Each year the East Penn Press awards the Richard F. Gaal Memorial Scholarship to an Emmaus High School graduating senior who has displayed exemplary community commitment. This year’s recipient is Vivienne Pinocci-Wrightsman.

Gaal, who spent most of his life in Emmaus, is best remembered for his accomplishments as a photographer. Employed first by the Free Press and from 1959 until his death in 1995 by the East Penn Press, Gaal volunteered for a wide range of community organizations: among them the Emmaus Halloween Committee, Emmaus Fire Company and Veterans of Foreign Wars.

This award is given to a senior who best demonstrated those traits of good citizenship throughout their high school career.

At EHS, Pinocci-Wrightsman co-founded the biology study club, which focused on diving deeper into biology concepts through experiential learning activities for underclassmen.

She was a unified ambassador with Special Olympics Pennsylvania where she represented EHS to Special Olympics’ staff to work on initiatives in the unified champion schools across the region. Additionally, she was on the unified track and field team, a team composed of athletes with and without intellectual disabilities.

In the fall of 2023, she was an assistant soccer coach with Lehigh County Unified Soccer, a team also composed of athletes with intellectual disabilities.

Pinocci-Wrightsman was the vice president of National Honor Society and earned over 24 hours of volunteer work through the EHS chapter.

She played on the Emmaus girls soccer team – two years on junior varsity and two years on varsity and was team captain her second year of junior varsity. With that, she was selected as the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Girls Soccer Scholar-Athlete, out of a conference of 18 high schools.

Outside of school, she worked as a private math and language arts tutor and babysitter.

At EHS, she was also a member of the PALS Club, National Art Honor Society, National Spanish Honor Society and Western Lehigh United Soccer Club.

“Through the Lehigh Career and Technical Institute, I was enrolled in the Emerging Health Professionals program, where I got to pursue my interest in medicine,” Pinocci-Wrightsman said. “This program aims to expose high school students that are interested in health care to the actual field through hands-on volunteering, shadowing, medical certifications and more. Going into my senior year, I had intentions of becoming an occupational therapist, but after 10 months of shadowing varying occupations in the hospital, I found my true passion in emergency medicine and public health.

“Through EHP, I was able to attend and participate in two group events at Penn Health Occupations Students of America. I first competed in creative problem solving, where my group was presented with a health care issue for us to develop and strategize an appropriate solution; we also competed in an anatomy identification competition. We received second in the state in both. It was here where I, not only discovered a newfound interest, but really saw where my strengths lie.”

Her future plans include attending the Honors College at Rutgers University-New Brunswick to study biotechnology. After college, she plans on becoming a physician assistant specializing in emergency medicine, pediatrics or neurology.

Pinocci-Wrightsman has always been inspired by her sister, Olivia. “Despite the fact that our career and academic interests are nearly opposite, I have always been so motivated by her drive to make change in the political field. From working a congressional campaign as a 17-year-old, to founding an anti-racism club at our high school, she has never failed to make an impact on others around her; motivating me to want to do the same, but in medicine.”