By Richard Bammer

Vacaville High senior class president Molly Hendrickson recalled walking onto the West Monte Vista Avenue campus four years ago as a freshman, a memory that served to make a point about what she would do differently given her cumulative experience since then — and just minutes before picking up her diploma Saturday morning during the graduation ceremony.

Under mostly clear skies and temperatures in the 60s, she addressed more than 450 classmates and several thousand people packed into Zunino Stadium bleachers and wished she could talk to her freshman self. Her advice to that younger teenager? “To slow down, make friends, get involved, prepare for college” before completing one of life’s major passages, which was the moment she and her classmates found themselves in.