THOUSAND OAKS : Eagle Scout Aspirant Plans to Help Seniors

As a young Explorer Scout, Zachary Isom kept tabs on his troop’s community service programs: He watched his older brother plant flowers on a freeway overpass and a friend clear brush from an overgrown trail.

While he appreciated their efforts to beautify the city, Zachary vowed to do something more people-oriented. And now, needing to log 40 hours of community service to earn his Eagle Scout award, Zachary has come up with a plan to install smoke alarms in senior citizens’ homes.

But before he can begin, he needs help from the city of Thousand Oaks.

Zachary, a 17-year-old graduate of Westlake High School, will ask the City Council tonight to help him reach needy senior citizens. He wants the city clerk to mail out letters offering his service in procuring and installing smoke detectors.

Because the city’s list of low-income seniors is confidential, the city clerk needs council approval to begin the mailings. Zachary also hopes the city will back his project with a letter of support, which he believes might persuade local retailers to donate free smoke alarms.

“This project looked pretty easy at first, but now it’s more and more complicated,” Zachary said. “It takes longer to go through the city, but you get more help in the end.”

Zachary , who will attend Brigham Young University in the fall, said he latched on to the smoke-detector project after talking with City Manager Grant Brimhall, who attends the same Mormon church. Brimhall’s son carried out a similar project, distributing blankets to the elderly, to win his own Eagle Scout award. “It’s a good project because it helps a lot of needy people,” Brimhall said.

Zachary’s Eagle post adviser, Jeff Gurvine, said he’s thrilled to see a community-service program that reaches out to senior citizens--and he’s sure his teen-age troop member will benefit from the experience.

“The elderly will be watching him with a smile on their faces, and he’ll see the results right there and know he’s helping them,” Gurvine said. “He’s finally found a chance to express some of his feelings of wanting to help people.”

Zachary agreed that he has a do-gooder impulse, but he had one more motivation for joining the Boy Scouts at age 12 and sticking with the program: “It looks good on your resume,” he said.