Victoria Heisler is a bird of a different feather, though her plumage is just as nice.
The 14-year-old has grown up in Severna Park. Her two older sisters, Kathryn, 19, a sophomore at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, and Elizabeth, 18, a senior at Severna Park High School, have been devoted to their local high school and its mascot, the Falcon. But, Victoria, the youngest of the three sisters, struck out in a different direction. Instead of becoming a Falcon, she’s a Patriot fan, instead. Victoria is completing her freshman year in the Extended Learning Program/International Baccalaureate Programme at Old Mill High in Millersville. “I decided to come here because my sisters went to Severna Park High,” she said simply. “Everybody knows me there. It was a chance to do something different. I liked meeting a lot of new people.” She’s doing well in school, garnering a 4.2 weighted grade point average. “The only ‘B’ I got was in gym,” Victoria said. A major regret of Victoria’s is not seeing her old friends from Severna Park Middle School as often as she’d prefer. Like many teens, she’s booked solid with extracurricular activities in the afternoons after classes end and on weekends. Victoria is a defensive wing on Old Mill’s junior varsity lacrosse team and a member of the winter swim team. As an IB student, she also has to volunteer numerous hours to fulfill her annual Community Action Service requirements.
With fellow teens at her parish church, St. Bernadette’s Roman Catholic Church in Severn, Victoria recently served dinner to the homeless who were temporarily housed in the parish hall. Area churches take turns hosting homeless men and women for a week during the cold winter months. “I’ve learned homelessness is not always the fault of the homeless,” she said. “In these economic times, it’s hard to get a job. Or, a job sometimes doesn’t pay enough to live in a house.”