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The San Diego Union Tribune, North County

July 30, 2009

Vision impairment doesn't keep her from heading to UC

By Pat Sherman

CARLSBAD — When people hear the term “legally blind,” they usually don't associate it with activities such as baby-sitting, swimming or twirling a flag in a color guard.

Yet, Carlsbad resident Samantha Pinnell, who is legally blind, took part in all these activities in during her senior year at La Costa Canyon High School – all while maintaining a 4.2 grade point average.

“As soon as I tell someone I am visually impaired, they automatically write me off as being completely blind,” said Samantha, 18. “For a lot of people they do not see the in-between.

“We may not be able to do everything a normal, sighted person can do, like drive, but if we put our minds to it, we can do anything we want, within reason.”

This month, Samantha was chosen as one of 13 recipients of scholarships from the Jewish Guild for the Blind's GuildScholar program. The program was established to help assure that more students with vision loss were able to attend college.

Samantha said people usually appear puzzled when she tells them she skis, until she explains how she follows closely behind a sighted ski instructor.

“That person I am following is the only thing I have my eyes on while going down a mountain,” she said.

Samantha and her 20-year-old brother, Andrew, also a La Costa Canyon graduate, were born with a condition known as optic nerve hypoplasia, an underdevelopment of the optic nerve. As a result, Samantha is completely color blind and extremely nearsighted and light sensitive. She also has nystagmus, an involuntary movement of the eye, which slows her reaction time and can make it hard to focus.

Samantha's sensitivity to sunlight requires that she wear sunglasses during most daytime activities. Beyond that, it is not easy to spot her vision loss, said her mother, Monique Pinnell.

“She hides it pretty well, until you're around her for a while and you're outside and she holds onto you,” Pinnell said. “She doesn't know where there's a step, or she can't tell whether there's a gutter. ... When she's with me, I tell her, but when she's with friends she just holds onto them. It's very discreet.”

In class, Samantha was able to see what her teachers had written on on the board through a magnifying camera. It allowed her to view the lessons, in an enlarged form, on her laptop. With the aid of the device, Samantha excelled through a heavy load of honors and advanced placement courses.

“I don't know how she did it, but she kept up the pace,” her mother said. “She refuses to listen to books on tape because she finds that she can't concentrate. So, she just used her very, very thick reading glasses and held (the books) right up to her nose.”

Gordon Rovins, director of special programs at New York-based Jewish Guild for the Blind, reviewed this year's student scholarship applications. He said Samantha had some glowing letters of recommendation from her teachers, including physics teacher Kevin Fairchild, math teacher Michelle Anderson and special education teacher Paula Furgerson, who helped assure that Samantha had large-print texts and other things required for her education.

Rovins said he was impressed with Samantha's independent spirit and found her “a great advocate for herself.”

Samantha moved to Carlsbad with her family from Wellington, New Zealand, at age 8. Rovins said Samantha wrote at length about the transition.

“She is a really good writer,” Rovins said. “She really communicated that quite well.”

Samantha, who will attend University of California Santa Cruz in the fall, plans to study psychology and perhaps later attend medical school to study psychiatry.

“I decided to study in this field when I was in sixth grade because I have always been the person people would go to for advice,” she said.

Samantha said the advice she would offer North County civic planners is to make getting around the community easier for the visually impaired.

“Out of the school environment, it is very difficult for a visually impaired person to get around North County without the aid of someone else,” she said. “The bus systems are not good nor are there enough buses running. Also, when crossing roads, it is very difficult to know when it is safe to cross.”

Samantha's mother said she encouraged her two vision-impaired children to be as independent as possible from an early age.

“My whole philosophy was that these kids may have a disability but it doesn't mean that they can do any less than their peers,” she said.

Samantha said she considers her mother her chief mentor and an inspiration.

“She never gives up and she is always the first one to jump in and help me with any problems,” Samantha said. “She is overall a strong woman. Raising two visually impaired children and never giving up on us only makes me admire her more.”