Little Bit Gives A Lot

By ELISSA BERNSTEIN
INTERLAKE HIGH SCHOOL

Wesley Steeb rode her first horse when she was 18 months old, unearthing a passion that continues to guide her life today.

It was Christmastime, and someone placed her on Ginger, a neighbor’s Shetland pony, to take part in a living nativity scene. She didn’t cry or panic. She didn’t tumble off. She didn’t freeze in fear.

She laughed.

“My parents say my eyes sparkled,” says Steeb, now 16.

“The faster she went, the happier she was,” says Karen Steeb, Wesley’s mother. “She was just a natural. So for Christmas that year, at 18 months old, she started riding lessons.”

After years of riding, however, Wesley Steeb wanted her daughter to branch out and “bless people” through her love of horses.

She loved “everything horses,” her mom says, including horse books, horse models, even horse tack. Eventually, she began to volunteer at Little Bit, a therapeutic riding center near her Woodinville home.

“It’s the most important part of my week,” says Steeb, a senior at Cedar Park Christian School in Bothell. “It isn’t complete until I’ve been at Little Bit. I just get such a great feeling whenever I’m there.”
Little Bit’s roots go back to 1972, when Margaret Dunlap, a rider with multiple sclerosis, founded the center with one horse, a rented stable and five students. Today, the organization is one of the largest therapeutic riding centers in the nation.

Little Bit is a member of the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, or the NARHA, a nonprofit that promotes therapeutic riding. There are nearly 800 NARHA therapeutic riding centers in the United States and Canada, including 17 centers in Washington state.

Little Bit uses horses to improve the physical, mental and emotional condition of disabled children and adults. The program relies on community support to pay the high cost of lessons and volunteers to assist in classes, fundraisers, shows and events. The required minimum age for Little Bit volunteers is 14 years old, but Steeb joined when she was 8.

She isn’t a typical volunteer.

“(The staff) knew she was young and said they’d consider her,” says her mom. “During the training, a horse bit her, and it didn’t phase her one bit. She disciplined that horse with such authority that they said, ‘You know what you’re doing. You’re on.’ ”

Since then, Steeb has worked in numerous Little Bit riding lessons, programs and shows with every horse in the barn and too many riders to count. She estimates she has volunteered 1,250 hours throughout the past eight years, and makes an effort to go as often as she can.

She took lessons at the center for a year and was even photographed for a Little Bit advertising campaign. Currently, she’s a volunteer captain, a highly trained volunteer and leader.

The relationships she’s made through Little Bit are “amazing,” she says, recalling a rider with impaired speech whom she witnessed speak his first full sentences, and a former volunteer with whom she still visits. Another rider likes her so much he calls her his sister.

“It’s just a reciprocal relationship of teasing and joking,” she says of their friendship.

As her mother puts it, Steeb initially went to Little Bit for the horses, but keeps going back for the relationships.

“I fell in love with the people and the community and the whole atmosphere,” says Steeb, who stresses the intangible benefits of volunteering. “I really see friendship forming. There are riders that have a favorite horse, and that horse knows their footsteps and the sound of their wheelchair. It’ll come to the door of the stall. The horses expect the relationship, as do the riders.”

Her experiences are intensely personal, but they don’t come as a surprise to the Little Bit staff.

“When someone comes to volunteer, they continue to volunteer for the same class on the same day with the same riders,” says community relations director Pam Coté. “Some work together for years. They become integral parts of each other’s lives, like family. Oftentimes, the volunteer becomes a mentor for the rider and they form very strong relationships.”

Little Bit needs 350 volunteers each week to assist with 19 horses and 230 riders, who encompass a range of about 70 disabilities and special needs. Volunteers attend an orientation and two trainings to learn protocol, then work a minimum of two hours a week for a 10-week quarter.

According to Coté, all volunteers don’t arrive with horse experience, but those that don’t catch on quickly. And many are teens. In fact, some volunteers have grown up with Little Bit, staying for more than 20 years or eventually becoming staff members.

Steeb decided on her future career — hippotherapy, a type of therapeutic riding offered at the center — after job shadowing Little Bit physical therapist Debra Peet-Walker for two summers. After she goes to college, Steeb plans to return and volunteer during breaks and summers, and possibly even join the staff.

“She walks through the barn door and she is a changed person,” her mom says. “The volunteering has given her confidence. It’s been a wonderful focal point for her drive. She knows that she is receiving a very unique experience here.”

Coté understands this dedication: “Volunteers come to Little Bit for an experience that they just can’t get anywhere else. They get to smell the barn, experience the warmth of the horses, experience friendship with other volunteers, and they get to see magic happen in the arena.”

Little Bit is scheduled to relocate into a new, larger barn near its current location in 2010. The staff’s goal is to reach full capacity in 2012, doubling the number of potential horses and riders — and likely shortening the two-year waiting list of 200 riders.

Naturally, this means more volunteers are needed: “We rely very, very heavily on volunteers,” Coté says. “There’s no way we could provide the amount of services we could do without volunteers. No way at all.”

