Summer WIOA worker Jacob Miles of Globe aims high

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Yavapai-Apache Nation News/Camp Verde

Yavapai-Apache Nation member Jacob Miles, 16, is completing four weeks of work experience under the auspices of the WIOA (Work Innovation Opportunities Act), a work training program on the Yavapai-Apache Nation in Camp Verde. Jacob is a resident of Globe, Ariz.

Jacob gained valuable insights about work experience this summer as he answered the Human Resources office phone and filed papers.

Jacob is the son of Cari Lewis of Globe and Dylan Miles and grandson to Evelyn Lewis of Globe as well. Jacob also has two brothers, Isiah,17, who worked in the parks this summer under the same program as Jacob, and an older brother, Marques, 19, also of Globe.

Jacob’s uncle, Glen Lewis, Jr. resides in Camp Verde where Jacob is staying during his work experience program for the summer. Marcella James and Dale Miles of San Carlos are his other grandparents. In addition, the late Glen Lewis, Sr. and Nora Hans were his Camp Verde grandparents.

This coming fall, Jacob will be in the 11th grade at the Globe High School, where he has made great strides in accomplishing his career goals.

This day, he is at work on the Yavapai-Apache Nation in Camp Verde and he dresses professionally, sporting a traditional bow tie, unlike many teenagers who show up to work in t-shirts. He has good work ethics and puts in 32 hours a week for four weeks at $10 an hour.

“I’m buying an iPad with it,” he says assuredly. Jacob has big plans and already, he is part of the Governor’s Youth Commission (GYC) as secretary of that organization that has frequent meetings in Phoenix.

“The GYC is a group of teens around Arizona that goes to the communities and tries to make a public impact. Last year I did a toy drive and started my own club in high school that addressed bullying and suicide prevention,” says Jacob. Jacob’s Globe members have raised money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Every three months, Jacob makes a trek along with his peers to the Phoenix capitol for a council meeting with GYC to hash out issues and plan for events.

“It’s up to you what you want to do with it. I volunteered to pick trash in Globe,” he says. At the Phoenix meetings there are several high-profile organizations that come and talk to Jacob’s group about civic volunteer duty. “It’s about what we can do and how we can help,” he adds. Jacob is definitely not apathetic nor uncaring.

It’s a story of the saying how “one thing led to another.” At Globe High School he has run for student council two years in a row and lost the election. Jacob lost because Jacob had an agenda about suicides and substance abuse and how he is committed to putting a stop to it.

He says that his campaign poster featured the title “13 reasons why to vote for Jacob Miles” that was recommended by his supporters. The catch phrase was based on a Netflix series entitled “13 reason why,” which also featured stories about teen suicides. Some of the students thought the campaign posters title was inappropriate and chastised Jacob for it. However, Jacob says the series “… poorly portrayed what suicide really is.”

Jacob had good intentions though and has never retreated from it.

Not all was lost, as Jacob listed the number of a suicide hotline on his campaign posters. And from this incident of misunderstanding about a campaign poster and losing the student council election that Jacob’s name was recommended to the GYC, where he is still a member.

“There have been many suicides in the Globe-Miami and San Carlos area during last year,” he points out. It’s a matter not taken lightly by him.

Ask him what his favorite school subject is, and he responds that it’s math. And it’s not arithmetic but hardcore college credit math that is taught by the host Gila Pueblo Community College based in Globe.

“They come to the school and teach,” he says about the Math 100/200 that he took last year that offered a myriad of math topics/problems that may involve algebra, business statistics, geometry and exponential functions. He will also be enrolling in Math 140, English 101 (freshmen comp) and participating in a certificate program to become a medical assistant this school year that is offered through the Cobre Valley Institute of Technology in Globe.

This summer, during the time that he was employed under the WIOA program at Yavapai-Apache Nation in Camp Verde, Jacob took a one-week break and attended a medical summer camp at Arizona State University to learn about medical career options. It was here that his career horizon was broadened by a speaker at the camp who is the educational director for the Southern Arizona Health Education and is a graduate of Columbia University in NYC with a Master’s Degree in Public Health.

That person promises to write a letter of recommendation for Jacob to attend Columbia University after Jacob finishes up at Globe High.

“It’s my number one choice since I was in middle school to study bio-chem and go to medical school to be a cardiac-surgeon,” he says. Most people Jacob’s age are mostly interested in listening to Justin Bieber and keeping tabs on endless hours of Facebook accounts.

Jacob is really on a different track. He took biology this past year and whizzed by with an A and next up is his first year in chemistry, one of the many chemistry classes he will have to take to become a medical doctor.

Back in Globe, Jacob spends time hanging out at the Vida E Caffe, located on the main drag of Globe where he likes to sip cappuccino and listen to musicians. It’s sort of an avant garde place with paintings and photographs hanging on the wall, a European coffee house in a mining town that serves the purpose of bringing like-minded people there like Jacob. This is where gaming competitions are held with video games and a great music venue like open mike on Saturday nights. It’s also the same exterior building used in the movie production of the “The Great White Hope” with James Earl Jones in 1970.

“Living in Globe is a little boring, but you can find things to do. There’s a lot of perks like the movie (theater),” he quips about the lone theater in Globe.

His other pastime is playing classical piano and taking lessons for the past nine years.

“I have a private teacher in Globe who teaches jazz and classical,” he says. For now, his recital piece is “The River Flows in You,” written by Japanese composer Yiruma.

Jacob, Apache Indian, has his sights on becoming a medical doctor and the summer work experience was a good start for him and seeing successful people who work for the Nation that give him good role models.