We-Ha–West Hartford Magazine’s seventh annual ‘Terrific Teens’ spotlights local teens who are making a difference in the community – and for this year’s photo shoot we headed to Westfarms.

By Aaron Greene, photos by Todd Fairchild

Even though this is West Hartford Magazine’s seventh annual feature on local teens in West Hartford, the task of choosing the young adults to interview hasn’t gotten any easier.

Our goal has always been to find the kids who capture attention not just because they earned the best grades, or the most points in a game, but because they are all around good kids. As you can imagine, there is no short supply of eligible students.

This year features 2017 graduates who hail from Conard, Hall, Kingswood Oxford, and Northwest Catholic. Our tradition is to pick one male and one female from each school – but the male from Hall has a twin brother, so we had to be inclusive!

Why Westfarms? We strive to seek unique areas of town that maybe have history, or significance to the families. Since Westfarms has been a part of our collective history for over 40 years, it provided an interesting back drop for our photo shoot this year.

Look for one teen each week to be featured on We-Ha.com for the next several weeks.

Terrific Teen 2017: José Echeverria – “Future Police Officer”

José, a graduate of Northwest Catholic High School, is majoring in criminal justice at Central Connecticut State University and plans to become a police officer. Ideally he would like to work in the North End of Hartford, where he grew up.

José attended Northwest Catholic for all four years of high school, but didn’t start off as a West Hartford resident. He had a difficult family situation during his childhood and was attending a Hartford Catholic Worker after school program when he met Amanda Tremblay, at the time a Northwest Catholic student who was volunteering there. She encouraged him to apply to Northwest Catholic, and by his sophomore year her parents, Tom and Kathy, took him in.

José is an avid basketball player and the sport has played a major role in his life. He played in a “sixth man” role for Northwest Catholic’s varsity basketball team for all four years – going to the state tournament his sophomore through senior years. José was captain his senior year.

While José does not play basketball at CCSU, it’s still one of his favorite things to do and he plays pickup every day he can. José also loves to be outdoors as much as possible. When asked about his role model, José immediately mentioned his basketball coach, who gave him advice, and he also considers Tom and Kathy Tremblay, who taught him about life and how to be more open to other perspectives and outlooks, as role models.

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