Shelby Frick, at 17, has witnessed doctors performing a rotator cuff surgery and she’s heard about ground-breaking medical research directly from the lips of Nobel laureates.

The rising senior at Greensburg Salem High School had those experiences in June while attending a three-day Congress of Future Medical Leaders near Boston.

Another of the event’s highlights was the Greensburg teen’s meeting with Carmen Blandin Tarleton, who in 2021 became the second person in the world to receive the second in a series of two face transplants. Tarleton rebounded to become a motivational speaker after she was severely burned by industrial strength lye in an attack by her estranged husband and subsequently endured multiple surgeries.

“She motivated me a lot,” Frick said.

Frick, who wants to become a veterinarian, has taken even greater inspiration from a source right at home — her mother, Katie, an emergency room nurse at Latrobe Hospital.

Through her mother, Frick said, “I learned a little bit about anatomy and about life in the ER.

“I’m planning on job shadowing or volunteering a couple of times (at the hospital) to keep my experience and interest in it up.”

One of her mother’s colleagues, registered nurse Ryan Lehman, is mentoring her, Frick said, “helping with anatomy-based questions when Mom isn’t available” — while the honors student works on her senior project, preparing a PowerPoint presentation about the medical field.

“There’s a lot of information,” she said. “I’m very passionate about it.”

Lehman said he’s offered Frick advice about researching data for her presentation, making sure the information she uses is from credible, peer-reviewed sources.

Motivation is one area where Frick hasn’t required any coaching.

“She’s very task-oriented,” Lehman said. “When I was her age with assignments to do, I waited until the last minute. She’s a go-getter who completes things ahead of time.

He’ll help her fine-tune her project as it nears the final stage.

“She does a good job with so much information,” he said. “I’m looking forward to her presentation. I’ll probably learn something new.”

Frick isn’t sure who nominated her to attend the future medical leaders event, which was held on the University of Massachusetts Lowell campus. It’s a program of Bottega University, a distance learning school headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Like other students who attended, Frick was selected based on her academic achievement, leadership potential and determination to serve in the field of medicine.

At the event, Frick was able to meet the holder of a Nobel Prize for chemistry and two other Nobel laureates, honored for work in physiology and medicine. The latter included Mario Capecchi, a native of Italy who shared a 2007 prize with others for discovering principles of introducing gene modifications in mice.

“It was pretty cool,” Frick said.

She also got tips from a veterinarian, who “showed us there are more than three types of medical treatment.” In addition to surgery, pharmaceuticals and radiation therapy, other options include herbal remedies, nutritional therapy and oxygen therapy, Frick learned.

“I plan on being a veterinarian because of my love of animals and the fact that they’re very short-staffed right now,” she said.

Frick’s pets include two cats, Angel and Whispers, and a bearded dragon lizard, Coco.

She also helps care for animals in teacher Andrea Redinger’s plant and animal biology classroom at Greensburg Salem High. Frick was among students in the class who helped introduce visiting younger pupils to a variety of familiar and exotic species during Redinger’s annual Critter Cruise.

“I was educating some of the students from Nicely Elementary about bearded dragons,” Frick said.

When she’s not focusing on animals and health care, Frick works at Hillview Bowling Lanes in Greensburg. She’s also a member of her school’s competitive bowling club, which placed 11th in nationals when she was in ninth grade.

Once she completes her high school education, Frick intends to pursue a biology degree, as a prelude to veterinary school.

“I hope to do my undergraduate studies close to Greensburg,” she said. “Then I can still have my job and volunteer at the hospital.”

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