Patch Whiz Kid of the Week: Grady Lai

Each week, San Bruno Patch will feature an amazing kid, youth group, teen or sports team that wows us with their accomplishments. 

This week, we feature a  eighth-grader who excels in school and with music.

Patch Whiz Kid of the Week

Name/Age: Grady Lai, 13

School: Parkside Intermediate School

Accomplishment: Grady Lai is no stranger to treading his own path.

As an eighth-grader, he takes an independent studies class where he learns geometry online from Brigham Young University. 

His favorite music artists are Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Mozart, and his favorite song is Bach’s Double Violin Concerto.

It’s no surprise then that he also plays the violin, as he’s been doing since the fourth grade. He also just tried out for the Peninsula Youth Orchestra and got accepted. 

While he is a very independent person, Grady’s most recent accomplishment is a shared one and shows another side to his character. 

The Parkside orchestra, of which Grady is the first chair for the violin section, recently won first place at the Music in the Parks Festival at Peterson Middle School in Sunnyvale and Great America. The school’s concert band also won an award—second place— and the music program overall was awarded the Spirit Award, given to the one school at the event that demonstrated proper social behavior, excellence in musicianship and the most school spirit. 

At last week’s , Grady also noted that the students were the only ones who stayed after the performances to help clean up. As a leader in Parkside’s music program, Grady said he enjoyed every minute of it. 

“It was really a wonderful experience,” he said.

Key to Awesomeness: “I’ve had a 4.0 since the seventh grade, and I still have a 4.0,” Grady said of his academic excellence. “I also like to learn new things,” especially history, he said, “because they don’t teach you all the details in school. So I surf the Internet a lot.” His favorite history subjects? The Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

Added his music teacher, Vivian Arciniega-Aanenson: "Grady is a wonderful student. He comes to class everyday with a positive attitude, daily helping other students with finger positions and tuning. He always looks for ways to constantly improve as a musician and a person, which inspires the other students to do the same. Grady plays the violin with the kind of musicality and maturity that you would expect from a 30 year old....I expect to attend one of his concerts as a professional violinist one day."