Anna Sophia Brown calls it a crazy year. She’s president of multiple student organizations, captain of the speech-and-debate team and, more recently, learned she’s now the recipient of a substantial scholarship.
It was announced in early April that the Roaring Fork High School senior nabbed the Boettcher Foundation Scholarship, an award given annually to just 50 Colorado students. Receiving $20,000 per year for four years, Brown intends to use the funds to pursue a double-major in environmental studies and political science at Colorado College.
“This is a weight off my shoulders,” Brown said of receiving the scholarship. “But I think, for my parents, it’s more important. They can give me the best education possible without having to worry about whether or not it’s going to impact them, and that’s what I really care about.”
Amid her academic accolades and various extracurriculars, Brown also spent her final year in high school developing a knack for local journalism. Writing for The Sopris Stars, The Sopris Sun’s youth reporters program, Brown wrote a series of stories that both affected her life as well as the lives of the entire Carbondale community.
“I think the reason that I’m so drawn to journalism is that it’s a way to be more connected,” she said. “It’s less about reporting the face value of it and trying to actually understand it, and I really love that.”
Capturing it all
Carbondale had become a hot topic around Colorado High Country in fall 2023 when about 80 mostly Venezuelan immigrants were reported living in abysmal conditions underneath the Highway 82 bridge. They were a part of a bigger, two-year wave of thousands of Venezuelans who originally migrated to Denver.
These immigrants, fleeing political and economic chaos, were under the thumb of former President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro. So when Maduro was captured by the U.S. in January 2026, Brown decided to write a reaction piece for the readers of Carbondale.
Though just her fourth assignment ever, the auspicious Sopris Stars correspondent successfully used a series of local connections to reach and quote a Venezuelan man living in Caracas.
“The whole time I was trying to hold back tears,” she said. “He was telling me stories of his friends and his family and all the opportunities he would’ve had being born in that time, in that place. That was really crazy for me to hear, and it’s definitely changed the way I look at international happenings, politics.”
In November 2025, Brown further exhibited journalistic courage by documenting Roaring Fork students’ thoughts and reactions to an increased presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) around the country. Titled “Balancing Fear with the American Dream,” Brown combined data gathered from the Department of Education with live quotes to capture what it’s like growing up Latino in the Roaring Fork Valley.
It’s stories like these that not only shaped the way Brown views the power of journalism but life in general.
“Yes, our valley is a bubble,” she said. “But our world isn’t.”
A river of opportunity
It was the most life-changing experience Brown ever had.
In her junior year, she embarked on a journey as a Rotary Youth Exchange Ambassador to Brazil, her home base being a town called Nova Friburgo. In the process, she found herself waking up one early morning on a boat with a friend, on the Amazon River.
“We were watching pink dolphins jump out of the water, like right by our boat,” she said. “It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. It was such a beautiful moment — just the birds, just the sunrise.”
“It just reminded me of just how much beauty there is in the world,” she added.
This experience also fostered Brown’s first published work. Encouraged by The Sopris Sun, she wrote about her trip to Brazil via a column titled “Notes From Brazil.”
Illene Pevec, a local author and former Sopris Sun correspondent, is Brown’s grandmother. Pevec said Brown has successfully used her experiences in high school to develop a strong writing capacity and that “she is very impressed with everything” that Brown writes.
Pevec also praised her granddaughter for receiving the full-ride scholarship.
“I’m a very proud grandmother,” she said. “She really deserves it because she’s worked so hard.”
With Roaring Fork High School graduation slated for late May, just this past week Brown told The Sopris Sun that she’s busy planning her graduation party, playing senior assassin, baking, doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and climbing the Narrows near Carbondale with her parents. Meanwhile, she closes out her senior year as president of the environmental club and Rotary Exchange students; captain of speech and debate, as well as Model United Nations. Brown was student council class president for two years before becoming its PR manager, and she participates in Youth in Nature through Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers.
Brown still writes for The Sopris Sun.
“I think I want to do too many things,” she joked.
Recent Boettcher Scholarship winners from high schools in Glenwood Springs, Carbondale and Basalt include:
2025: Amanda Madden, Glenwood Springs High School
2024: Eli Cohen and Ricardo Zavala,
Roaring Fork High School
Sarah Blazier, Basalt High School
2022: Willa Schendler, Colorado Rocky Mountain School
2019: Solana Teitler, Roaring Fork High School