Student's remarkable streak nears its perfect ending

COEUR d’ALENE — I’m sitting in my car Thursday afternoon, heading north on Ramsey Road, and all I can think about is one night in a newsroom on Sept. 6, 1995. I was staying late to wrap up a story, and while I still had plenty of work ahead of me, I made sure to tune into the middle of the fifth inning of that night’s Angels-Orioles game.

The middle of the fifth is typically mundane — they’re not even playing baseball in this brief intermission — but this was special. I didn’t want to watch the game. I wanted to watch the housekeeping that happens in the middle of the fifth, when statisticians marked that particular game as official.

On that September night 23 years ago, in the middle of the fifth, the Orioles game officially counted in the history books, and the banners across the ballpark switched from 2130 to 2131, signifying Cal Ripken, Jr.’s streak of consecutive games played. Ripken, a lifelong Oriole who played every game through injury and exhaustion for more than 12 years, had just broken Lou Gehrig’s unbreakable record to forever become baseball’s Iron Man. 50,000 fans in the stadium and millions more from their living rooms cheered him on for more than 20 minutes.

“It is unlikely,” I remember saying to a colleague, “we will ever see anything like this again.”

I have time in my car Thursday afternoon to reflect on that night because I’m stuck in heavy traffic. I’m oddly nervous I might be late.

I’m nervous not because I’m late to a meeting with my new boss or to a date with my wife or to a conference with my son’s teachers. I’m nervous because I’m concerned I might be two minutes late to an interview with a teenager named Blake Stilkey.

The son of Jay and Jennifer Stilkey of Coeur d’Alene is entering the final months of his senior year with an absurdly impressive streak of his own. Barring catastrophe, the Lake City High School senior will graduate in June having never been absent or late in his entire scholastic career. He has never had his parents call in sick for him. He has never been caught lingering at his locker as the next period began. He has never slept through his alarm and missed the bus and run through the doors late. He has never taken a day off.

Ever.

From his first hour of kindergarten at Winton Elementary through Friday, Blake has shown up for class, on time, ready to learn.

I show up for this interview with a minute to spare. He smiles and discreetly checks his wristwatch.

“My parents always made sure I understood,” he tells me, “that if I have an obligation to somebody, it’s my responsibility to be where I need to be. If I’m supposed to be in school, that’s where I need to be. It’s important I live up to that.”

That work ethic puts him in rare company. Only one other student in recent memory — Garrett Cabeza, back in 2011 — graduated after a full career in the Coeur d’Alene School District with perfect attendance.

“If you made it all the way through third grade,” Blake remembers with a relaxing smile, placing his index finger and thumb an inch apart, “they gave you these little perfect attendance medals at the end of the year. For some reason, when I was younger, I really wanted those. That kept me going.”

By the end of fifth grade, friends would politely chide him about his attendance. A local car dealership awarded him a bicycle. His streak became something of a schoolhouse legend, and he decided he could make it to graduation without missing a day.

“It’s just something I set my mind to,” he says, “so I committed myself to staying with it.”

“I think it’s a real testament to his devotion to learning,” says Scott Maben, Director of Communications for the Coeur d’Alene School District. “There are posters on the walls of our schools that stress the importance of attendance: ‘Every day counts.’ And it’s true. Every day is an opportunity to learn something valuable. He sets a great example for all students.”

Sixth grade can be a more challenging animal than elementary school. Students migrate to different classrooms and different teachers. The familiarity of Winton vanishes into a completely foreign environment. Locker combinations torment the soul.

Blake remembers his first month at Lakes Middle School as a Monday-through-Friday churn of stress.

“It was just big, big, big anxiety,” he admits. “Everything changed. It took me a good month or six weeks to come up with a regimen. I had to figure out what books I needed to take to which classes at once, so I wouldn’t have to go back. I had to figure out when I had a chance to go to the bathroom, and when I had to hold it. It took me a good month to [establish a routine to] get comfortable.”

Getting comfortable with a changing middle school routine is easier than getting comfortable in a middle school life, a challenge Blake says weighed on him.

“By the seventh grade,” he says, “I didn’t know where I wanted to be. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. But I knew that showing up was important. So I kept at it, kept up my attendance, kept up my routine.”

