Churchill 7^th Grader Returning to Scripps National Spelling Bee

CARMICHAEL, CA (MPG) - She said she’d be back, and she meant it.

Samhita Kumar, a seventh-grader at Winston Churchill Middle School in Carmichael, took home first place in the California Central Valley Spelling Bee for the second year in a row and is headed back to D.C. in May to compete once more for the winning title in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Kumar took the regional title last year as a sixth-grader and, although she took 18^th place in the national competition, she saw her dream of going to Washington, D.C. come true.  This time around, Kumar said she wasn’t familiar at all with the word she managed to get right that cinched her second regional title.  But, she says, she just used her intellect, grammar and vocabulary skills to get it right:  O.S.P.H.R.E.S.I.S, a love of odors or smells. 

“I knew the word was Greek in origin, so even though I didn’t know it, I knew it had a “PH” and not a “CC,” which is Italian,” said Kumar, proudly showing off her trophy, which will be permanently displayed in the administration office at her school.  “The words were definitely much, much harder this year than they were last year, but I just took my mind to the zone where I go and I concentrated and I got it.”

Kumar out-spelled seventh-grader Rayhan Kabir from Toby Johnson Middle School in Elk Grove in the final round.  A total of 61 students from Sacramento, Yolo, Solano, Placer, Plumas and Shasta counties competed for the regional title.

Kumar will be accompanied by her parents and brother to D.C. for the Scripps competition, which kicks off May 29.  She said she has no plans to do anything differently this year to prepare, but most assuredly, she will be clocking a lot hours building up her vocabulary and practicing with her parents who have coached her in previous competitions.

“I will be doing a lot of studying and practicing with both of my parents, but other than that, I’m going to just do what I always do to prepare,” Kumar said.

Winston Churchill Principal Mike Dolan said the school’s staff and Kumar’s fellow students could not be more proud of her.

“We are all just over the moon about her second regional win and her second trip to the national competition,” said Dolan.  “She did an amazing job last year and we are extremely excited for her that she’s getting another chance to go and compete.  We’ll see how she does, but either way, she’s made us all very proud.”

Kumar will compete against 11 million spellers from across the country this year for the national title.  As a finalist she’ll have to tackle 56 words just to make it into the championship round.  From there, 12 spellers will move on to the final rounds, with a total of seven making the cut for the winning categories, including the first-place slot.

The Scripps National competition is a 91-year old tradition launched in 1925 as a literacy push.  Ananya Vinay, then a 12-year old from Fresno, took the 2017 national title after correctly spelling the word marocain, which is a dress fabric made with silk and rayon.  She sealed the championship after a grueling 20 rounds, breaking a streak of co-champions and taking home the entire $40,000 prize.  

CARMICHAEL, CA (MPG) - Music, medicine and faith, says Carmichael resident Dr. Rajshree Gaitonde, have fed the elements of a spectacular life and career that began forming nearly 9,000 miles away on a hot summer day over buttermilk and prison labor.

“When I was a child living in Madras, South India, our neighbor’s house happened to be owned by the Inspector General of Prisons,” says Gaitonde, recounting the first of many vignettes that launched a journey that ultimately landed her the distinction of being the first female physician to work inside one of the country’s most notorious maximum security institutions: Folsom Prison.

In her self-published book released in 2017, Dr. Gaitonde asks a question many find themselves confronting at some point or another: How did I get from there to here?  And she answers those questions in humorously impassioned detail in her memoir, 8,596 Miles, My Leap of Faith, My Journey, a 109-page whirlwind of a story rooted in spiritual interventions, synchronicity, music, medicine, matchmaking, faith, love and unexpected opportunities.

“This is my story. This is how I, a privileged young girl from India, managed to come all the way to Northern California to wind up serving as a the first female physician in one of the most dangerous prisons in America,” says Gaitonde. 

That hot summer day back in Madras, now Chennai, when she was about three years old, Gaitonde explains, a group of men bound to one another by rope or chains, she isn’t sure, were working in the Inspector General’s garden under a blistering sun.  She watched the men she learned were prisoners on work duty and could not understand why they were tied up in the heat.  So she did what every young girl would do in a situation like that and took them glasses of cool buttermilk.

“I could not believe men were tied up like that and it really touched me,” says Gaitonde, adding that she would not remember that event until years later when the offer to work at Folsom Prison was on the table and she was hesitant to take it.  “My mother, who encouraged me to follow my passions and take risks, reminded me of that day.  She and my parents both said I was destined for it and if I didn’t like it I could quit.  It turned out to be one of the most critical turning points in my life, so important to me that I had to tell my story.”

Her memoir traverses Gaitonde’s upbringing, her fast-track to medical school at The Stanley Medical College at the University of Madras where she was the youngest woman to attend at the time, her arranged marriage to a stranger who would take her to America’s east coast and ultimately on to Sacramento, where she was offered a job that would test every bone in her body, but ultimately deliver every reward she could have hoped for.

“Most of my patients at Folsom called me ‘Dr. G,” says Gaitonde.  “Although my first few months on the job at Folsom were difficult and filled with many moments of sheer terror, ultimately I was able to win their confidence and respect.”

Gaitonde leaves out names and specifics of her time at Folsom, which stretched from the 1980s to 2002.  “I have to protect myself and the individuals I treated there,” Gaitonde says.

Gaitonde specialized in endocrinology and India’s ancient form of medicine: Ayurveda, which incorporates the healing power of herbs, a healthy diet, yoga and even music into a system of whole-body care.  She also studied music and classical Indian vocals as a young girl and, in addition to her MD, Gaitonde holds a Master’s in Public Health and, perhaps not all that surprising: a law degree.

“I wanted to learn the language of the law because it was important to me to understand what was being talked about when I would have to go to court for my job in Folsom and speak on behalf of a patient,” said Gaitonde. 

Today, Gaitonde is on a book tour of sorts, recounting her story for newspapers, radio and at speaking engagements across the Sacramento region.  Carmichael, she says, is indeed, a long way from Madras—8,596 miles, to be exact. And her story is just as long and winding, but it isn’t complete.  This chapter, says Gaitonde, is partially unwritten, but certainly set aside for her to share her story with the intention of both inspiring and helping others.

“In many ways I know that I must have been destined to do everything I have done in my life so far,” said Gaitonde, who is now in her late 60s and sports dark sunglasses due to a degenerative eye disease.  “My father, an airline executive, was my hero, and my mother, a brilliant psychologist, was my guru.  They taught me to follow my passions and to remember to always be of service to others, because to be of service is to love.”

Proceeds from Dr. Gaitonde’s book are being used to support underprivileged girls in rural India.  Find it on Amazon at: www.amazon.com/596-Miles-Leap-Faith-Journey/dp/0692975578.