Local Student Helps With Undercover Stings

"Can I get a pack of Camel Lights?" These are the last words you'd expect to hear from a Castro Valley High School student called out as a role model for community service.

Connie Lau, 15, plays it cool and tries to act older than she is, exuding confidence intended to keep a retail store clerk's guard down.

If she gets the cigarettes, uh-oh! Somebody's in trouble—and it's not Connie.

Besides being a good student and president of the Interact Club at CVHS, she's also a decoy for law enforcement officers conducting sting operations throughout the East Bay. She's worked in Albany, Oakland, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, Fremont and Dublin, typically hitting 25 stores in six hours in one night.

Violators get citations; law-abiders get a thank you. The highest number of people caught selling cigarettes to Connie in one night was four. 

"You have to be confident, like you really want your smokes right now," she said. "You have to look straight into their eyes. You can't show signs of hesitation."

Even when she's not working with undercover police officers, Connie prides herself on taking chances and looking for ways to improve the world around her.

"My internal goal is to help as many people as I can," she said. What makes her a standout is her ability to plunge in despite uncertainty. She'll say to herself: "Why am I standing here hesitating when I could be making someone's life better?"

She confesses that she first joined Interact, a teen offshoot of the Rotary Club, to beef up her college application. But community service turned out to be intrinsically rewarding.

Interact clubs are for students ages 12 to 18. They're sponsored by local Rotary clubs, but are independently run by the students, although the sponsoring club may offer guidance. Worldwide, nearly 200,000 students are involved in an Interact Club, according to Rotary International's website.

This year alone, Connie's club—which has more than 80 active members—has helped with a hunger relief campaign and generally lent a hand whenever needed. If you've attended the Friends of the Library book sale, the Tips for Education fundraiser at Don Jose's restaurant, the chili cookoff fundraiser for polio vaccines, the rodeo parade or the Valley Blues Festival, you probably saw Connie and her friends.

"Interact changed my life. It gave me more opportunities to help people," she said.

Connie also plays tennis and badminton, takes Advanced Placement classes, sings with the choir, enjoys hip hop and belongs to other school clubs. She'll be a junior next year.

To alleviate stress from her many obligations, she breakdances.

"It's something I'm not good at, but it's a way of escaping," she said. "Once I'm done with all of my homework or I'm really happy about something, I might bust a move in my room."

At night, she makes wishes "for everybody's happiness" precisely at 11:11 p.m. No one seems to know how the custom began; some surmise that the image of lined-up 1s on a digital clock simply arrests attention, thereby creating a spiritual opening for a wish. The custom holds that these wishes can't be self-serving.

"I don't know if it works, but there's no harm in doing it," Connie said.

She enjoys brainstorming ways to coordinate her friends in a highly visible good deed on a massive scale in a well-known place at 11:11 p.m. on Nov. 11 of this year to take advantage of an unusual alignment of ones: 11:11, 11/11/11.

"Hopefully, we'd inspire people," she said.