Plainview, Buffalo teens are named top volunteers

Last update: February 12, 2008 - 7:08 PM

Shanna Decker, 17, of Plainview and Gabrielle Thompson, 13, of Buffalo were named Tuesday as the state's top youth volunteers.

The Spirit of Community Awards recognition comes from the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Shanna and Gabrielle will each receive $1,000, a silver medallion and a trip in early May to Washington, where they will join others like them from across the country for a host of events. Two youths among them will be chosen as the nation's top volunteers by a panel.

Shanna is a senior at Plainview-Elgin-Millville High School. She has visited more than 600 young cancer patients over the past nine years and shared with them her own fight with cancer. When she was 7, Shanna had a leg amputated and endured aggressive chemotherapy for bone cancer.

Gabrielle is a seventh-grader at Buffalo Community Middle School. She raised $5,000 for cancer research by selling luminarias at school and has written a book about coping with childhood cancer. When she was 7, doctors removed a malignant tumor from her abdomen.

PAUL WALSH