Remy Andrea Fuentes is a senior at Santa Rosa High and a three-year volunteer at the Humane Society. Here she's with Luigi. Press Democrat photo by Jeff Kan Lee

By BOB NORBERG

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Since she was 5, Santa Rosa High School senior Remy A. Fuentes has dreamed of being an attorney.

“I learned to play golf because I thought attorneys play golf,” Fuentes said.

It also led her to join the high school debating team, where she found something at which she excelled. “It turned out that it is something that I am good at,” said Fuentes.

Fuentes and debating partner Alan Ramey won seventh place for parliamentary debate and first for the Northern California area in statewide competition last year.

“Twenty minutes before the debate they give you a side and a topic,” Fuentes said. “You have to keep up on news because they can throw anything at you.

“They give you a side and have to debate it. It is a nice way to open your mind. Debate is to explore possibilities and think differently,” she said.

The 17-year-old senior has a grade point average of 4.6 and is taking advanced placement classes this year in literature, economics, biology and French, as well as playing the clarinet in band and running cross-country.

She is taking cross-country as a challenge to herself because it is neither something she likes doing nor is good at.

“I have always hated running; it is turning a negative thing into something really positive,” Fuentes said. “I will at least be healthier. I am the slowest runner, but someone has to come in last.”

For four years, Fuentes has volunteered at the Humane Society, first as a dog-walker and now at the front desk, assisting in adoptions, and she also volunteers as a buddy in the Challenger Baseball Program at Mark West.

“I feel like they don’t have a lot of funding for employees, so it is important to volunteer,” Fuentes said. “Non-profit work is important to me.”

Fuentes is a first-generation American, her parents emigrating to America from Cuba when they were children, and she is fluent in Spanish.

“My family is fluent in both Spanish and English, we go back and forth, but if I am spoken to in Spanish, I respond in English,” Fuentes said. “I have the natural ear because of my family and the flow of the language, but my pronunciation sucks.”

Fuentes wants to study social work and public policy as an undergraduate and is applying to UC Berkeley, UCLA, Rice University, Brown University, Pomona College and the University of Michigan.

You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@pressdemocrat.com.

Remy A. Fuentes
Age: 17
Birthplace: Santa Rosa
Family: Parents Tom and Maria Fuentes; grandmother Alicia De Vales
What’s in her iPhone: Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, opera,
Luciano Pavarotti, Motown and Marvin Gaye
Fave group hobby: Debate
Dream job: Working as an attorney for a non-profit
Fave TV Show: “Monk,” when it was on, and “Weeds”
Fave food: Sandwiches
Quote: “I am a vegetarian, I am conscious of what I am eating. It has gotten me healthier because I am running an hour every day.
Aerobics are part of my every day life.”