Chela Riggs by Zorana K.
Chela Riggs (1988 to 1990)
Chela Riggs graduated from Cascade in 1990. She was born in Salem, Oregon in 1972 and grew up with her mom, dad, and two brothers. After high school she joined the military. In her last week of boot camp she broke her ankle and couldn’t graduate. She then came back to Everett and started a family. Three of her children now attend Cascade as well. She makes a living as a professional massage therapist.
Chela on world events:
I went to cascade in ’88 to ’89 and ’89 to ’90. The Tiananmen Square happened when I was in school there and I was in Mr. Theril’s history class so we had huge political discussion about democracy in China, the students revolting, and passive versus active resistance so that was huge that that had happened and it became a current event for the day in his class. Tiananmen Square was when a bunch of Chinese college students descended in the plaza and they were basically revolting and protesting because China’s Communist so there was no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion. The Seattle Times had a huge picture of the tanks and the smoke so when we got into school that day Mr. Theril basically said “shut your books, watch the news this morning and here’s what we’re going to learn about...” It’s ironic because he said “you’re living history, this is huge.” And at the time nobody knew exactly what would happen if maybe they made an impact enough but 4 years later China’s still Communist.
The same teacher (now that he’s retired I can say this) was the wrestling coach and he did not put up with any crap from kids so I remember one of the football players got really mouthy with him and he picked him up off his feet and held him up against the wall just like in a movie and he told him that he was not going to behave the way he was in his class, which was 20 years ago so he probably couldn’t get away with that now but the guy was kind of a bully so everyone just sat there and thought it was great ‘cause the kid got put in his place. That was kind of funny. It seems like it was more clique-ish back then; you have all different social groups but there’s not a lot of rivalry or animosity. There wasn’t much ethnic diversity at all. I mean Cascade was mainly a white school. It had a very big spectrum in the financial sense and in the parking lot there was everything from a ghetto car to people driving $60,000 BMW’s that their mommies and daddies bought for them. I mean you were like either definitely a jock or definitely a prep or definitely whatever. There was no in between.
I think it was my junior year that Ted Bundy was executed in Florida. He was a serial killer. I was in Sid Stevens’ business law class but because of everything that was going on with all of his final appeals and that he represented himself for so long we actually spent a good portion of the month leading up to his final execution doing criminal law instead of business law and I always thought that was cool because instead of just sticking to the book, Sid actually let us study current events and we discussed everything that happened in Washington state because that’s where Bundy killed a couple dozen women. So that was memorable brcause I remember that he actually let us watch outside the prison when they did all the news-casting. One of our classrooms, when he was executed, was actually watching what was going on and that was kind of creepy. You could probably YouTube it nowadays if you wanted to see it, but it was kind of sad since the guy was a total killer. It just had a huge impact on all of us as far as consequences of your actions.
The Stehekin was always in a battle with the administration about freedom of speech. We were in a video production class back when they still had the VHS tapes that went from one to the other and we actually did a documentary and at the time. There was a razor wire on the fence around the parking area and my friend Matt videotaped one of the cars and then zoomed out to where you could see the barbed wire that was all around and we used the U2 song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” as the background song and we put it in and ran it during lunch and actually got in trouble because the administration hadn’t approved that so the video class and Stehekin were always in a battle with the district.
I think the most memorable thing that was really sad was that there was this girl that was in our class and she was in a wheel chair and had been born with a spinal defect and they had never expected her to survive as long as she did so the fact that she was there and would probably graduate with us was always a really big deal. She was really cool like one of those people that everybody just knew. But she was sick a lot, out of school a lot, so we always wondered if she would graduate with us. One year her younger sister went to a party out by Silver Furs where there used to be a place called the pit and everybody would go out there and party and they left there and got in a car with a guy who was drinking and she was killed in a car wreck because he was. It was really sad that this girl was a junior when she was killed and her sister was a senior. It absolutely devastated her sister but I mean it was a huge lesson, because so young it really impacted us because we all, as morbid as it sounds, kind of expected that the other sister might not graduate with us and she might not be there. When she wasn’t at school we’d always wonder “Is she just sick or is something really wrong?” Her parents of course were devastated because they had also poured a lot of time and attention into the older sister and then they did memorial pages and she had written a letter and it is probably in one of my yearbooks actually, and it was like “I’m going to see you soon”.