Steeb plans to contribute to Little Bit’s progress and expansion. She doesn’t mind the pressure of the looming volunteer workload. Truthfully, she hardly considers it work.

“Through helping other people, you focus on them, and you don’t realize the return you’re getting for yourself,” she says. “I’m gaining so much more than I can ever give back.”

Closer to Home: Little Bit is only one of 17 therapeutic riding centers in the state to belong to the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association.

Near Yakima, the Pegasus Project, founded in 2003, also uses horse therapy to help riders with special needs.

Like Little Bit, the Pegasus Project, located at Tumbleweed Ranch, is a nonprofit, NARHA-affiliated center. It relies on approximately 75 volunteers each week to help run its programs. Three volunteers are needed per rider to act as side walkers and horse leaders.

The ranch is located at 4680 U.S. Highway 12. To learn more about the Pegasus Project, call 969-3310, or visit www.pegasusrides.com.

Editor’s Note: Reporters Beth Zainwel and Elissa Bernstein and photographer Andrew Phan participated in the Journalism Summer Workshop at Seattle University.

The intensive, hands-on camp was held June 20-27.

Fifteen teens experienced journalism during the workshop, organized by former Seattle Times investigative reporter Tomas Guillen.

Guillen, now a journalism professor, teaches at Seattle University.

Zainwel and Bernstein were mentored by Adriana Janovich, a Yakima Herald-Republic reporter and the coordinator of Unleashed, the newspaper’s weekly teen section.

Many of the works in this week’s issue are a result of the workshop, which is partially sponsored by the Yakima Herald-Republic. More student work from the workshop is set for publication in upcoming editions.

For more information, visit www.seattleu.edu/jsw.

Summer: Time to Make a Difference

By ELISSA BERNSTEIN
INTERLAKE HIGH SCHOOL

When my parents — exhausted, sweaty and dusty — stamped their work boots at the doormat and trooped toward my room with a third shovel in hand, I only had one natural reaction.

I closed the door as fast as I could.

No way did I want to spend my summer afternoons renovating our yard under the glaring sun, without my music or phone or friends. But 10 minutes later, I was dressed in old work clothes and sulkily donning itchy green garden gloves as slowly as possible.

I won’t pretend I’ve had the best attitude toward my parents — or our backyard — this summer. We yank out clumps of grass, sift rocks and roots from the dirt like human colanders and dump wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of soil and gravel from one hole to another.

Before long, I mope uselessly around the lawn. My spirits are weary far sooner than my muscles. Perhaps I’m not the best worker. Despite this, though, I can’t say the time spent is all bad.

It’s a summery day in Bellevue, the sunshine makes the whole yard seem splashy and green, and I can already distinguish the beginnings of what is sure to be a beautiful backyard. But the best part?

I’m making a difference. It isn’t a huge difference, granted, affecting only my family and neighbors. But I might have fueled that valuable energy toward YouTubing, chatting online or just hovering hopelessly indoors. I might have fallen prey to the stuffy boredom that always seems to set in two weeks after the school year ends.

Not today. Not this summer.

I’m spending time outside, I’m being active, but mostly I’m showing my family I care enough to help. When I look back on these precious months, when I had utter freedom, I know I’d rather remember completing this project than mindlessly Facebooking.

There are so many ways to make the most of your summer right from your own neighborhood. Besides helping your family with home renovation projects, you can make the most of these three months by volunteering.

Two summers ago, I planned to temporarily volunteer at a therapeutic riding center. But I connected with my four riders, fellow volunteers and the 20 horses so deeply that I stayed throughout the following two school years, unable to quit when September rolled around. By helping out the center and getting to know the riders, my summer felt meaningful and had a purpose: giving back to the community.

Last summer, I also volunteered at a children’s museum, spending all day playing with kids and passing out birthday cake. I came home each afternoon with frosting on my elbows, acrylic paint smeared on my nose, and a radiant smile on my face. The kids never failed to make me laugh and the work was, without a doubt, much more fun and rewarding than staying home alone.

The volunteering possibilities aren’t limited to the organizations your school suggests for your community service hours. Follow your interests and work as a tutor, at a museum, as a counselor at a day camp, or an organizer of an event, just find a way to be motivated and get inspired.

Whether you help your parents in your backyard or volunteer in your community, you’re getting out of the house and effectively breaking open the fortune cookie of possibility. The fortune’s in your palm. Will you unfold it?
• Elissa Bernstein, 16, is a junior at Interlake High School in Bellevue, Wash. She has written for The Kirkland Reporter and The Bellevue Reporter.

Fruitful Fest Connects Past, Present

By ELISSA BERNSTEIN
INTERLAKE HIGH SCHOOL

Eighty years ago, Bellevue was characterized not by urban shopping centers and reflective skyscrapers but antique corn grinders, old-fashioned canning machines and small, family-owned farms.

These two Bellevues seem almost completely unconnected. That is, of course, except for the stirring smell of shortcake, brightened with red strawberries, melting in the sun and oozing vanilla ice cream.

