While most 16 year olds are finishing their sophomore year of high school, 16-year-old, pre-med student Ryan Welsh is going into his sophomore year at Cal State Long Beach.
As a student, the founder of his own charity organization, Find a Friend, and a member of the Screen Actors Guild, Welsh manages to squeeze in enough sleep to function. For the last three years, Welsh has used his talents at claw vending machines to help the less fortunate gain cuddly companions with his Find a Friend foundation.
Two or three days a week Welsh visits Fantastic Café where he spends extra money from his acting gigs to play the claw machine for stuffed animals. “He can roll them in like a bowling ball,” said Lynn Welsh, his mother. “Sometimes he can get two or three [stuffed animals] come out at a time.”
His unlikely charity idea was sparked after Welsh discovered his talent for consistently winning excessive amounts of stuffed animals by maneuvering a joystick-controlled claw through piles of stuffed animals, which for most people is difficult to almost impossible.
At first he gave some of the animals he won to his friends. “Some of his friends said it’s kind of therapeutic to have the stuffed animals with them while doing their homework,” Lynn Welsh said. Eventually he decided to turn his talent into a reverent cause, contributing over $500 of his own earnings and countless hours of his time to his charity.
Currently hundreds of stuffed animals await donation at the Welsh family home in Huntington Beach, Calif. Welsh has sent furry friends to the Kiwanis Club, the Orangewood Children’s foundation and has even made arrangements to pack plush animals for American soldiers in Iraq.
“My grandmother has inspired me because of the numerous donations she gives to charities, her volunteer work and the spiritual life she leads,” Welsh said. Welsh also has published poetry, which sits in the Library of Congress, and was nominated for the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and the Phi Eta Sigma-Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society at CSULB.
Since he was 10 months old, Welsh has acted in a dozen or more sitcoms and commercials, including a regular appearance on the Nickelodeon series Zoey 101.
Although he enjoys acting he will never skip out on school responsibilities, putting his education as his top priority, according to his mother. Welsh is not the only member of his family to attend CSULB at such a young age.
His older brother, Sean, attended CSULB as a freshman at the age of 16, and also made an impact by assisting the foundation of the Sigma Phi Omega gerontology club.
“Both of the boys are very self-motivated,” Lynn Welsh said. “They both went to Fairmont Preparatory Academy and their goals were to be valedictorians in 9th or 10th grade.” Ryan Welsh says he doesn’t mind being younger than most of the other students on campus.
“I feel quite comfortable and no one notices that I am younger,” Welsh said. All of Welsh’s extracurricular activities make it hard for him to find time to sleep. With a busy schedule all day long, Welsh says that too much sleep is a waste of time.