2025-26 PHHS Key Club President An Nguyen receives her scholarship award from Scholarship Committee Chair Gary Blume (left) and committee member Vic Enchelmayer.
Phoebe Shoemaker, 2025-26 Key Club Lieutenant Governor for Division 21 East, was moved to tears when she learned the amount of her scholarship award.
The Grantville-Allied Gardens Kiwanis Club was pleased to present two of the largest scholarship awards in club history last month, with both awards going to talented members of our Key Club at Patrick Henry High School.
An Nguyen has served for the past year as President of the Key Club at PHHS. She has been able to balance her Key Club commitment with her other passions, such as the varsity badminton team, all while maintaining a demanding and rigorous academic workload. An has also given much of her time to the “First Gen” scholars club at Patrick Henry, a group for first-generation Americans to succeed in school, and the Chua Nhu Lai Thien Thu Buddhist Temple in San Diego. She also has a little sister, Angela, who has attended many of our Kiwanis meetings this year.
After graduating from Patrick Henry later this month, she is planning to spend two years at a community college and then transfer to a major four-year university, where she wants to get a Ph.D. in Psychology. She particularly wants to give back to children and help them with the struggles of growing up. These goals are very much in alignment with the mission of Kiwanis International, so of course we were proud to give her a major scholarship award! We thank An for her four years of service to PHHS Key Club (including one year as President and one as Vice President), and we hope that this award will help her continue to pursue all of her academic and professional goals.
Ever since Phoebe Shoemaker moved to San Diego from the Big Island of Hawai’i in elementary school, she’s been giving back to others through the Kiwanis family. In the fourth grade, her friend Samantha invited her to be part of the K-Kids Club at Hearst Elementary School. Two years of K-Kids, followed by three years of Builders Club at Lewis Middle School, then four years as a Key Clubber at Patrick Henry (including one year as Division 21 East Lt. Governor) – all of that amounts to a nine-year journey of community service and leadership.
Phoebe has a passion for science, stating that she would like to become a writer for National Geographic or for NASA! With a remarkable 4.52 GPA over the past three years, she consistently earns good grades, all while meeting hard deadlines, and still finding time to volunteer. As Key Club Lt. Governor of Division 21 East, Phoebe was in charge of monthly report forms, hosting monthly division council meetings, managing her divisional leadership team, and organizing major events like the Key Club Regional Training Conference.
In addition to Key Club, Phoebe has also spent the last four years on the PHHS Yearbook staff, plus two years of coding, and a year on Link Crew. Her yearbook staff advisor, PHHS teacher Elizabeth Frohoff, describes Phoebe as somebody who is “highly adept at time management,” and that she “demonstrates genuine selflessness.”
She is considering a move to the Bay Area, where she can spend the next two years at a community college before going on to study at a major four-year university. She has already been accepted to UC Santa Cruz. Phoebe’s scholarship this year is the largest ever awarded by G.A.G. Kiwanis, while An's is tied for the second-largest.