In the 1920s and 30s, the Bellevue Strawberry Festival was meant to put the small, agricultural community on the map. Today, metropolitan areas like Bellevue Square have replaced the strawberry fields, but the festival is still held every June to celebrate Bellevue’s agrarian past and heritage.

“You would never have expected Bellevue to be covered in farm land when you see the city today,” says Heather Trescases, co-coordinator of the festival and director of the Eastside Heritage Center, or EHC, the non-profit organization that hosts the celebration. “[The festival] is a way to celebrate that heritage, and tell the story of the Japanese American farmers and all the other diverse cultures which have come to Bellevue.”

The festival, which took place June 28 and 29 this year, started as a dream. Jennie Ethel Bovee, the wife of Bellevue’s first mayor, Charles W. Bovee, wanted an event to bring both visitors and recognition to Bellevue. The abundance of fresh strawberries, grown mostly by local Japanese farmers, seemed like the perfect way to commemorate the town’s spirit and draw in visitors.

The first festival was held in 1925 at what is now known as the Old Main Street School. According to the EHC’s Web site, a committee of 10 men and women organized the festival on a budget of $40.

Despite these modest figures, the fest enjoyed startling success, attracting visitors from Renton and Kirkland, and even Seattle-ites, who crossed Lake Washington by ferry to attend.

Bellevue’s population hovered around 2,500, and the festival drew about 3,000 visitors. It featured fresh produce and “Strawberry Queen” pageants, and generated a real estate buzz around rural Bellevue.

By 1938, the event drew in crowds of five times the original amount. Four years later, however, the festival was stopped due to the Japanese internment during World War II.

It took 45 years to revive. In 1987, the Bellevue Historical Society brought back the event. Today, it’s still going strong – on a larger and more casual scale.

This year’s event, which cost more than $80,000 to put on, is expected to bring in 40,000 visitors. It will be held at Crossroads International Park on Saturday and Sunday. The celebration is sponsored by the City of Bellevue and local businesses, with many products – strawberries and shortcakes, for example – donated or sold to the EHC at discounted prices. The revenue from the festival funds the EHC.

“[The festival] just grew and grew,” says Trescases. “People came to the event to socialize … to see their neighbors and spend time together as a community, to enjoy the good food.”

With respect to previous traditions, the event includes historical exhibits, antique artifacts, old farming and dairy equipment, and even a classic auto show displaying cars that families might have used back when the festival began. Other old-time activities are three-legged races, sack races and contests in which participants balance strawberries on spoons.

The festival still sells strawberry shortcakes and holds an ever-popular strawberry shortcake-eating contest.

Along with a love for strawberries and the City of Bellevue, the desire to come together as a community is one of the only aspects of the current festival which remains unchanged.

“We stay true to the original purpose of the festival, and the basic elements of shortcake and entertainment are the same,” says Trescases. “But in order to make it a modern-day festival, we have added many things that would not have existed,” such as henna tattoos, yoga supplies and blown glasswork.

These products – arts and crafts, clothing and jewelry, home improvement items – are available at more than 80 vendor booths. Special guests, like Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, are also expected to stop by.

One of the festival’s most popular activities is a family fun center, which features clowns, face painting, puppet shows, inflatable play areas, a rock climbing wall and miniature golf.

Two stages offer eclectic entertainment, including performances from the Northwest Junior Pipe Band, Ugandan Children’s Choir, and the Y’chessa Dahli Middle Eastern Dance Ensemble.

Another characteristic which has not changed in more than 80 years is its dependence on volunteers, most of whom are teenagers and young adults.

“We’ve always relied on volunteers,” says Karen Klett, volunteer coordinator of the EHC. “Without volunteers there would be no Bellevue Strawberry Festival.”

The festival’s 155 volunteers work in three- to four-hour shifts and help prepare the park, greet visitors, answer questions, run booths and clean up. Despite the workload, the number of teen volunteers increases every year.

“There are a lot of kids working together, and they all enjoy that,” says Klett. “Lots of kids work in the shortcake booth. Everybody loves strawberries. It’s a nice way to spend the afternoon.”

Twenty-year-old Michelle Liu began volunteering at the festival in 2006 to gain high school community service hours. She enjoyed the experience so much that she’s returned every year since, and she’s not alone. Twenty of her Bellevue Community College classmates have responded to her posters promoting volunteer work at the festival.

“It’s a very good opportunity to meet local people from the community,” Liu says. “I am an ESL student and this helps me learn American culture. Every year when I go, I can discover some new things.”

Meantime, Trescases is gearing up for this weekend’s event.

“It’s only two days in the year, but we touch 40,000 people in the community,” she says. “We give them an opportunity to discover and participate in local history. It’s going to be the biggest and best ever.”

For more information: Call 425- 450-1049, or visit www.bellevuestrawberryfestival.org

Elissa Bernstein, 16, is a junior at Bellevue’s Interlake High School. She has interned at the Bellevue Reporter and the Kirkland Reporter. She wrote this story at the Journalism Summer Workshop at Seattle University. Unleashed coordinator Adriana Janovich served as her mentor.