Iowa girl to carry 2010 Olympic torch

WAUKEE, Iowa — When organizers of the Olympic torch run for the Vancouver Winter Games picked torchbearers, they wanted to recognize humanitarians.

They ultimately selected 10 American youth to be among those who carried the flame from Mount Olympus in Greece to the 2010 Olympic cauldron in Vancouver. Two of the 10 live less than five miles apart in central Iowa.

Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson was almost a no-brainer. But, the surprise addition to the roster of American torchbearers was Talia Leman, 14, of Waukee, Iowa.

“I can't believe it. I'm so excited!” Talia said. “It is such an honor to be selected to do something of this magnitude. It's the ultimate honor to symbolize human achievement.”

Talia said she has never met Johnson, although she watched the then-future Olympian as she trained at Chow's Gymnastics in West Des Moines a few years ago.

Talia is being recognized for her own achievements, although they weren't made in sports. She is being recognized for her non-profit organization, RandomKid, which she started a few years ago after successfully raising money for Hurricane Katrina survivors.

“When I was 10, before I started RandomKid, I did a project called TLC or ‘Trick-or-Treat for the Levee Catastrophe.' We wound up raising $10 million,” she said. “Through that, we were able to show the good things that can happen when you harness kid power.

“We started RandomKid after that, helping individuals achieve their goals, but it grew to mobilize kid efforts,” Talia said.

As the CEO of RandomKid, Talia leads “power assemblies” and provides interest-free loans to kids to help jump-start philanthropic ventures.

She has worked with kids from 20 countries and reported close to $10.5 million dollars for her RandomKid-guided initiatives. She has since been named by Character Counts as one of the world's “48 People of Character.”

Talia said she was inspired to do great things by her grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor.

“With everything he went through, he probably had every right to be a rude person to other people, but he is the most kind and loving person I know,” she said. “I learned that if he can, I can. We all can. And, when you give love and hope, you feel that love and hope come back to you, and you see that all things are possible.”

Although the torch run will be an opportunity to help get the word out about RandomKid, she doesn't have any particular plans in mind for promoting her non-profit. Instead, she said she is more likely going to focus on doing a good job carrying the torch.

“I'm not sure where it will be. I just know it will be somewhere near Calgary, that I'll have to run the length of about three football fields, and if it takes me more than 15 minutes, the flame will go out,” she said. “I'm just hoping not to fall or trip or anything like that.”

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