Huntington High School Senior Earns Girl Scout Gold Award for Sensory Kits

Olivia LoBue, a senior at Huntington High School, earned the Girl Scout Gold Award after completing a project designed to close a critical gap in emergency response: helping first responders better assist individuals with autism during crisis situations. LoBue created sensory kits and an accompanying training manual aimed at equipping local emergency personnel with tools and guidance for those interactions.

The Gold Award is the highest achievement in Girl Scouting, an organization that has existed for 102 years. The award dates to 1916 and is presented to "the best and brightest [who have] improved themselves, their communities and the world," according to Girl Scouts.

LoBue is not the only Huntington High School senior to reach that pinnacle recently. Marina Siegel also earned the Gold Award after spending roughly a year on a project rooted in local history. Her goal was to catalog every historical blue and yellow sign throughout Huntington and build a website documenting each one, including a description of the sign, its precise location, and a photograph of the site.

"Working on my Gold Award project took about a year to complete," Siegel said.

Siegel has been part of the Huntington School District since kindergarten at Flower Hill School. Her senior-year schedule reflects a demanding academic load: Introduction to Photography, Pre-Calculus, Advanced Placement Literature, AP Italian, Physics, AP Government, Economics and Senior Band.

The two projects reflect the range of community impact the Gold Award is meant to recognize, from preserving the visual history of a Long Island town to preparing first responders for one of the more challenging aspects of emergency care.