Sara Gonzalez is a 17-year-old senior at Cypress Bay. She was born in Mexico, and moved with her family to the US at age 7, settling in Weston. She is bilingual and headed to college next year where she will major in math. She is a member of the Math Honor Society which tutors Cypress Bay and Falcon Cove students in math.
An outside passion for her has always been cooking, which she learned at a very young age from her grandmother, Barbara Velasco. A favorite project is Christmas cookies. She also loves ethnic cooking of all flavors.
Early last spring, she decided she wanted to give back in some way. She has volunteered with the Weston Music Society for many years, at events and by aiding with computer projects. She was introduced to the WMS by Barbara, who is a Board member. WMS has a matching scholarship program; a donation of $250 is matched by the organization for a scholarship for graduates who will be continuing their music studies in college. She decided her plan would be to sell cookies to earn $250. She thought it would take all summer and most of the school year to complete the task.
She created “The Sound of Sweets” along with a flyer to advertise the effort, and started taking orders. She and her whole family soon found themselves baking 120 cookies a session because of the deluge of orders they received. By summer’s end, she had raised over $500. She baked her last batch on September 3 and retired to devote her attention to her senior year schedule of all AP courses.
Lou Marett, WMS President, commented. “We always knew Sara was sweet, but this effort to support scholarships is more than sweet, it’s heartwarming. Not to mention how delighted the purchasers were for the very delicious cookies.”
