In the small community of Weston on the southern coast of Florida, Zoe Sanders (12) grew up surrounded by a cozy congregation of cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents and extended family. Her cousins live in the other neighborhood. Across the street from her house are her grandparents. A couple miles down the road are her other set of grandparents, and a couple miles down the road the other way are her great-grandparents and her great aunt and uncle. This is home.

Travel around 1000 miles north, and you’ll reach Chautauqua, a family camp and lakeside community in upstate New York. Zoe’s spent every summer here since she was an infant, growing up with a band of best friends who have become family now. Their days are filled with brunches at each other’s homes, boating on the lake, swimming and soaking up the forever sun. This is home.

Fly west for seven hours, and here comes Stanford, CA, where Zoe’s lived for the last ten years. She’s built a community here with roots stretching into all corners of the Bay Area. This is home.

Zoe’s parents lived in the Bay Area for fifteen years before they moved back to Florida to raise her and her older sister around their family. When Zoe was around 8 years old, she was at the beach with her cousin when she got a call from her parents. They were looking at houses in California after Zoe’s dad received a job offer at Stanford and told Zoe they were moving out west.

“I was almost in disbelief because Florida was all I’d ever known. A couple weeks later, we started packing up our stuff, and I was like, ‘Hold on, wait a minute, what’s happening,’” Zoe said. “Before we moved, everything in my life was the exact same: I had lived in one house my whole life, went to one school, saw the same people, the same friends, the same family. And then everything changed.”

After moving here, Zoe spent a year at a nearby public school, and the next year, she switched schools to Harker and moved to a different house in the same area. She learned to create a new life for herself here with new interests and a new support system, a web of different friends separate from her Florida family.

Zoe’s long involvement in her temple combined with her experience with volunteering through Friendship Circle—an organization that pairs volunteers with teens with special needs—are a testament to her deep roots in this community. Over the years, she’s watched her own beliefs and passions allow her to impart the same experiences on those younger than her.

“I always talk about how I feel like I’ve had so many full circle moments, where I was once the student and now I’m the teacher. It feels that much more special when I remember that I used to be the one running around the playground or forgetting my Hebrew alphabet. It’s a reminder that it’s scary that we’re growing up, and I don’t feel like I’m too old for anything, but it’s still a significant growth,” Zoe said. “As I got involved with volunteer programs that I actually liked or went on Jewish paths that I really wanted, whether that was doing confirmation or becoming a teacher’s aide, it was more fitting to my interests. That became purposeful to me and something that really means a lot.”

Upper school math teacher and LIFE director Jane Keller has witnessed this personal development in Zoe over the last three years that she’s known her.

“[Zoe] had such a narrow view of the world, not in a bad way, when I first got to know her. Her ability to understand the greater picture of life has really changed over the last few years,” Keller said. “She sees the broader picture of what the world is and what the world can be versus when I first met her.”

For Zoe, moving across the country was an initially jarring experience, but she “decided to make something good out of it.” Now, she’s able to spend her winters visiting family in Florida and her summers at her “third” home in Chautauqua. She started out as a camper and is now a counselor, guiding future generations of Chautauqua families.

“My time in Chautauqua and my winter visits to Florida have taught me about valuing every moment that you spend with the people you love,” Zoe said. “When I’m in Florida, I’m only there for two weeks, and it’s busy because we travel around to all the houses to see everyone. And at Chautauqua, I’m there for six or seven weeks, which sounds like a lot of time, but it’s not when you’re with your best friends.”

Just as she cherishes the moments she spends with her extended family in Florida, Zoe greatly values the time she spends with her friends in California—for instance, during lacrosse.

“I remember Zoe telling me in freshman year to join the lacrosse team, and I’m so glad I did. It’s something I definitely wouldn’t have done without her,” close friend Lisa Barooah (12) said. “She’s very serious about the things that are important in her life, like her religion and lacrosse, but she doesn’t take life too seriously.”

Zoe first started playing lacrosse when she was in third grade and joined a club team with her uncle as her coach. After moving to California, she picked up the sport again in middle school and joined the upper school team in freshman year, playing attack and midfield.

“For the school team, it’s like this sense of community outside of your own friend group at school. I’ve always thought it’s really important to reach outside your friend group, in a school setting, whether that’s through clubs or sports or whatever you want,” Zoe said. “When I was a freshman, I made sophomore friends and junior friends and senior friends all from this one team.”

Dylan Williams (12), who’s been close friends with Zoe since fourth grade, called her a “little light” in the lives of those around her.

“Zoe is probably the most outgoing and bubbly person I know,” Dylan said. “She could walk into a room where she doesn’t know a single person and leave with twenty new friends.”

In her sophomore year, the lacrosse team’s season culminated in a disappointing loss at the league championships in a match against Woodside High School. Zoe described her reaction as a “two-sided moment” where she was simultaneously upset with herself and proud that she even made it that far. She credits that defeat to bringing even more drive and determination to keep winning and working hard with the rest of the team in the following season.

This ability to see her world through rose-colored glasses is one that she’s inherited from her great grandmother and carried with her throughout her life, from her childhood in Weston to her new turned-over leaf in California.

“[My great grandma] had this motto, ‘Turning rain into liquid sunshine.’ First of all, I love rain, and I think it’s so fitting. But it also goes to show that when things seem really rough and difficult at the time, they can really be teaching moments that propel you so much further in the future,” Zoe said. “That quote embodies so much in those couple of words.”