Waterford — High school seniors have had to forgo their last several months as Lancers because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Town residents are trying to lessen that blow.

“Adopt” a High School Senior: Waterford, CT, at bit.ly/awhssfb20, is a Facebook group started about a month ago to match residents with seniors. Parents post photos and biographies of their graduating senior in the group, and the first person to comment “adopted” will send the teen little gifts of encouragement for the rest of the year.

Group creator Kelley Dugan is not a Waterford High School senior — she graduated six years ago — but she is someone with a lot of empathy, and time on her hands. She discovered the concept when a friend of hers posted about sending a gift to a high school senior. She then came across a national adopt-a-senior Facebook group. A statewide, Adopt a 2020 Senior Connecticut group also exists, with almost 7,000 members.

Dugan floated the idea for a town group in one of Waterford’s Facebook forums.

“I thought, ‘I may as well start it in quarantine, I don’t have anything else to do,’” Dugan said. “We’re all going through this difficult time, and there’s a bunch of ideas for seniors floating around, but no one takes the initiative to actually do it.”

Dugan said she’s seen some people talk down to high school seniors wanting to finish out their year in regular fashion — “I saw people commenting saying seniors don’t have a right to be upset because they could be dying, they could be sick. But this is a milestone in their lives, they have a right to be upset about it.”

Amy Hynek, mother of senior Jeremy Hynek, made a similar point.

“I feel they’re getting a bad rap, I’ve gotten messages comparing our kids, saying they’re just sitting on the couch, to the kids who went to Vietnam,” Hynek said. “I don’t think people understand how much of a loss they feel. The kids, they don’t have that closure, that final goodbye.”

As of Thursday, the Facebook group boasted 767 members. Dugan said adopters have been a mix of people unrelated to WHS and people with students at the school.

Dugan loved high school. She said she felt allegiance to seniors who were robbed of their traditions. But Caroline Surdo, who is sponsoring her cousin Joe Lathrop, said she hopes adopting is a new tradition.

“It’s nice to know that people are recognizing us, not that we desperately need recognition, but it’s something huge that’s been taken away from us — senior year and the proms and the graduation and the field trips and that end-of-the-year feeling,” Lathrop said. “Any sort of appreciation or gratitude from anybody else means a lot to us, speaking on behalf of a lot of people.”

Surdo said the Facebook group is surprisingly cutthroat. Her mother, Karen Macrino, adopted Lathrop’s friend, AJ Sachatello, and Surdo said they wanted a third to adopt, but people comment too quickly on the posts. Surdo even had her uncle Jeff Lathrop inform her about when Joe would be posted in the group, so that she could be sure of adopting him.

Surdo said she and Macrino are sending gifts once or twice a week to their adoptees. The volume and type of gifts varies in each case. The Facebook group has a rule against disclosing specific gifts so as not to make others feel guilty. But, examples include: doughnuts, candy and other junk food, apparel for the student’s chosen college/university, gift cards and heartfelt, handwritten letters (Dugan’s personal favorite).

Lathrop’s family history is rooted in Waterford. Surdo graduated from Waterford High 19 years ago, and Macrino graduated 41 years ago. Macrino knew Sachatello’s father, Joseph Sachatello, a Montville police officer who died in 2003. Part of Macrino’s gift-giving includes letters with stories centered on Sachatello’s father. 

“His dad graduated in ’87, I graduated in ’79,” Macrino said. “He was one of the stars on the basketball team, and I was the cheerleading coach. I can’t tell you who was on that basketball team, but I can tell you Joe Sachatello was on there, because he was the kindest, most polite and respectful kid on the team.”

Hynek also spoke to the significance of letters. She said her son received some “really beautiful letters” from his adopter, which “got him back on track a little bit, a little more pep in his step.”

“My son, when this all started, said, ‘I don’t really want gifts,’” Hynek said. “I told the adopter I found their notes in his keepsake box, so they clearly are hitting a good spot in his heart.”

Jeremy, who is planning on attending Roger Williams University in Rhode Island in the fall, plays football and is a bit of a prankster, according to him and his mom. He also mentioned the “very heartfelt, meaningful letters.”

“It’s good to know that the town has my back and there’s more people out there showing support for seniors that aren’t going to get a graduation or a prom,” Hynek said.

Schools throughout the region are in limbo regarding events such as proms or in-person graduations. Every person The Day spoke to for this story said they hoped for some sort of in-person celebration, including Sandy Kenniston, whose son, Jason, is a senior.

“It’s amazing what the community’s doing for these kids,” Kenniston said. “My son was adopted, and he doesn’t know who it is, it’s all a surprise, and it’s driving him nuts.”

Joe Lathrop, a skier, golfer and saxophonist who’s headed to Boise State University in Idaho in the fall, tried to subvert the otherwise grim outlook painted by the pandemic. He said, first of all, the pandemic is teaching seniors to be self-sufficient, to be their own people and set structure for themselves — a role the school usually plays. He talked about how people should look to set and achieve goals during quarantine: “If by the end of this you haven’t advanced your goal, it’s not because you don’t have the time, it’s because you don’t have the motivation.” And he contextualized the position of Waterford’s seniors.

“For so far back in history, there’s never been a class like us,” he said. “Twenty or 30 years from now, we’ll look back and say, ‘Hey, I’m part of the Class of 2020, I’m different. We didn’t get all that stuff, but here I am, I survived.’ It’s cool to be different from everyone else. And we always knew we would be different, though this isn’t how we’d hoped.”

s.spinella@theday.com