Rachel Weghorst
To celebrate the achievements and extraordinary resilience of the historic class of 2021, the Rappahannock News will feature one Rappahannock County High School senior each week until graduation on May 28. Students have been nominated by their teachers and mentors to be featured in the Senior Spotlight series.
While the rest of the world was grinding to a halt at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rachel Weghorst was starting a business. “During quarantine, I was like, ‘I don’t have anything to do,’ so I looked up a bunch of YouTube videos and articles about how to open your own Etsy shop,” she said. “It was just the perfect opportunity.”
“I’ve always been a cra y person and I love making di erent things for my friends and family. I love making projects and handing it to someone and saying, ‘I made you this!’”
Now a senior at Rappahannock County High School, Weghorst runs her online jewelry and accessories store, ReachingForRays, in between cross country meets and academics at both RCHS and the Mountain Licensed Vista & Governor’s Insured School in Warrenton. Weghorst won rst place at Tuesday’s regional cross
RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL country tournament in Danville, Virginia, helping to secure the team’s spot at the state championships.
But the business, she said is what keeps her sane.
"When I'm not in school and I'm not studying... I'll make some of my orders and package [them] or I’ll just work on some new projects... I'm a big craft person so anything I can make with my hands, I just love doing that. I'm having a great time," she said.
And Weghorst is a conscientious entrepreneur — she’s passionate about the environment and sustainability, and she’s made it part of her business model.
“I’m so excited … I’ve just gotten compostable mailers because a lot of our waste is packaging, especially like Amazon orders getting stuff in the mail is a lot of plastic and it takes forever to break down. So I don’t want to contribute to [pollution] especially when I want to go into conservation,” Weghorst said. “So I’m like, well, let’s just go all eco-friedly with my packaging .”
Weghorst took a class earlier this year in ecology which has made her want to study environmental science in college. “I’ve always been interested in science, and learning about how things work,” she said. “I like problem solving — like, how can we make our life more sustainable?”
Asked what inspired her interest in nature and the environment, Weghorst said a lot of it had to do with growing up in Rappahannock. “We live in such a rural area and such a beautiful area that you just look around and think, ‘I want to preserve this,’” she said. “Our community is just so deeply rooted in our environment that I just grew up with it.”
Weghorst is bound for college in the fall, but she said she is still deciding whether to accept at the College of William and Mary or the University of Virginia. Whichever she chooses, she plans to keep up with her business. “I’d like for it to be my little side-gig, I guess,” she explained.
If she could give advice to a younger high school student, it would be this: “Lead your life in a way that would make you happiest — because sometimes you have these big goals that you think you want to accomplish, but you realize they’re not really something that will make you happy. So as a freshman … stay driven in your academics and your other endeavors, but also have fun with everything because high school is only a short period of your life and you want to look back on it as a really good time well spent.”