CHINOOK – Naselle High School senior Renee Steppe sat in her Chinook home last Thursday, writing a argumentative piece for her speech class at Clatsop Community College (CCC) – she’s been taking a class per semester there since the start of the school year.

For this speech, she’s siding with the use of uniforms for students in public schools.

“I think we should have them, it just makes everybody equal,” she said.

Treating everybody equal is something that has made a name for Steppe at the high school. NHS counselor Justin Laine recently said that a quick poll of the school’s staff found her as the “nicest student citizen in the school.” When asked about this, Steppe was quick to blush.

“It’s nice of them to think that way. I’m glad they don’t dislike me,” she joked.

It becomes evident quickly that Steppe has a very easy-going attitude about things, as well as a sense of humor. She chalks all this up to her home environment.

“I just try to be nice to everybody, I guess it was just how I was raised.”

The middle child of three girls, Steppe has found home is her haven, saying, “It’s gotta be the most important thing.” She said she is looking forward to her older sister Lani returning from a mission trip to Poland soon.

“A piece of the family has been missing,” she said.

She describes her family a bunch of characters, saying they could easily make a TV show out of their lives.

“I think people come over for dinner sometimes just for laughs,” she said.

And though some of her peers at times chide her for her sheltered life so far, Steppe doesn’t really see it that way.

“A lot of people say I’ve lived under a rock all my life, and I just say, ‘OK…?'”

But it isn’t like she spends all her time in the family sitting room. Outside of school in Naselle and at CCC, Steppe has worked at the Subway sandwich shop in Astoria since she was 16, just as Lani did before and her younger sister Cheryl is now. It was there she also met her boyfriend of two years, Josh Neff.

The Steppe family have lived in Chinook for five years, moving from the desert of Goldendale, near Yakima.

“In the winter it was below zero, and it was 110 in the summer,” she said of the difference in weather between the two areas. “It’s nice here. We learned pretty quick that you wear shorts when its 60 degrees or not at all.”

Upon arriving on the Peninsula, she attended Coryell’s Crossing private school in Warrenton until ninth grade, when she decided to stick with another small school environment in Naselle.

“I really like it,” she said of the school. “There’s only 17? kids in my graduating class. You know everybody in the whole school by their first name and some of their parents.”

Steppe has taken part in a wide variety of activities while in high school, for a wide variety of reasons. For her first two years she participated in FFA, her freshman year she ran cross country and her sophomore year she played volleyball and basketball.

“I didn’t even know how to play basketball when I started,” she laughed. “I guess I’m not very athletic, but I like playing.”

As for her future plans, like most things, Steppe shrugs it off with a happy-go-lucky grin. She said she will continue to work at Subway at least through the summer, and then start at CCC full-time in the fall. Steppe said she is looking forward to the future, but will miss high school.

“Probably not the school work, but just the fun of high school.”