Teen of the Week: Parkersburg’s Daphne Vanfossen aspires to help others in her community
PARKERSBURG — Seventeen-year-old Daphne Vanfossen enjoys working in her community at the Salvation Army.
“I get to see new people every day who come and go. I get to see some people who live in the shelter and see them as they get new jobs, get apartments and kind of achieve new things,” she said. “I’ve already met a few wonderful people.”
At the Salvation Army, Daphne works in the kitchen, serves food and hangs the clothing it receives. She said she enjoys working with the people the most.
“It’s a nice welcoming environment,” she said.
After high school, Daphne plans on joining the West Virginia Army National Guard where she will be a mechanic. She likes learning how all of the parts of a vehicle fit and work together.
“I think it’s something new and I’m willing to try because I started working on my car, fixing it on my own,” she said. “It would also be helpful for skills in the future, so I get to learn on other cars than a Toyota.”
After her National Guard training, she plans to go to the West Virginia State Police Academy to train to become an officer of the law.
“I’ve known since eighth grade what I wanted to do,” she said. “So I’m just following that path.”
Vanfossen said two of her biggest role models are her cousin’s husband, Ken Prager, and Leslie Board, her law and public safety teacher at the Wood County Technical Center.
“He’d go out every day and change someone’s life, then come home with his family,” she said. “He’d always see something new every day, that’s what also interested me as well.”
She said Board keeps in touch with her and has helped her figure out the skills she needs to move on with her career in law enforcement.
Vanfossen is a senior at Parkersburg High School, has a 3.5 GPA and enjoys studying history. Her favorite class is U.S. history.
“I can go back and see what has happened, what has changed, just a different view than everything now,” she said.
She is a member of the senior Women’s Club at PHS. The club volunteers in the community, comes up with ideas for the PHS homecoming and other activities for students to participate in throughout the school year. One of the volunteer projects they work on is writing to elementary school students as their pen pals.
In her spare time, Vanfossen enjoys dog sitting, spending time with her friends and family and practicing jiujitsu and kickboxing at RONIN Jiujitsu and MMA in Parkersburg.
“I always found wrestling interesting,” she said. “So I started taking it (jiujitsu) and I feel in love with it.”
Daphne loves that she learns something new during every lesson. She also loves how stress relieving it is and how easy it is to let herself go while she’s training.
James Dobbs can be reached at jdobbs@newsandsentinel.com