Haley Resta teaches Sunday School, mentors a young girl with a rare disease and is planning a major philanthropic awareness event for her Gold Award, the Girl Scouts’ highest honor.
Leticia Da Silva has volunteered as a swim and martial arts instructor at Children’s Specialized Hospital, taught safety lessons to first graders and served as a mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.
Together, these Woodbridge High School seniors have logged more than 600 hours of community service – most of which involves children.
They are the 2020 recipients of the third annual Marisa Tufaro Memorial Community Service Scholarship.
The $1,000 awards are bestowed by the Marisa Tufaro Foundation, a nonprofit that assists pediatric patients and other children in need throughout the greater Middlesex County area.
The scholarship selection committee received a record number of applications this year.
The foundation and scholarship’s namesake, Marisa Tufaro, was an Edison resident. Born with a complex cardiac defect that required six open-heart surgeries and a heart transplant, she lived 13 inspirational years before succumbing in 2017 to a rare form of cancer following a valiant battle.
This marks the first time that co-winners of the scholarship from the same school have been named, and the third straight year that a student from Woodbridge High School (Jordan Cinelli in 2018 and George Wenson in 2019) recevied the honor.
“That makes my heart feel so good,” Woodbridge principal Glenn Lottmann said. “It’s one of my proudest moments in my six years as the principal of Woodbridge High School. I am so proud of these young ladies and all the students who applied.”
Leticia Da Silva’s time at Woodbridge High School began with an uphill climb. The summer before her freshman year, she tore an ACL and meniscus while playing soccer.
“I went up for a header and I fell and my knee gave out, bending left to right,” she recalled. “I remember laying on the ground for a couple of minutes telling myself, ‘This is going to take a while to recover from.’ When I got the call from the doctor I was very upset, but I told myself I needed to grow from it and get better from it. This wasn’t going to get the best of me.”
That attitude served her well, on and off the field. Off of it, Da Silva devoted herself to service projects. She handed out food in local soup kitchens. She mentored younger kids through Robert Wood Johnson’s Safety Ambassadors Program, Heroes & Cool Kids, Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Woodbridge Stars program. She volunteered long-term at Children’s Specialized Hospital. Her work there included chaperoning a trip to the Poconos.
“Since the day I started, the kids taught me so much about myself that I didn’t even know,” Da Silva said. “I was supposed to be helping them, but they really were helping me. They were giving me a different outlook on life. It was really amazing.”
The experience inspired her to pursue an education degree at Post University in Connecticut, which she will attend in the fall.
“You can’t learn that in a classroom,” she said of her experiences as a volunteer. “It’s something that helped me figure out that I have a passion for kids and teaching, and that’s something I really want to do in my future.”
In a noteworthy postscript, Da Silva recovered from her knee injuries to become a captain for the Woodbridge High School girls soccer team. She will continue to play center back in college for Post, which is in Division II.
Each summer for the past few years, Lottmann has asked a Woodbridge soccer player to work with his son Dylan (who just finished eighth grade). Last summer he asked Da Silva.
“My son loved his time with all the people, but he said Leticia has gotten him to be better more so than anyone else,” Lottmann said. “He said, ‘She won’t accept anything but the best from me.’ I told Leticia, ‘That’s why I wanted him to be around you.’”
Lottmann and Greg and Cyndi Tufaro, Marisa’s parents, informed Da Silva Monday that she earned the scholarship.
“It means absolutely everything to me,” Da Silva said. “I’m really blessed to be able to get a scholarship that has Marisa’s name because she was such an amazing girl, such a role model to me. There are no words to describe how grateful I am.”
Haley Resta grew up with an understanding of what a difference a mentor can make. Her younger brother Matthew, now 12, has autism. She’s been a constant by his side.
“I would see him struggle in school and how he needed extra attention,” she said. “I kind of have a maternal instinct to help people.”
Resta has applied that instinct throughout her time with the Girl Scouts. After meeting a younger scout with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a rare disease that weakens the body’s connective tissues and can lead to easily-bruised skin as well as weakened blood vessels and organs, Resta immediately took the 10-year-old, named Greven, under her wing.
“I see what she’s gone through at such a young age, but she always has such a bright smile on her face,” Resta said.
Because EDS affects so few people, there is little in the way of research and help available. For her Gold Award, Resta is planning a major awareness event for EDS. She originally wanted to organize a 5K in Woodbridge, and those plans were in motion when the coronavirus pandemic shut everything down. Now she’s reinvented it as a “plank challenge” – after the push-up style exercise – that she hopes goes viral on social media, akin to the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS.
“I want to be a part of the change that helps this young girl’s life become a little easier,” Resta said.
Each year around the holidays, Resta sends care packages to hospitalized children. She also teaches Sunday School to first through fifth graders and volunteers at a food pantry with her congregation, Fellowship Bible School Church in Woodbridge.
“Seeing how I could impact other peoples’ lives is a really big thing for me,” she said.
At Woodbridge High School, Resta was an officer in the choir and a member of the Drama Club.
“She is a role model, a leader, always there to help others,” Lottmann said. “She doesn’t do things for herself. She does things for everyone else, nonstop.”
Resta, who posted a 3.87 GPA at Woodbridge, will attend Middlesex County College in the fall with an eye toward majoring in biology.
She was moved to tears when Lottmann and the Tufaros informed her that she earned a Marisa Tufaro Memorial Community Service Scholarship.
“It means so much,” she said. “When they told me I won, I literally started crying. Much like Greven, she seems like such a bright light despite what was going on in her life. I felt like I couldn’t thank them enough for having this opportunity. It’s almost beyond words.”