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One conducted independent research that helped extend the lives of cancer patients. Another starred in a Web video that spoofed Miami's Chonga culture -- and became an instant sensation on YouTube.
Matthew Capeletti wants to make sure all struggling students have a shot at winning the Nobel Prize. To keep his classmates -- and students across the country -- from giving up on schoolwork they don't understand, Matthew, a senior at William T. McFatter Technical Center in Davie, created a free Web-based service called TutorChatLive.com. The site provides unlimited tutoring in math and science -- and almost any other subject.
She fooled you. Without the hair goop and the fake-gold hoops, Mimi Davila is no chonga. She's a scholar. A humanitarian. A Silver Knight.
When he was growing up in Margate, Daniel Bernard Roumain, 36, did two things obsessively: He practiced his violin and he listened to his family's stories about life in their native Haiti. "I absorbed from that just as much as I did from the records I listened to," he said.
Silver Knight recipients and their families wrote in to the Miami Herald to share their thoughts on what the award has meant to them and how it shaped their lives.
CLASS OF 2008
Kevin Mintz rolled his electric wheelchair up to the podium in the middle of the stage Friday. He looked down at his white graduation gown and then addressed the crowd, his speech slow and labored.
ART
Artist Yazmany Arboleda was working Wednesday morning to open an installation piece called The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama.
HIGH SCHOOLS
A lot has changed in 50 years, but not the quality of South Florida's Silver Knights. The prestigious Silver Knight Awards -- bestowed on high school seniors who are standouts in their communities and classrooms -- reached its golden anniversary this year.
Steven S. Reinemund's comments from the Silver Knight Awards ceremony on May 20, 2008:
SILVER KNIGHT AWARDS
A proud fraternity of brainy and charitable people will welcome a new class to its ranks on Tuesday. Fifteen outstanding Miami-Dade high school seniors will be named Silver Knight Award winners, joining the 15 Broward seniors who won the honor last month and the hundreds who have come before them.
He helped defuse the United States' biggest prison uprising, spent a decade restoring an iconic Key West cultural center and is now proposing to create a federal historical park around Miami's Freedom Tower.
Johnita Due, daughter of civil rights activists John Due and Patricia Stephens Due, has come full circle. A Silver Knight award winner in journalism, she is now making sure the voices of people who often aren't heard get their say.
Arts: Nancy Kunce, Killian Athletics: Rufus Ferguson, Killian Citizenship: Maximo Gomez, Coral Gables Drama: Patricia Idlette, Miami
Nancy Franks McCue marked a series of firsts before retiring from the North Miami police department in 2000: the first female office, sergeant, lieutenant and commander. But her ''firsts'' started at Hialeah High School, as the school paper's first female Boys' Sports Editor. And in 1962, she became her school's first Silver Knight winner.
SILVER KNIGHTS
She danced in Spain under the name Helena Alonso -- but she didn't know a lick of Spanish. Today Lynn Paisley teaches Spanish and journalism at MAST Academy.
At age 2, Trine Engebretsen became Florida's first liver transplant recipient. She has made a lifetime commitment to helping others receive organ replacements and encouraging others to donate.
Art: Michael Gelfo, Southwest Athletics: Michael Fortier, Miami Citizenship: Russell Bizette Jr., Southwest Drama: Julius T. Lee, Booker T. Washington
Before winning the Silver Knight in foreign languages, Nadeige Laleau, nee Elusma, doubted she would live to see her 18th birthday.
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY Art: Myra Rosen, Gulliver Athletics: Terri Snyder, Sunset Business: Jeanne Belin, Palmetto Drama: Juan Martinez, Miami
On Aug. 15, 2007, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Peru, leveling swaths of the port cities of Pisco, Ica and Chincha. Hundreds of people were killed, thousands left homeless.
Jeff Lynn has always had a passion for the arts, and now he is the administrative and development coordinator for the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood. He has also coordinated preview screenings of 100 films in 30 days at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival.
Irvin Lustig is one of the original developers of software used to run major airlines, telecommunications companies, manufacturing, transportation, financial services and the U.S. defense program. In some sense, he says, his software touches you every day -- you just never knew it.
Miami-Dade Art: Matthew Mornick, Coral Reef Athletics: Michael Hepburn, Miami Central Business: Jeffrey DeMott, Homestead Drama: Sarah Graber, Palmetto
SILVER KNIGHTS PROFILES
David Heffernan was goofing around with some buddies in the audience during the presentation of the Silver Knight award for athletics in 1980. The Columbus High senior didn't think he had a chance to win.
Colleen Grady can pinpoint the moment her life changed. It was September 2000. Grady, an attorney for an international law firm, was vacationing with a friend in Cambodia.
Ana Maria Rodriguez and her daughter, Annette, have each won a Silver Knight. Today, the awards sit proudly side by side in the family room. But there's room for more.
Annette Rodriguez 1999 Mathematics Our Lady of Lourdes Academy Q: What drew you to win the award in that category? A: Both my parents are really numbers oriented. My mother's a math teacher and my father's a CPA. My mother was actually my math teacher at St. Agatha. She probably had some influence.
