NOAA Experience
Brightens Darcy’s Forecast
When Sean Darcy rolled into the National Weather Service office in Greer last summer, he didn’t know much about the weather except that it happens every day.
Then a rising senior at Hillcrest High School in nearby Simpsonville, Darcy was the office’s first High School/High Tech student and the first person with a disability to work there.
Injured in a car accident in 2003 when he was just shy of 15, he sustained a spinal cord injury that keeps him in a wheelchair. Computers are his passion, so in an office dependent on them, “he’s not disabled at all,” said Vince DiCarlo, warning coordination meteorologist and Darcy’s mentor.
“He’s a good fit for the (HS/HT) program,” said Kerry Reece, career planning and employment specialist with the S.C. Vocational Rehabilitation Department where Darcy is a client.
HS/HT prepares high school students with disabilities to make responsible career choices and motivates them to graduate and either move into post-secondary education or a technical job in their interest area.
Darcy worked about eight hours a week last summer, learning the ropes, doing callbacks to verify the accuracy of warnings and even putting out a severe weather alert or two.
DiCarlo, who believes in exploiting potential, asked him to develop a program on lightning safety. The result is a PowerPoint slide show that Darcy will present to schools in the Greenville area.
“Lightning safety’s been on the back burner recently,” DiCarlo said. “This will help raise awareness.”
DiCarlo was so impressed with Darcy’s work, he found some money in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s student temporary employee program to hire him for the spring semester. This summer, Darcy’s working on an internship funded by the National Collaborative on Youth with Disabilities that was negotiated on behalf of HS/HT with NOAA.
The program also benefits NOAA, DiCarlo said, by providing a source of future employees.
“NOAA is a large organization. We employ oceanographers, hydrologists, climatologists, meteorologists and a wide range of other skills,” he said. “Most high school kids are not thinking along those lines.”
Darcy’s interested in engineering and hopes to go to Greenville Tech before possibly moving on to Clemson.
“I’d recommend this program to anybody,” Darcy said. “It gets you out there and gives you real job experience. You get more of a picture of a real job than you would in a fast food place. And you meet great people.”
Darcy’s father Dan is enthusiastic about his son’s opportunity.
Dan Darcy is assembly manager at CompX Security Products in Greenville. Compex employs about 10 former SCVRD clients who are deaf and also had about five HS/HT students in its plant last summer.
“I can’t say enough about the program or the people,” he said. “Sean’s been through a lot and it’s good to see him involved in this.”
The program also benefits NOAA, DiCarlo said, by providing a source of future employees.
“NOAA is a large organization. We employ oceanographers, hydrologists, climatologists, meteorologists and a wide range of other skills,” he said. “Most high school kids are not thinking along those lines.”
Darcy graduated from high school with his class in June 2006, despite a six-week hospitalization. He’s enrolled at ITT Technical Institute in Greenville, where he is majoring in computer programming and holds a very solid 3.5 grade-point average. He started another internship with the National Weather Service in February.