2002 Pacific
Palisades
Youth Pageant
Miss Palisades
runner-up
ASHLEY DREW FISHER
Excerpts from:
Palisadian Post, April 11,2002
By Karen Wilson
 Before she
took the stage at the 2002 Pacific Palisades Youth Pageant last month, Ashley
Fisher had yet to run through her routine singing and dancing to the tune “If
They Could See Me Now" from the Bob Fosse musical "Sweet
Charity” – without flubbing a line missing a note, or misstepping.
Yet the
16-year-old Palisadian, who put the number together just four days before the
pageant, sang and danced her way to second place on March 13 and was crowned Miss
PaIisades Runner-Up.
"I
was really nervous before I went on stage," says the high school junior;
who attends Concord High School, a small, private high school in Santa
Monica. "I'd only had three full days of serious rehearsal, and I was
scared I'd mess up my dance moves.”
At Concord,
she is an honor roll student.
In
addition, Fisher – who plans on attending many of this year's
Chamber of Commerce mixers to "help out [Miss
Palisades 2002] Juliana Tyson" – also has a giving heart. She has traveled
to Mexico to build houses with Amore Ministries, volunteered to teach health
classes with Peer Education Prevention, entertained. the elderly at various
senior citizen homes around L.A., and currently provides entertainment at
Palisades Presbyterian Church's dinnens and events (she is also a member of
the church's youth group).
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LAURA ELIZABETH PUTNAM
“Youth of the
Month"
 Laura
Putnam was named Youth of the
Month in March 2002 by the Pacific Palisades Opthimist Club. She was
nominated by the advisor for the Pacfic Palisades chapter of the YMCA Youth
and Government Program. Laura is co-president of the Palisades YMCA chapter
of Youth and Government.
At the
annual mock legislature, the YMCA Youth and Government spends a weekend in the
Sacramento capitol.
The students
follow standard government procedure. As an
assemblyperson, Laura wrote a
bill to revise a law that carries, what she feels is an excessive punishment
for teenagers. Currently, drivers under 21 years of age convicted of possessing
alcohol or drugs have their driver's licenses suspended for one year;
regardIess of whether they were
driving a vehicle or not.
"I
think that this punishment does not fit the crime and that it tends to
villainize my generation,” said Laura.
Laura
presented the bill to her corrimittee for approval, then to the Student
Assembly (which passed it), then to the Student Senate (which passed
it). But – just as in real life –
the (Youth) Governor vetoed the proposed bill.
Laura then
took the bill back to the Senate floor; where a fellow Concord student, Hunter
Johnson, presented it again to the Student Senate. It won a majority vote
to override the Governor's veto. Her bill was passed!
Laura says
she learned that politicians can make unfair laws dictating to a group (under
21) that can't vote yet. Looks like she'll be changing that...
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