In 1990, word got out that Anne Arundel County school officials were considering closing Parole Elementary School, and Rhonda Pindell-Charles went to work.
She banged on neighbors' doors, circulated petitions and buttonholed school board members to win support for saving the school she attended as a child and to which she was sending her two children.
Her efforts paid off: In the next 31 days she collected 2,500 signatures in a petition drive to save the school, a move that helped win a commitment from the county school board to keep Parole's doors open.
Such efforts are what prompted Annapolis Alderman Carl O. Snowden and the Community Action Agency to give Mrs. Pindell-Charles a Drum Major Award at the annual Martin Luther King Dinner last month in Annapolis.
The award is given to those who make outstanding contributions to the black community, Mr. Snowden said.
"She's a quiet but very effective leader in the community and in getting things done," Mr. Snowden said. He said he would like her to run for City Council some day.
Mrs. Pindell-Charles, a lawyer who commutes to work in Baltimore each day, said she values the free time she spends with her children too much to consider elective office in the near future.
"That's something that I'd have to throw myself into completely, and I just don't have the time," she said.
But she still finds time to throw herself into other community causes and activities.
She has been on the Annapolis Board of Appeals, the Banneker-Douglass Museum Foundation, volunteered with the Annapolis Citywide Youth Summer Basketball League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
She also is on the Parole Elementary PTA and serves as a citizen advisory committee representative to the school board.
Mrs. Pindell-Charles, 40, graduated with honors from Annapolis Senior High School in 1972.
In 1976, she graduated magna cum laude from Morgan State University and three years later, she earned a law degree from the University of Maryland Law School.
"She's always been a very good student, very smart and hard working, but she was never obnoxious about it, you know," said Paulette Jones, a childhood friend.
Admitted to practice law in 1980, she worked as an assistant attorney general for three years before she was appointed an assistant state's attorney in Baltimore, where she now oversees 40 staffers as deputy chief of the juvenile division.
She clearly likes her work, seeing it as being "part-prosecutor and part-social worker" because of the active role prosecutors in Baltimore play in deciding on counseling, school programs and "treatment plans" for juvenile offenders.
Ms. Jones credited Mrs. Pindell-Charles' parents and her devotion to her church -- the Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal Church in Annapolis -- for instilling in her a need to serve the community.
Mrs. Pindell-Charles agrees.
When she is asked to list the biggest influences in her life, she quickly identifies three: "I think it's been my parents, God and my church," she said.
Her father, France A. Pindell, is a retired homebuilder, and her mother, Gwendolyn Queen Pindell, is a retired county schools math teacher.
At Mount Olive AME, Mrs. Pindell-Charles is an assistant Sunday school teacher and an usher and sings in one of the choirs, the Mount Olive Voices of Praise.
She and her husband, Marvin D. Charles, a senior accountant for the school system, have two children -- Marvin Jr., a 12-year-old seventh-grader at Annapolis Middle School, and Rishelle, a 10-year-old fifth-grader at Parole Elementary.
But saving Parole Elementary was more than a matter of ensuring a quality education for her daughter, she said. For many, the school was a focal point for Annapolis' black community.
Parole was the last of 30 county schools still open that once mainly had served black students before county schools were integrated in 1966, she said.
"Everybody knew Parole [Elementary School] and what it meant," she said.
In November 1992, she also set up the Parole Elementary School Alumni and Friends Association and with the group's help was successful in getting the school board to rename the school for Walter S. Mills, the principal for 46 years.
Mr. Mills' 1939 suit against the Anne Arundel County Board of Education resulted in equal pay for black principals and teachers.
The only plaintiff in the test case, Mr. Mills was represented by Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer with the NAACP who later became a Supreme Court justice.
The school board voted unanimously last Aug. 17 to rename the school the Walter S. Mills-Parole Elementary School.
Mrs. Pindell-Charles said it was an honor that would have been appreciated by the late Mr. Mills, an educator who she said also influenced her.
"He was a terrific principal. He didn't take any guff off of anybody," she said.
"He believed in education. He believed you could do whatever you put your mind to, and I think he passed a lot of that on to his students."