That routine today includes getting up without fail at 6:10 a.m., preparing for school, eating breakfast and leaving by 7. By 7:20 every morning, you can find him in the Lake City High gymnasium, playing his first love: basketball.

Staying active and on the court is just one habit Blake has cultivated to maintain a healthy lifestyle, particularly in an environment of sneezes and germs and other children still learning basic hygiene. In his early years, his mother kept reminding him to keep clean and wash his hands.

She also taught him to hold himself accountable.

“I remember when I joined the school band,” he says, adding that he plays the clarinet, “if we ever had a school-related [performance] where we had to get on the bus, I’d always go to my teachers and make sure it was OK. I’d ask, ‘Now, you’re sure it’s OK for me to go to this? You’re sure I won’t be marked as absent?’ They’d have to tell me over and over, ‘Yes. It’s OK. It’s for school. It’s not unexcused.’”

Of course, after 13 years in the Coeur d’Alene school system, he’s seen his share of close calls.

“I remember once,” he recalls, “I was standing in line for DECA [for a snack]. I ordered pizza and cookie dough, and I had already paid. And the person behind the counter just kinda forgot about me. And I’m checking the time, and I’m thinking I’m going to be late, and they were taking forever to make my pizza. I was about to say, ‘Hey, just put it on my tab,’ or something. ‘I gotta go.’”

He made it to class, pizza in hand, with a minute to spare. I ask him if, looking back, the near-tardy was worth it.

“Absolutely,” he says. “Their pizza’s the bomb.”

Stilkey’s streak was threatened more recently when he checked into his physical education class one morning and went to the weight room. Due to a miscommunication, while he was lifting, he was never marked as present, threatening to end his perfect streak.

“I had to beg and plead with [my teacher] to fix the mistake,” he said. “I was terrified he was going to mark me absent.”

Fortunately, a lifetime of diligence has helped him build credibility with his teachers. Blake said those relationships keep him motivated.

“This is something that has been very intentional for him,” says Bryan Kelly, Assistant Principal at Lake City High. “But there’s so much more to him than his attendance. He goes out of his way to be kind and helpful to others. He’s well-liked. He’s admired and respected by his teachers. He’s just one of those guys that would give you the shirt off his back. He’s a great example of what it means to be a Timberwolf.”

“I’ve never had a teacher I didn’t like,” Blake says. “Even when I thought I wouldn’t get along with them, or if I didn’t like their teaching style, I still ended up liking them.”

“Think about what [his streak] says about the teachers who work here,” Maben adds. “Encouraging him everyday, keeping him engaged everyday: It takes an extraordinary skillset to keep students motivated, and it takes an extraordinary student to keep showing up.”

Blake’s streak doesn’t explain the entirety of his academic career. He estimates he will graduate June 7 with a 3.7 grade point average. He says he hasn’t decided what he wants to do after graduation, and he will likely take a gap year to figure out his next step. He hasn’t ruled out travel, including a possible family trip to Israel.

“Whatever I do,” he says, “I want to follow my passion, wherever it leads me.”

In the meantime, Blake Stilkey will begin his post-high school life this summer working at Le Peep Cafe. Its owner, Maggie Kemp, also works for the school district and has a unique history with the employee. Thirteen years ago, Kemp was there to greet him when he walked through Winton Elementary for his first day in her kindergarten class.

“I think it says that he’s responsible,” his mother, Jennifer Stilkey, tells me. “It shows that he’s dependable, and that he sets the right priorities. Mostly, I think it shows that he respects everyone’s time. He shows up.”

“I don’t like to say it,” he admits, “but I really am proud [about the streak]. I think it shows that I’m punctual, but I also think it shows that I can build friendships, that I’m reliable, and that I’ll always be there.”

After I say goodbye to Blake in the Lake City High School parking lot, I think of all the different pressures students can endure in their young lives — meeting expectations, making friends, exploding emotions, bullies, real reputations in a digital world, grappling with impending futures — and I wonder if I’ll ever understand the kind of fortitude baked into a child who shows up every day. It’s something I can’t help but admire, and like Iron Man Ripken, it’s unlikely I’ll ever see anything like this again.

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Contact reporter Craig Northrup: cnorthrup@cdapress.com