What Heidi Dehart does, she does because of other people.

People are what motivates the Mount Si High School senior to volunteer for various Key Club activities, and to coordinate the club’s big garage sale fundraiser each summer.

“The part that I really enjoy…is watching people who were looking for something and just being really overjoyed that they found it,” she explained, “or just being so happy that other people are willing to help them.”

Her positive approach is just one of many reasons she was recently awarded the first-ever North Bend Youth Citizen of the Year Award.

“She leads by example and is always the first one into a service project and the last one to leave,” said Mayor Ken Hearing. “Her commitment to Key Club is just an extension of her hard work in academics.”

Dehart, the daughter of Larry and Pirjo Dehart of North Bend, was listening to Hearing read the nomination and assuming the award was going to her best friend, Jewel Dockery, who recruited her into Key Club when they were both in sixth grade.

“I was thinking, that could apply to Jewel,” she said, “but no, Jewel doesn’t play soccer….”

Dehart was more than surprised when she realized the award was for her.

“I like just sitting back and watching, so getting an award was really kind of shocking,” she said.

Especially when it’s simply for doing the things she likes to do, like volunteering for Key Club projects.

“I just saw how much fun it was and I really enjoyed working with people in the community,” she said.

Sidelined from soccer by a medical condition this year, Dehart is taking two Advanced Placement classes this year at school, and helping to manage the year-old writing club that started at Mount Si High School last year. The group meets weekly to read pieces aloud, and help each other with their works. Dehart, a speculative fiction writer, talks enthusiastically about the club’s collaborative efforts to help writers with plot, character and theme, “and hopefully getting people’s books published!”

Her favorite event, though is the Key Club’s involvement with Relay for Life, and the fundraising garage sale she has coordinated for years. Stocked with donations from people and businesses, the sale seems to get bigger each year, and has become a community event, a point of pride for Dehart.

“One year, we had people stopping from Yakima,” she said. “They said their friend told them about it,.”

The garage sale happens in the summer, but she’s still thinking about it now, because when she goes to college next year, someone will have to take over.

“I’m trying to find an underclassman who’s willing to take over the project, so it can continue,” Dehart said.

She is definitely going to college, and “definitely” going to remain involved with the Kiwanis family, by joining Circle K, the college-level branch of the service group.

• Learn more about the Snoqualmie Valley Kiwanis Club at http://sharepoint.snoqualmie.k12.wa.us/kiwanis/default.aspx