Westhill High's Woody Pierre, right, receives a certificate from Interim Superintendent of Schools Winifred Hamilton for some of his good deeds.
Photo credit: Anthony Buzzeo

STAMFORD, Conn. — People who know Stamford’s Woody Pierre describe the high school senior as a smart, responsible and wonderful young man, which helped him to be named the 2011 Boys & Girls Club Youth of the Year.

“He is the best of what Stamford does,” Winifred Hamilton, interim superintendent of Stamford Public Schools, said of Pierre during a January Board of Education meeting.  

Camille Figluizzi, Woody’s principal at Westhill High School, described him as, “intelligent, honorable, kind and poised to become a man who will make the world a better place. Woody is recognized for the good deeds he has done in our community and our school family.”

Woody’s character was probably never more on display than this past fall when he found a wallet with more than $1,500 in it. He immediately took the wallet to the school’s media center, where it was returned to its owner. It turned out the money in the wallet was the family’s rent for the month, Hamilton said during the meeting.

“I can’t take anything I didn’t earn,” Woody said of returning the wallet and the money.

However, that wasn’t always the case, the 17-year-old says. Woody said he was “not always the best kid” and was always giving his counselors at the Boys & Girls Club of Stamford a hard time, getting into fights, being sent to the director’s office and even being suspended from going to the club.

“It’s like a huge transformation,” Woody, who is now a counselor at the Boys & Girls Club, says with an ear-to-ear smile. “Even my friends don’t believe me.”

The change in his life began when he was “saved” during his freshman year after becoming a member of the choir at his church, French Speaking Baptist Church. Woody said he had always gone to church, but it wasn’t until then he really learned to listen to what was being said.

Shortly after that, he returned to the Boys & Girls Club as a member of the Keystone Club there and then became a counselor, helping with the 8- to 11-year-old-boys after school. The club has helped him further develop and learn to take on responsibilities. Woody described his relationships there as being like family.

“I wouldn’t be this focused, I wouldn’t have these goals,” he said of the impact the club has had on him.

Woody is waiting to hear back from colleges and hopes to go to Central Connecticut State University, where he wants to major in social work or education. His goal is to run his own Boys & Girls Club.