Who do you think of when considering Bear River’s kindest soul? Senior Mya Marsh immediately thinks of Sabrina Mantooth.
“Sabrina is super, super, super smart and always willing to talk to you. She’s very caring and super funny. I love her so much”, Marsh says. “She’s just been there for me when I’ve been going through stuff. She’s always been my friend. And we had never really had any drama.”
Mantooth is a senior at Bear River, a hardworking student with loads of crazy stories under her belt. Born and raised in Penn Valley, she grew up surrounded by questionable neighbors with even more questionable intentions.
“My neighbors had a crack lab next door,” Mantooth said. “There were a lot of crazy people who would go by buying drugs and literally shaking. My mom and I would have these routines of hiding, how to avoid them, how to talk to them, etc. “Across the street was a guy who we said ‘cursed the house’. He had these four crazy killer pitbulls who were always loose. So whenever we left for school in the morning we had to sprint to the car. When we got in and slammed the door shut, the dogs would be right at the doors. My mom kept knives and tasers in the car to deal with them. It was all a little crazy.”
In terms of school activities, Mantooth has been involved throughout most of high school in sports, extracurriculars and AP classes. However, she had to quit a lot of her school involvement to have time for a job.
“I’ve always been into a bunch of sports, mostly basketball, tennis and water polo, but also a bunch of music things. I’ve been in band my whole high school career,” Mantooth said. “Quitting was hard to do. I went to the basketball senior night and it was kind of sad and I was like, ‘oh, I should have been there’, but I think in the long run it was the better decision and it’ll probably have better benefits for the future.”
Despite sacrificing time to save up for college, Mantooth has kept a lot of her passions. Some of them stem from her early childhood; most notably, music.
“Music is a passion I got into really young,” Mantooth said. “Mr. Richardson, the middle school band teacher, came one day with the hose and funnel and played a song through it. That’s what made me want to play the trumpet. Then, my sister really wanted to play the piano (for the sake of saying she could play the piano) so we got a free one from a piano prodigy named James Shawcross who was giving them away. My sister didn’t even end up playing and so I picked it up instead. I learned to play Fur Elise in two weeks thanks to YouTube.”
Aside from that, Mantooth has aspirations to become a structural engineer after graduating from college. Having applied to seven state colleges and getting into six (one being Cal Poly), the future looks bright.
“I also (desperately) went to apply for the Air Force Academy, because they’ll pay for your college if you give years of your life to service,” she said. “For me, that was an ideal opportunity. Recently, though, I’ve made up my mind that I’m just going to stick with scholarships because my dream has always been to go to college. Hopefully I’ll be able to go for engineering or linguistics. Linguistics because I’m pretty good at languages. Especially for the Air Force, if I was to go down that path, they have a lot of good translation opportunities.”
Pushing Mantooth to succeed in her future is her mom, Colleen, who is one of her biggest motivators. Her mother has shaped Sabrina into the person she is today.
“My mom grew up really difficult, having dropped out of school in the sixth grade, but she is the wisest person I know,” Mantooth said. “She’s my best friend — we’ve gone through a lot together, and she’s my No.1 person to lean on and ask for advice— make dinner together, go for a drive, go for a walk, that kind of thing.”