FAVORITE SONS & DAUGHTERS

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View welcomes announcements of recent achievements of Favorite Sons & Daughters who have graduated from local high schools. Achievements may run the gamut from earning a college degree to successfully climbing Mount Everest. Please include the student's name, age, city of residence, parents' name, area high school attended and year graduated. Send announcements and photos by mail to: Lynn Benson, View, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125-0070; by fax to 477-3852; or by e-mail, viewcalendars@viewnews.com.

Patrick Hummel, 21, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in support of his upcoming graduate studies in economics.

The award is for $40,500 for each of three years of graduate school education.

This June, Hummel will graduate from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) with a bachelor's degree in applied and computational math, a bachelor's in economics and a master's degree in chemistry.

Patrick has done original research in mathematics, economics and chemistry, and has published nearly a dozen research papers in these areas. He has a 4.2 grade point average and is ranked first in his college graduating class.

Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Chicago are among the schools that have offered him a full tuition waiver.

Hummel graduated as valedictorian from The Meadows School in 2002.

He is the son of Paul and Carla Hummel of Las Vegas.

Eleyse Nicol Leatherwood, 8, has been chosen as a state finalist in the National American Miss Nevada Pageant, which will be held June 16-17 at Palace Station.

Eleyse is in the second grade at Hummel Elementary School, where she is on the honor roll, and has won awards for citizenship, perfect attendance and student of the week and student of the month.

She enjoys singing, drawing, crafts, playing with Barbie dolls, and helping friends and family.

Her parents are David and Armeda Leatherwood of Las Vegas.

Shelly Rants and Jada Richner teamed up six years ago while students at Garrett Middle School to work together on the Cindi Turner Read-A-Thon.

The fundraising reading program honors Rants' aunt Cindi Turner, a former Garrett Middle School student, a Boulder City High School graduate and a Clark County elementary schoolteacher who was killed by a drunken driver. Richner also had an aunt who was killed by a drunken driver.

Each year, a new individual or family, who has been affected by a drunken driver, is selected to be the recipient of funds raised from the Read-A-Thon. This year, the girls decided to do something different and donated the effort's proceeds to the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program, which gives kids the skills they need to avoid involvement in drugs, gangs and violence.

With 150 students participating this year, more than $2,500 was raised. For the seven years the program has been running, it has raised over $24,000.

Winners of the essay portion of the contest this year were Jeff Dunn, Robby Jackson and Jill Reynolds.

Both Rants and Richner, who will graduate this year, mark their last year with the program.