By Paula Day

Melanie Leyva began helping handicapped children when she was in the fourth grade.

As a peer helper, the 10-year-old tutored exceptional children in her elementary school. Then she began recruiting other young people to help with the Special Olympics in Gwinnett County. Four years ago she organized the first annual Carnival for Kids for 50 severely/profoundly handicapped children attending Gwinnett County’s Oakland Center. Last year, she rounded up volunteers, donations and prizes for another carnival, this one for 150 Special Olympics athletes and their families.

The 17-year-old from St. John Neumann parish in Lilburn received the Gold Award April 1 for her work with the handicapped. The award is the highest a Girl Scout can achieve.

Melanie first approached local business in 1986 for donations needed for the carnival for Kids at Oakland Center. Her prospective donors were skeptical.

“They assumed I was too young to be in charge of something like that,” she recalls with light-hearted acceptance of adult assumptions. Now she sends letters of introduction before she approaches businessmen and goes to them carrying the scrapbook of pictures of “her kids” tossing beanbags and blowing bubbles.

“I have a few (donors) I can count on because I’ve been doing it for several years,” she explained with typical self-effacement. All the materials needed for a carnival - balloons, helium tank, crepe paper, refreshments, - are donated, as are the new and used toys given as prizes. Both carnivals are modeled after those held in schools and churches, with games, face painting, fish bowls, refreshments.

This year, the second annual Special Olympics Carnival will be May 12 in the Lawrenceville city park.

“About now I really start to get worried,” she said, adding that a lot of toys come in at the last minute. “I’ll do anything I have to, to get them. Go for them, drive five or ten miles.” She will also spend the night before a carnival sorting the toys according to size, and color coding them to match tags worn by the children.

“Safety is the number one priority,” she explained. “The color tells the volunteer what size prize to give. Some Kids can only get big prizes. They might put a small one in their mouth.”

Melanie brings to her involvement with severe/profoundly handicapped children both enthusiasm and insight.

“Being able to help these kids is my gift from God,” she explained. “I realize I’m good at this. I was in special reading classes until middle school, so I understand what it’s like to be singled out. I’ve been there.” She plans to attend the University of Georgia and become a special education teacher.

“You should go into something not for the money, but for being happy,” she explained. “I know I’ll be happy at that. I just love these kids.”

The bright-eyed, articulate high school junior was asked to be a peer helper by a teacher of exceptional children.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I volunteered,” she recalls. “It was easy because the teachers were excellent. They helped me understand everything - the kids’ behavior, their environment. When you’re in the fourth grade it’s not hard to accept other kids’ strange behavior.

“The teachers taught me how to use the correct terms like ‘age appropriate,’ and ‘autistic’ and ‘muscular dystrophy.’ I’d been around kids who were autistic. It’s no big deal.”

Involvement in the classroom led to involvement with Gwinnett County’s Special Olympics track and field meet. The first two years she spent meeting the children, their parents and coaches.

“I could see they needed help,” she recalls. “They were all volunteers, mostly parents, who were too busy running the events to be with their kids as they participated. There are so many kids and every one needs one-on-one attention, so in the sixth grade I started talking to kids my own age. Anyone can do it; it’s not a complicated job. Holding someone’s hand all day is not hard.”

At first only a few close friends helped. In the seventh and eighth grades the number of school-age volunteers grew. In high schools recruiting helpers for the Special Olympics has been easier because she is in contact with more people. Now she prints flyers advertising the need for volunteers with her telephone number and information about the Olympics which she posts in the classrooms. Young people from St. Neumann’s Youth Group also help.

And it is a family affair. Melanie’s parents, Paula and Richard Leyva, and her brothers, Ryder, 15, Paul, 12, and Tommy, 10, all help with the Special Olympics and carnivals.

“She comes from a family-oriented culture,” explained Alicia Macros, alluding to Melanie’s Hispanic heritage, “and parental support is why she’s where she is.” As youth consultant for the archdiocesan Office of Religious Education, Ms. Marcos has observed Melanie in archdiocesan youth activities and tapped her to give a talk on self-esteem at the recent Youth Rally for junior high students. Last October Melanie was co-recipient with Deanna Frank of St. Pius X parish in Conyers of the ORE’s “Outstanding Youth Award.”

“She’s a beautiful girl,” commented Ms. Marcos. “She’s happy and good at what she does.”

“She’s a person who doesn’t look for glory. In fact, she runs away from it,” the youth consultant observed. “She doesn’t consider herself a leader, but she’s really way beyond an average 17-year-old’s capacities in leadership.

Ms. Marcos is also impressed with Melanie’s moral values which she describes as “very much in place for a 17-year-old.”

In her nomination letter for the Outstanding Youth Award, St. John Neumann youth minister Patti Jugenheimer noted Melanie’s involvement in the parish Youth Leadership Council and in Students Against Drunk Driving as well as her help in the parish nursery, her coaching of deaf children’s soccer team, her interpreting for a needy Spanish family and her visiting nursing homes and hospitals.

“The thing I really like about Melanie,” Ms. Jugenheimer said, “is her ability to reach out and meet the needs of others. She’s outstanding in her gift of welcoming. She has such a caring heart and is able to see where the need is and fill that need, especially in personal relationships.”

Ms. Jugenheimer quickly added that Melanie Leyva is “a real teen,” concerned about all the things teens are interested in.

Melanie adds membership on the archdiocesan Catholic Committee on Scouting to her other activities. “She represents youth and speaks for them in the committee,” Father John Kieran, coordinator for the Scouting ministry in the archdiocese, said. He explained that the Gold Award is a very prestigious award and very few achieve it.

Melanie Leyva’s present energies are being spent finding enough toys for the May 12 carnival.

“Print my telephone number, 972-8906, so people with toys can let me know,” she urged. The reward for all her efforts will come at the carnival. “Once you see these kids faces,” she explained, “it’s worth a million dollars. It’s really priceless.”