we did it we raised over 300 packs of supplies,” she says. “We did it last year and we raised more than 700.”
Segredo wanted to do the drives because Southridge is close to Palmer Trinity and yet is so different economically and socially.
This past summer, Segredo participated in a Blue Missions trip to the Dominican Republic.
They went to a remote town four hours from Santiago.
“We went to build latrines for families that don’t have,” she says. “We built 16 latrines. It was incredible to be there.”
What surprised Segredo is how happy the residents were, living without things considered essential by people in the U.S. such as air conditioning or bathrooms.
“It’s still surreal to think that there are people who live like that, and they don’t live far from us,” she says.
The mission went for eight days and the students paid their own way for the privilege to build the latrines.
At school, she’s president of the Palmer Trinity club, Hope for Tomorrow.
“The club’s main goal is to make gift baskets and take them to the hospital for the kids,” she says.
She’s vice president of Palmer Trinity Palace Buddies club. Until recently the club would go to help entertain the residents of the Palace in Homestead but this year they switched to the one in Kendall. Segredo’s grandmother lives there.
“We are planning to do a domino tournament to get the people involved,” she says. “We just go to make them smile.”
She is a member of the council for Tri-M, she plays violin in the school orchestra and she’s president of the Spanish Honor Society. Segredo volunteers for Breakthrough Miami one Saturday a month.
Segredo is a Palmer Trinity student ambassador who gives tours to prospective parents.
She is a member of the community service club Twenty Little Working Girls.
Her college applications include the University of Miami, Georgia Tech, University of Florida and Florida International University. She plans to double major in computer engineering and business.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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