A Penchant for Healing

Brady Barrett’s butterfly habitat restoration project hints at his career goals.

When it came time to plan his Eagle Scout project, Brady Barrett chose to focus on rescuing a small blue insect about the size of a thumbnail. More specifically, he partnered with the South Bay Parkland Conservancy (www.southbayparks.org) to help restore the native habitat of the El Segundo blue butterfly, a species that came close to extinction just a few decades ago.

“My grandparents and my dad are from El Segundo, so I was familiar with the restoration effort,” says Barrett, a senior at St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower. Working with the conservancy and the city of Redondo Beach, he identified an area in Czuleger Park to clean up and then plant buckwheat and other native species. The area is now part of a wildlife corridor that will eventually stretch from El Segundo to the Palos Verdes Esplanade and through the Hermosa Beach Greenbelt.

“There were some empty dirt patches that had become covered with dog poop and other trash, so the residents weren’t happy and it wasn’t hospitable to the butterflies,” Barrett explains.

The project took place over two weekends and involved 28 volunteers. The first weekend involved clearing the debris and preparing the soil for new plants. Planting happened the second weekend.

Scouts who wish to earn the rank of Eagle, the highest rank within scouting, must carry out a service project. Only 4% of scouts reach this rank, which also requires earning 21 merit badges and holding leadership positions within the troop. The process generally takes at least six years to complete. Barrett has met all the requirements.

Scouting is not Barrett’s only experience serving his community. He also participated in Torrance Memorial Medical Center’s High School Volunteer Program. This entails committing to regular volunteer service as a hospital escort for a period of 13 months and draws many more applicants than positions available. Escorts assist with various tasks, including transporting patients by wheelchair, delivering specimens to the lab, and conveying medical charts and supplies around the hospital.

“It’s my goal to become a surgeon, so this was a great way to get a feel for the hospital environment,” he says. “The experience at Torrance Memorial has 100% reinforced my goal.”

Barrett attends a specialized biomedical program at his high school. It offers classes, such as molecular biology, typically encountered only in university settings. To further his medical experience, he attended a high school program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where he was able to shadow physicians and learn more about different fields of medicine.

“I think my experience at Torrance Memorial helped me get selected for this program,” he says.

Ever mindful of his career goals, Barrett applied and was accepted for a high school summer fellowship at The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. It involved hands-on training with institute faculty in their labs, conducting an intensive research project and presenting his findings.

Whether protecting tiny butterflies, interacting with hospital patients or doing research, Barrett seems drawn to curing and restoring.