Courtesy Photo The 2019-20 Alpena High School Drug Abuse Resistance Education role models are seen recently with Alpena High administrators and DARE officers Christina Bednarski, an Alpena County Sheriff’s deputy, and Officer Tim Marquardt, of the Alpena Police Department.

ALPENA — Each year, fifth-graders in Alpena Public Schools, All Saints Catholic School, and Immanuel Lutheran School have older students they can look up to.

Each year, Alpena High School seniors are selected by Tim Marquardt, high school liaison officer with the Alpena Police Department, to be Drug Abuse Resistance Education role models. The role models are seniors who are leaders in the school and active members of the community.

The seniors go into the fifth-grade classrooms and talk to them about who they are and the extracurriculars in which they participate.

“We show them exactly what we do and (which) activities have helped us stay on the right path, because we care so much about what we’re doing and we know that we can’t do those different sports, we can’t have a job, if we’re out in the community doing the bad stuff,” senior Molly Dickinson, a DARE role model this year, said.

The fifth-graders are also able to ask the seniors questions. The questions relate to drugs, alcohol, bullying, what high school is like, and more.

“I want to show the kids (that) this is the majority of the high school that they’re seeing, this is what high school is like,” Marquardt said.

Being a DARE role model isn’t just visiting the classrooms and interacting with the fifth-graders. They also volunteer at the Alpena Police Department’s glow stick event every Halloween, participate in Shop with a Cop every December, and join other activities throughout the school year.

They’re also busy students. Not only are the role models a part of DARE, they also participate in different extracurricular activities and sports, volunteer in the community, and have part-time jobs.

“Activities keep you busy, so you stay away from all the bad stuff,” senior Miya Ayala, another role model, said.

This year’s role models said they were pushed to join the program by the DARE role model they had in their fifth-grade classroom. One of this year’s role models, senior Ava Shriner, said it drove her to be more active in the community.

“We all knew that we had to be in extracurriculars to be in DARE, so, if we wanted to be in DARE, we had to find other stuff to help out the community,” she said.

“I know that, when I was in elementary school, I always looked up to the DARE role models that came into my classroom and I was like, ‘I want to be like that one day,'” Ayala said.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12.