SHIORI CYNDI TANDO

SHO TAKATORI

The 2008 Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival Community Service Scholarship Committee has announced the 2008 recipients of the $2,000 scholarships.

The two will be introduced to the public at the festival’s opening ceremony on Saturday, April 12, at 1:15 p.m. on the Peace Plaza Stage, Post and Buchanan in San Francisco Japantown.

Following are profiles of the recipients:

• Shiori Cyndi Tando is a senior at Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco. She is the daughter of Kris Kumiko Tando of San Francisco.

She has a 4.72 weighted GPA and is planning to attend UCLA, where the field of study she plans to pursue will be psychobiology and statistics. She is ranked 10 out of 550 graduating seniors.

Tando has been very involved in the Kimochi Senior Nutrition Center for the past three years, helping serve lunches to senior citizens attending the program. She also has been a volunteer with the California Pacific Medical Center Diabetes Office, usually going there once a week.

In her essay, titled “Learning From Volunteering,” she reflects on her great-grandmother in Japan, who often eats by herself, and says that eating should be enjoyable. For that reason, Tando decided to volunteer at Kimochi.

“I cannot stay with Grandma all the time, so I decided to volunteer at Kimochi, with hopes that I could help others ... feel more comfortable and less lonely,” she writes.

Tando is also very active with the San Francisco Japanese Language Class, where she is an elected member of the Student Council. She has won numerous awards from the SFJLC and is at the advanced level of the Japanese language. In addition, she is in her fourth year of Italian in her high school.

She has taken Advance Placement classes in statistics, calculus and physics, and has passed the AP Japanese test with a score of 5.

Her high school counselor writes, “Shiori has enhanced our school throughout her high school career and I know she will continue to make waves in college. Her talent and heart is highly sought after and one that Galileo will miss.”

• Sho Takatori is a senior at John F. Kennedy High School in Sacramento. He is the son of Hiroshi and Mitsuko Takatori of Sacramento.

He has a weighted GPA of 4.41 and is ranked No. 1 of 457 graduating seniors. He is planning on attending Stanford, UC Berkeley, or Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and plans to major in chemical engineering.

Takatori has volunteered with the California Environmental Protection Agency and spent the whole summer of 2007 working with civil engineers on environmental problems such as Bisphenol A toxicity, pesticide can leakage and wasted brownfields.

He was the student assistant to Dr. Jeff Wong, chief scientist at Cal-EPA, and often attended meetings with him at the State Capitol.

Takatori was instrumental in the start of a fundraising campaign called “A Ball Can Change the World,” which raised money to help poor African children play sports. He worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Adidas to implement the campaign, with all funds being sent directly to the children in Africa.

He has also volunteered at the Sacramento Zoo for the past four years.

For the past two years he was his school’s team captain for the Academic Decathlon, an academic tournament involving 27 high schools in the Sacramento area.

He organized the school’s first robotics team and club this school year, a project that required him to work with the Science Department and NASA.

Takatori has been on the varsity soccer team for four years. As the captain this year, he led the team to a Division I playoff.

He has also been selected to participate in the American Legion California Boys’ State, representing the Sacramento District.

Takatori has taken Advanced Placement courses in chemistry, calculus, physics, U.S. history, English, English literature, statistics, biology, and U.S. government. He received a score of 5 in chemistry, calculus and physics.

Fluent in Japanese, he has also taken French for the past three years in high school.

He has already received acceptance letters from MIT, California Institute of Technology, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, and UC Davis.

The director of admissions for CIT, in his letter of acceptance, wrote, “Your volunteer work with Cal-EPA is impressive.”

The Nikkei Lions Club of San Francisco administers the scholarship program, which is now in its 21st year.

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