The Bulletin, Bend / Central Oregon News
FEBRUARY 09, 2010 08:41 PM
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more photosMary Thibault helps customers during the lunch hour at Bronco Billy’s in Sisters. Stephen, her only son, says she has been preparing for some time for their separation. “My mom did it, I have to do it,” he said.
Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
Dream leads to MIT for Redmond math whiz
Sunday Reader: Meet Stephen Rigsby
By Patrick Cliff / The Bulletin
Published: June 01. 2008 4:00AM PSTREDMOND —
Stephen Rigsby first became intrigued with math when he helped count his mother’s tips from her waitress shifts.
Next fall, the Redmond High senior will put that love of mathematics to the test when he steps through the doors of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Stephen, 17, used to organize the coins and bills his mother brought home after work by denomination before counting them up.
“He’s really ordered, but not as far as his room or anything goes,” Mary Thibault, Stephen’s mother, said. “He’s like one of those Rubik’s Cubes kids.”
Stephen earned a perfect score of 800 on his math SAT, and he’ll finish somewhere in the top 10 of his class when he graduates Friday. Then he’ll go to MIT with tuition and expenses paid.
Stephen settled on MIT in eighth grade, even if the school didn’t settle on him for another four years. He remembers seeing television shows with experts at the forefront of their fields who often were from the university, which is known for its science and technology programs.
But when he told his school counselor where he wanted to go, the counselor, said Stephen, had his doubts.
“Do you even know what MIT stands for?”
Stephen did.
Stephen, an only child, lives with his mother in Redmond. His father, Andy, was a commercial fisherman who never made it beyond third grade.
“He taught himself how to read and write,” Thibault said. “From third grade on, he lived on a boat called The Pursuit.”
Even though Andy didn’t have a formal education, he wouldn’t have been surprised that his only son was going to MIT, Thibault said.
“The thing about fishermen is they’re the best dreamers on the planet,” she said. “The next catch, the next time you get to be home. What else would you do out there?”
Andy Rigsby died when he was 42 from a heart attack while fishing near the Big Island in Hawaii, just as Stephen was about to start high school.
“It was really tough, it was really tough,” Thibault said.
Both Stephen’s father and grandfather were fishermen. Stephen jokes that he is a failure because he’s not going to become a fisherman.
After his father’s death, Stephen and his mother moved around the West until arriving in Redmond about six years ago.
Stephen was home-schooled for most of sixth and seventh grade. He and his mother moved to Redmond during his seventh-grade year.
“I told my mom I wanted to go to high school in one place,” he said.
Although he enjoyed being in class with more students, he said he missed the flexibility at home in studying what he wanted: math and science.
When he first decided he wanted to go to MIT, Stephen was a bit naive, he said. When he found out how difficult it was to get into the school — only about 12 percent of applicants are admitted — he was worried.
“It was kind of a buzz kill,” Stephen said.
He researched what it took to get into the school, Thibault said. Based on that work, he started going to summer camps at MIT and other schools. He was stunned, he said, by the intelligence of the students at the camps.
He remains a bit intimidated, or modest, about the students he’ll be in school with starting with his August orientation.
When he went to his pre-orientation, he said he felt like he was the only one who slept, if even for a couple hours a night.
“It seems like no one sleeps there,” he said.
Stephen knew that the admission decision would come down in April. MIT allows candidates to check if they have been accepted online. Not wanting to wait, Stephen headed to the school’s Web site.
He’d long convinced himself — and sworn to his friends — that he wasn’t getting into the university. But he still had hope. As he clicked through the site searching for his name, he began to worry that he had been right.
“I was by myself, it was really stressful,” Stephen said. “I was really scared.”
Then, he saw the decision: He was accepted.
“I jumped around excited, like everybody else does,” he said.
Then, he called his mother, who works at Bronco Billy’s restaurant in Sisters. She screamed to her co-workers that her son had gotten into his dream school.
“We’re just so fortunate his merit is being rewarded,” Thibault said. “It really is about him. He’s so diligent and focused and happy, above everything else.”
On a recent afternoon, just before her shift began, Thibault spoke about her son going east to Cambridge, Mass.
“He’s such a good kid,” Thibault said.
Stephen is the captain of the Redmond High tennis team this year. He seemed more comfortable having his picture in the paper — even if for a season-ending loss — than talking about himself.
He shrugged off accomplishments and contributions. Asked what he did other than academics and tennis, he mentioned that he helped start a math club.
“We started the math club just to be nerdy,” he said.
Denny Irby has taught Stephen math for the past four years. Through the years, Irby has tried to keep Stephen interested, but it has been a struggle.
“To have a student like Stephen, specifically, it’s a challenge in a couple of ways,” Irby said. “I can’t ever push Stephen as hard as he needs to be pushed without leaving other kids behind.”
Stephen, on his own, searched out online math courses from MIT, just to keep challenged, Irby said.
“He’s about as intellectually gifted (a student) as I’ve come across,” said Irby, who has taught at Redmond High for about a decade. “I’m a very lecture-oriented teacher. He’ll ask questions about where this is leading. He’s always thinking ahead, looking ahead at the implication.”
Stephen and his mother won’t have to pay for college. Soon after Stephen found out MIT accepted him, he also found out that it had a new financial aid program. If an accepted student’s family made less than $75,000 per year, the student wouldn’t have to pay tuition. The university estimates it costs $50,100 for tuition and living expenses.
It’s a trend at private and public schools. They need to find a way to bring students in who otherwise would be blocked by the rocketing cost of college, said Donna Nordstrom, a counselor at the high school’s career center.
Stephen plans on studying physics in college. It’s easier, he said, to move from theories of physics to an applied science like engineering, rather than the other way around.
He’s not sure exactly what career he’ll want to pursue after he graduates, but he suspects he’ll want to work on the West Coast. It’s the pace, he said.
“It’ll probably be a bit of a shock (going east),” he said.
Thibault is excited to see what her son ends up doing after college.
“As many things as have been discovered, there are so many more things to be discovered,” she said. “I really have an optimistic view of the future because of all the bright kids I’ve met around here. There are so many neat things about to happen because of these brilliant kids.”
Patrick Cliff can be reached at 633-2161 or at pcliff@bendbulletin.com
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