15-Year-Old Student Graduates With the College’s Class of 2019

By: Lamar Toppin
Staff Writer

Ricko Sample is a 15-year-old student who is attending his final quarter at Green River this spring. Sample is an aspiring actor, an author, dancer, musician and singer.

Sample’s father is mixed, was born in Missouri and is a Stage IV cancer survivor. His mother is from Indonesia. Both his parents moved and met each other in Washington before having Sample.

Sample is currently working on getting an AA but plans on transferring his credits to New York Film Academy (NYFA), at the Los Angeles campus. He hopes to get a bachelor’s degree this coming Fall. His work as an actor is one that he wishes to pursue as a full-time gig. He is already part of an agency called Tiffany Talent, located in Seattle.

“I attended a few workshops hosted by them. I eventually became a member of their team,” said Sample.

Sample has been in a few independent films and was in the most recent play performed by Winter Quarter’s Drama class, 1940s Radio Hour.
He attended an online school in 7th grade, taking 10th year level courses. Because of his advanced academic achievements, his teacher recommended that he apply for the Running Start program.

Even though he was too young to apply, he went in for an interview and passed the placement tests. As a result, in Fall of 2017, he was officially enrolled into the Running Start program as a Running Start Student.
Aside from acting, he is also a published author. At the age of 15, he has already released two fully published books, “Bigfoot Untold” and “Three Mysterious Tales”.

Both books have been published through TellWell Publishing, a self-publishing company located in Victoria, B.C. His book, “Bigfoot Untold”, is based on true stories that his mother had told him throughout his life.
He actually got the inspiration to write this book afterseeing a challenge of Facebook called the “Bigfoot Script Challenge”.

However, the challenge was not about the mythical creature, Bigfoot, at all. Even so, he felt the need to write a screenplay and submitted it into a contest. Since it was his first screenplay, he did not win. Nevertheless, he decided to continue to write a book instead since he thought the story he had written was “interesting and unique”.

“I wanted to share it,” he said. ”Use it to support my acting career.”
After publishing his first book, he continued writing more books since his mom had plenty of stories to share.

“Well, I’m planning to publish more books in the future. I have already started writing one,” said Sample.

When asked how his parents felt about him already graduating from college, he mentioned that his parents previously were and currently are very supportive of the success he has already achieved at such a young age of 15 years old.

Besides financial support, his parents are encouraging him to pursue his various passions and want him to succeed.