Erica Fernandez, 16, sits on a chair in the vice principal's office, her head in her hands as her big brown eyes fill with tears.

"Mr. Hernandez!" she wails.

While other kids her age might sit in the vice principal's office awaiting punishment, Erica is not remotely in trouble.

She cries because Oscar Hernandez, vice principal of Hueneme High School, is embarrassing her with his praise.

"Mija, you are going to go to Harvard and be a great lawyer someday," he says to her. "You are truly going to change the world."

Erica begins to cry a little harder as Hernandez explains that somebody in the community has anonymously donated $1,000 so she can visit Harvard, her dream school.

"She has an angel on her shoulder," he said. "Someone out there really believes in her."

Erica is no stranger to hard to work and undoubtedly, Hernandez said, this is why she has an angel on her side.

When she immigrated to Oxnard 10 years ago from a small town in Mexico, she couldn't speak English, a language her parents still do not speak.

But now Erica spends her Saturdays tutoring at the Migrant Saturday Academy, helping others to learn English. She volunteers at the Rescue Mission and works after school at the Boys & Girls Club at Hathaway Elementary School in Oxnard.

A senior at Hueneme High School, she takes all advanced placement courses and maintains a grade-point average of 4.4, ranking her fourth in her graduating class of more than 500.

She runs on the varsity track and cross country teams and is captain of the varsity soccer team. When these sports aren't in season, she swims freestyle on the varsity team.

"I didn't even know how to kick a soccer ball when I first joined the team," she said. "The coaches told me they only let me on the team because I could run fast."

Nearly four years ago, Erica heard about BHP Billiton's proposed liquefied natural gas facility off the coast of Ventura County, a proposal that would have had a 36-inch pipeline routed through low-income neighborhoods.

She was outraged. Her father has respiratory problems and uses an oxygen tank to help him breathe. Everything she learned about the LNG facility indicated to her that it would cause more air pollution.

Working with members of several organizations, including the Sierra Club, Latinos No on LNG and the Coastal Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, she began to help spread the word about the facility.

She participated in weekly protests at the company's office in Oxnard. She went door to door in neighborhoods where the pipeline would be placed.

"Many people who lived there hadn't even heard about it," she said. She kept going back, delivering pamphlets and even marching through the affected neighborhoods.

She began calling television and radio stations, giving presentations in class and at church. She got teammates to pass out pamphlets at meets.

The groups with which she was working organized a rally, held before a public hearing of the State Lands Commission in 2004.

"We were working so hard to reach out to the community. We were hoping to get maybe 500 people to show up," she said. Almost 3,000 attended, she said.

When the State Lands Commission held public meetings earlier this year, Erica was chosen to represent the youth voice.

"I had a prepared speech, but by the time they got to me, my three minutes had been cut to a minute and a half," she said. "I ended up speaking from my heart."

After she spoke, the audience began to clap. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a member of the commission, later congratulated her.

"Garamendi told me that when he was 16, he wouldn't have been out doing something like this," she said. "I was shocked. I hadn't thought they would really even listen to me."

The Lands Commission ended up voting 2-1 against LNG. Two days later, Erica was in Santa Barbara, where she testified in front of the California Coastal Commission against LNG.

For her activism and dedication, Erica is being honored in San Francisco today with the Brower Youth Award, one of only six given nationwide.

Sharon Smith, who works with the Earth Island Institute, the group that handles the Brower Youth Awards, said she couldn't be happier to honor Erica for her activism.

"She has such a sweet heart," Smith said.

With the award comes a check for $3,000, which Erica plans to use to buy a computer. The rest she will save for college — Harvard, she hopes.

"I want to study law there," she said with a smile. "It's been my dream since I moved here."

Erica's parents, migrant workers, are in Kern County and her guardian is a sister who lives in Oxnard.

As the school year continues, Erica is focused on cross country. The team is in line to win the Pacific View League championship for the first time, and, she said, she couldn't be more excited.