I know that there was a couple wanting to go to homecoming or prom that was gay and back then that was like nobody; it was so not as liberal as it is now. For me personally I dyed my hair blue. I worked at a hair salon in Seattle so I dyed my hair white and then for show they did it blue and nowadays it’s funny to see all the kids walking around with like the blue when back then there was nobody who died their hair. I was the only one. Not even the people who were on the fringes did it.
The Berlin Wall coming down was important. In Mr. Theril’s class I got to watch it on the TV on the big cart and we got to watch it on the news as students and people from both sides were climbing on top of it and hitting it with hammers and taking pieces of it away and so it was cool. I was about 17 and I was actually going into the military to study Russian so it was interesting in that respect that it was kind of the end of the Cold War because the Soviet Union, USSR and America were trying to communicate more. George Bush was the president and had opened up more dialogue so from my perspective it was interesting because once it started happening, it happened so fast that when I was going into the military they didn’t need as many Russian speakers because they weren’t worried about as much issue with Russia and with the Cold War. My friend Naoma went in 2 months after me and when she enlisted they ended up teaching her Korean because they didn’t need any Russian speakers. I think graduation was on like June 6th or June 8th and then I shipped out June 12th so I was home less than a week after graduation and then I left for South Carolina, Port Jackson. I was in boot camp in 1990 at Fort Jackson and one morning when we all filed out into formation which is when you leave your bunks and are lined up in your line, our drill sergeants came out and were very solemn and told us to be at ease which is where you can just stand relaxed and they were like “we have something really serious.” Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and it was the start of a war and I was in boot camp and it was really scary. He invaded Kuwait and was starting a war in the entire region. The Arabs were friendly to the U.S. military presence being on their soil so it gave us a place to have a base in that region that has always been volatile. Operation Desert Storm was when we invaded back. We pushed him back into Iraq and actually way past the border of Iraq originally. But it was really scary because when you’re in boot camp and you’re with people who are going into infantry, which is fighting, the actual people who are on the ground shooting and they can change your MOS - that’s your military specialty. So people like me that were going in for certain things can basically be put wherever they need you. Everybody freaked out. I think it was literally like 6 weeks of counteraction, and it was crazy. Of course it turned into years. Bill Clinton of course became president after that, and apparently was a very good diplomat but in my opinion he failed to follow through and let Hussein stay in power. There hadn’t really been any terrorist attacks, there wasn’t anything like that. There were yellow ribbons everywhere. There was just so much support for the troops.
Chela Riggs graduated from Cascade in 1990. She was born in Salem, Oregon in 1972 and grew up with her mom, dad, and two brothers. After high school she joined the military. In her last week of boot camp she broke her ankle and couldn’t graduate. She then came back to Everett and started a family. Three of her children now attend Cascade as well. She makes a living as a professional massage therapist.
Chela on world events:
I went to cascade in ’88 to ’89 and ’89 to ’90. The Tiananmen Square happened when I was in school there and I was in Mr. Theril’s history class so we had huge political discussion about democracy in China, the students revolting, and passive versus active resistance so that was huge that that had happened and it became a current event for the day in his class. Tiananmen Square was when a bunch of Chinese college students descended in the plaza and they were basically revolting and protesting because China’s Communist so there was no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion. The Seattle Times had a huge picture of the tanks and the smoke so when we got into school that day Mr. Theril basically said “shut your books, watch the news this morning and here’s what we’re going to learn about...” It’s ironic because he said “you’re living history, this is huge.” And at the time nobody knew exactly what would happen if maybe they made an impact enough but 4 years later China’s still Communist.
The same teacher (now that he’s retired I can say this) was the wrestling coach and he did not put up with any crap from kids so I remember one of the football players got really mouthy with him and he picked him up off his feet and held him up against the wall just like in a movie and he told him that he was not going to behave the way he was in his class, which was 20 years ago so he probably couldn’t get away with that now but the guy was kind of a bully so everyone just sat there and thought it was great ‘cause the kid got put in his place. That was kind of funny. It seems like it was more clique-ish back then; you have all different social groups but there’s not a lot of rivalry or animosity. There wasn’t much ethnic diversity at all. I mean Cascade was mainly a white school. It had a very big spectrum in the financial sense and in the parking lot there was everything from a ghetto car to people driving $60,000 BMW’s that their mommies and daddies bought for them. I mean you were like either definitely a jock or definitely a prep or definitely whatever. There was no in between.
