By Amy McIntyre

Victor Perete McIntyre, known in Forks by his friends and family as “Robbie” and former Forks ECEAP and Elementary School student, was one of 55 students from around Washington State selected in the high-stakes lottery program for incoming Freshman for the Class of 2024 at the prestigious Raisbeck Aviation High School in Seattle, WA.

In the summer of 2013 Victor’s mother, Amy McIntyre, moved to Lacey, WA in search of sufficiently challenging educational programs after more than one year of saving and planning, and a lot of family support.

The move was primarily inspired by two things:

(1) multiple conversations with his teacher who unfortunately didn’t see his natural cues of higher capabilities and instead labeled him as problematic, and

(2) a previous referral from a “Child Find” rep for the school district stating Victor might need additional testing and learning support after he refused to engage in conversation with the rep at the community daycare.

Within three months of starting school in Lacey, WA, Victor was one of 25 students selected out of over 200 students tested in the district for the Highly Capable (HiCap) Program. In 2015 the family moved multiple times to follow Victor’s dad, Ruben Mendez Cruz, in his job adventures as a cook, eventually landing in Des Moines, WA.

Each school Victor was in between 2015-2016, he was placed into the HiCap Program. While in the HiCap Program, Victor was recognized by the school district with “District Award for Academic Persistence” in 2019, invited for a VIP tour & one-on-one with the staff of Unity Technologies (a video game software development company), and selected by a Lead Engineer at Microsoft to be his mentoree after Victor gave an impeccable impromptu speech about his homemade face recognition program that he single-handedly coded.

Thanks to the HiCap Program, Victor was able to apply for the Raisbeck Aviation High School Lottery Program, and subsequently selected as one of 55 of the more than 350 applicants.

The moral of this story is: if you believe your child needs more and you have the ability to reach out and get it, do it!

Children are our future, and they are your family’s future. When you support students to reach their potential with all the tools available, they will not disappoint.

Let’s all congratulate Victor in his next adventure at the Raisbeck Aviation High School!