While thanking mom is generally a prerequisite for high school valedictorians, it’s something more than that for Lakeland’s academic top-honors earner.

Sarah Peelen said she started focusing more on her studies in the eighth grade, when her mother, Sharon Peelen, who has now recovered, was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.

“If it was her last day (alive), I wanted her to be proud of me and everything that I achieved, and I worked hard for her,” Sarah Peelen said.

“I had always been a high achiever,” but when her mother was facing a tougher battle than most people ever face, “I really knuckled down and took on all the hard work I could take.”

Peelen said she had private hopes of being named valedictorian. “But I wasn’t 100 percent sure, so it was exciting to find out.”

In the fall, Peelen plans to attend the University of Virginia, where she will major in nursing.

“I want to be a nurse practitioner in pediatric oncology,” she said, adding that she wants to help children fight the disease that her mother battled.

She feels a mixture of emotions about moving on to the next stage of life. “I’m nervous and excited at the same time,” she added.

“I know I’m going to be nervous at first, but it’s my dream school; I have always had a dream to go there.”

That dream began years before high school. “To be honest, when I was in elementary school, a doctor my mother worked with said he went to UVA, and it made him into a doctor, and he said it was one of the best schools to go to in Virginia for nursing,” Peelen said.

Peelen counts the viola among her main interests, having played the instrument in Lakeland High’s chamber orchestra.

She is secretary of the Anchor Club and also senior class treasurer.

“I work hard because anything is possible,” she said, offering this advice for incoming seniors: “If you work hard, you are going to earn everything that you deserve.”

She said that now she is officially valedictorian, her parents, including father John Peelen, have something to back up their proud boasts.

“They had already starting bragging around, hoping it would be me,” she said. “So they can confirm what they had been saying before.”