They couldn’t bring their cellphones with them. They had to have a criminal background check run on them. And they were under the watchful eye of the secret service during the entirety of their meeting. But local Revelstoke Secondary Students Alexandra Robertson, Anna Kampman, Emalyn Adam, and Community Connections councillor Sheena Bell, got to meet former first lady Michelle Obama in Vancouver on Feb. 15, where they were hosted by the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade.
Kampman said they left that encounter humbled and and inspired by the personal encounter with Obama, who took time to speak to the local students before she gave a talk to a sold out Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, which seats about 2,900 people.
The local teenagers said Obama had a radiant energy and answered all of their questions.
“She was a really genuine person. I feel like a lot of people just look at her politically, but she is a really wise women who has had a really successful career outside of her life as the first lady. She’s not just a presidents wife,” said Robertson.
The students said the talk has changed, in just two weeks, how the young women live their everyday lives.
They say its made them more determined to take school more seriously, and to be more committed to their extra-curricular activities.
“I am more determined to go out and make something of myself,” said Adam.
The meet and greet was organized in just about two weeks, and started with a single phone call to inquire about the availability of tickets. But Bell — who has known Kampman, Adam, and Robertson since they were in Grade 6 — said the journey from their want to meet Obama to their face to face encounter with the former first lady has been years in the making.
It started for the young ladies when they became founding members of a group Bell organized for local students called, Girls Move Mountains.
Bell wrote in her letter to the Vancouver Board of Trade about the group following one of the girls making a phone call to inquire about getting tickets to the sold out event. She and the girls said they were in shock when they received a telephone from president and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Iain Black.
That phone call let them know that the board of trade was going to provide them with the opportunity to sit down with Obama, and that the organization would provide free tickets and put them up in a hotel room in the big city.
But Bell kept the fact that they would actually get to meet Obama a secret until they were on their way to Vancouver.
For the young ladies, it was a five-year dream in the making come true.
