With a Trained Eye

Gold Award Winner Isabella Carnonell and her Fully Restored Girl Scout Trailer…

To see pictures of the 1976 travel trailer Isabel Carbonell converted into a mobile resource for camping activities and badge attainment, one could readily agree that it would take the trained eye and confidence of a longtime Girl Scout to see the potential in the raw material she started with.
The trailer had been donated new to Carbonell’s Girl Scout service unit and had barely withstood changes in leadership over the years. No one was quite sure what was in it anymore. “I was pretty well acquainted with it because it was utilized by our service unit,” she says. “But it was pretty much a traveling storage unit.”

It was in sad shape, as well. “The trailer would tip back and forth if it wasn’t fixed with something because we didn’t have stabilizing jacks,” she says. The license plate was bent from grazing the ground. Additionally, “when I was cleaning the trailer, I found several dead animals, so it was very unsanitary.”
The now-18-year-old started as a young girl in Girl Scouts and noticed over the years that many Scouts did not have the resources she had to develop skills progressions over the years, things as standard as earning camping and cooking badges. In determining how she could address that issue, she took a look at the trailer-turned-storage system and envisioned a new use.

The fully restored trailer is now stocked with supplies to help local Girl Scouts achieve badges in camping, woodworking and cooking. “To fulfill these badges, you would often need tarps to make tents,” she explains. “And troops don’t have those.” The trailer is now stocked with five tarps and other higher-ticket items like a miter box, hammers and cookware, everything meticulously organized and inventoried. “It was important to me that the trailer had a very simple layout that followed logic,” she adds.

Her efforts have earned her the prestigious Gold Award, of which only one other has
been bestowed in her service unit (707) over the years. A Gold Award is a culminating achievement and Carbonell had prepared for it by first achieving bonze and silver awards through her troop.
“I knew it would be a project that I would need technical skills that I didn’t have,” she says. “But I was more than willing to get those technical skills.” Now she can proudly say that she can splice electrical wires, use five different drills, remove a false wall and clear propane lines as well as switch out an old refrigerator unit for a modern one.

And she now knows about paint. “I did not know paints,” she says with a laugh. “Paints are more complicated than I realized when I went into this. It became a whole side project.” Gratefully, she found support in the people at Red Bluff Paint Mart, who guided her on appropriate types of paint for various surfaces and even donated some to complete the project.

“If there’s a project that you’re not qualified for, you’re just not qualified yet,” she says. “It shouldn’t stop you from trying to do something because you don’t think you can do it well or well enough. I’ve seen a lot of young people be afraid of taking on new challenges because they’re afraid of being bad at it.”

While most Girl Scouts don’t develop a Gold Award project, Carbonell was clear that she had one more project in her before she left Red Bluff High School for college at Oregon State University. “As I was getting ready to graduate, I wanted to do one more large project to give back to my community,” she says. She had already earned bronze and silver awards by creating native plant gardens and bat boxes at the Sacramento River Discovery Center.

“She had to put a team together that did not include me,” says Clare Carbonell, Isabel’s mother and troop leader, with a laugh. “It was a much-needed renovation, and it turned into a sentimental project.” One of the other strong adults in Isabel’s Scout life was Carla Perry, camp cook and service unit advisor. She was a consultant on Isabel’s project, especially in regards to how to stock the kitchen, and died suddenly during the project. Isabel had her likeness painted on the trailer and dedicated the project to her.

While Isabel now has lifelong membership in Girl Scouts, her time is transitioning to her degree attainment in computer science focused on cyber security. She is certainly leaving a legacy in the North State, however. As if in embodiment of the Girl Scout Law, she says of her time in Girl Scouts and achievement of the Gold Award, “Ultimately, it means that I’ve used my time in a way that has benefitted others, and I really hope a lot of people get a lot of use out of this.” •