I think it was my junior year that Ted Bundy was executed in Florida. He was a serial killer. I was in Sid Stevens’ business law class but because of everything that was going on with all of his final appeals and that he represented himself for so long we actually spent a good portion of the month leading up to his final execution doing criminal law instead of business law and I always thought that was cool because instead of just sticking to the book, Sid actually let us study current events and we discussed everything that happened in Washington state because that’s where Bundy killed a couple dozen women. So that was memorable brcause I remember that he actually let us watch outside the prison when they did all the news-casting. One of our classrooms, when he was executed, was actually watching what was going on and that was kind of creepy. You could probably YouTube it nowadays if you wanted to see it, but it was kind of sad since the guy was a total killer. It just had a huge impact on all of us as far as consequences of your actions.
The Stehekin was always in a battle with the administration about freedom of speech. We were in a video production class back when they still had the VHS tapes that went from one to the other and we actually did a documentary and at the time. There was a razor wire on the fence around the parking area and my friend Matt videotaped one of the cars and then zoomed out to where you could see the barbed wire that was all around and we used the U2 song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” as the background song and we put it in and ran it during lunch and actually got in trouble because the administration hadn’t approved that so the video class and Stehekin were always in a battle with the district.
I think the most memorable thing that was really sad was that there was this girl that was in our class and she was in a wheel chair and had been born with a spinal defect and they had never expected her to survive as long as she did so the fact that she was there and would probably graduate with us was always a really big deal. She was really cool like one of those people that everybody just knew. But she was sick a lot, out of school a lot, so we always wondered if she would graduate with us. One year her younger sister went to a party out by Silver Furs where there used to be a place called the pit and everybody would go out there and party and they left there and got in a car with a guy who was drinking and she was killed in a car wreck because he was. It was really sad that this girl was a junior when she was killed and her sister was a senior. It absolutely devastated her sister but I mean it was a huge lesson, because so young it really impacted us because we all, as morbid as it sounds, kind of expected that the other sister might not graduate with us and she might not be there. When she wasn’t at school we’d always wonder “Is she just sick or is something really wrong?” Her parents of course were devastated because they had also poured a lot of time and attention into the older sister and then they did memorial pages and she had written a letter and it is probably in one of my yearbooks actually, and it was like “I’m going to see you soon”.
I know that there was a couple wanting to go to homecoming or prom that was gay and back then that was like nobody; it was so not as liberal as it is now. For me personally I dyed my hair blue. I worked at a hair salon in Seattle so I dyed my hair white and then for show they did it blue and nowadays it’s funny to see all the kids walking around with like the blue when back then there was nobody who died their hair. I was the only one. Not even the people who were on the fringes did it.
The Berlin Wall coming down was important. In Mr. Theril’s class I got to watch it on the TV on the big cart and we got to watch it on the news as students and people from both sides were climbing on top of it and hitting it with hammers and taking pieces of it away and so it was cool. I was about 17 and I was actually going into the military to study Russian so it was interesting in that respect that it was kind of the end of the Cold War because the Soviet Union, USSR and America were trying to communicate more. George Bush was the president and had opened up more dialogue so from my perspective it was interesting because once it started happening, it happened so fast that when I was going into the military they didn’t need as many Russian speakers because they weren’t worried about as much issue with Russia and with the Cold War. My friend Naoma went in 2 months after me and when she enlisted they ended up teaching her Korean because they didn’t need any Russian speakers. I think graduation was on like June 6th or June 8th and then I shipped out June 12th so I was home less than a week after graduation and then I left for South Carolina, Port Jackson. I was in boot camp in 1990 at Fort Jackson and one morning when we all filed out into formation which is when you leave your bunks and are lined up in your line, our drill sergeants came out and were very solemn and told us to be at ease which is where you can just stand relaxed and they were like “we have something really serious.” Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and it was the start of a war and I was in boot camp and it was really scary. He invaded Kuwait and was starting a war in the entire region. The Arabs were friendly to the U.S. military presence being on their soil so it gave us a place to have a base in that region that has always been volatile. Operation Desert Storm was when we invaded back. We pushed him back into Iraq and actually way past the border of Iraq originally. But it was really scary because when you’re in boot camp and you’re with people who are going into infantry, which is fighting, the actual people who are on the ground shooting and they can change your MOS - that’s your military specialty. So people like me that were going in for certain things can basically be put wherever they need you. Everybody freaked out. I think it was literally like 6 weeks of counteraction, and it was crazy. Of course it turned into years. Bill Clinton of course became president after that, and apparently was a very good diplomat but in my opinion he failed to follow through and let Hussein stay in power. There hadn’t really been any terrorist attacks, there wasn’t anything like that. There were yellow ribbons everywhere. There was just so much support for the troops.