Medical Lake Riley Olmstead grad wants to join the Marines, and the band

Medical Lake High School senior Riley Olmstead has a wide range of interests and refuses to pick just one to focus on. She loves music, wants to be a firefighter and plans to join the Marines. She hopes accomplish two of those goals at once by winning a spot in the Marine Corps band, but she’s determined to do all three one way or another.

“I was planning on joining the Marine Corps and doing my college online,” she said. “My dad and my uncle were in the Marine Corps. My uncle was actually in the Marine Corps band. I actually auditioned for it, but it was the first time I auditioned for anything. I didn’t get it.”

She plays a variety of percussion instruments and the piano. She plays piano for her school’s jazz band and is a percussionist with the school’s concert band. “Those two are probably tied for my favorite,” she said.

Olmstead was one of eight students selected to be in the All State Percussion Ensemble this year and the only student from Eastern Washington. The ensemble performed at the Washington Music Educators Association conference in February. “It was awesome, really fun,” she said.

Band teacher Craig Johnson said this was the first year an All State Percussion Ensemble was selected in addition to the usual choir and band ensembles. Students had to record themselves play six difficult exercises in order to audition for the ensemble.

“When we got there we found out she was the only girl,” Johnson said.

Olmstead is a person who other students like and respect, he said. “She’s a firecracker,” he said. “she just comes in and gets everyone excited about whatever they’re doing.”

Olmstead’s family has lived in Medical Lake for three generations. She has an older brother who she gets along with well. “We like a lot of the same things,” she said.

During the school year she keeps busy with band, a variety of sports and Key Club. This year she’s also the senior class president. “It was pretty busy, but you only get four years to do all that stuff so I figured I’d better do it while I could,” she said.

But her summers have also been busy as well. When she was 15 she worked on an Ecology Youth Corp litter crew, picking up trash along the freeway and state highways while wearing heavy boots, long pants, a hard hat and a safety vest.

“It was my first job,” she said. “It was so hot. It was pretty gross, but it was a good experience.”

She also spent a summer in the Avista Junior Apprenticeship Program. It was mostly classroom work, but Olmstead said she got to do hands-on things as well. “We got to practice laying gas lines,” she said. “We climbed some poles to hang transformers.”

The work interested her and she said she figures if her other plans fall through, utility work might be an option for her. “I just wanted to get my foot in the door in all sorts of places,” she said.

This year she’s been enrolled in the Fire Science program at Spokane Valley Tech, which is supposed to be a two-year program. “I didn’t find out about it until the end of my junior year, so I was only able to fit one in,” she said.

She’s interested in becoming a firefighter after she finishes serving in the Marine Corps. She said full-time firefighter jobs can be hard to find and thinks her military service will give her a leg up because preference is given to veterans.

Johnson said he has no doubt that Olmstead will be able to accomplish whatever goals she sets for herself. “She’s a phenomenal musician,” he said. “She’s an all-around gifted person. There’s nothing she can’t do.”