Shortly after teenage author Dallas Jessup earned her black belt, as a 13-year-old, she saw a security video tape on the news that showed the abduction of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia. Jessup thought that Brucia’s kidnapping could have been prevented, if she had learned self-defense techniques.
So Jessup, now 17, enlisted some of her friends and her mom to help her create a DVD to teach girls from age 11 to 19 “fighting techniques” that they could use against predators. It includes cameo appearances by Evangeline Lilly and Josh Holloway of the ABC show “Lost.”
“It’s a hard topic, but it really needs to be discussed,” said Jessup.
Jessup’s DVD became a platform for a non-profit known as Just Yell Fire that trains physical education instructors to teach self-defense classes. MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was among the schools that turned Jessup’s “get-away techniques” into a for-credit physical education course. Jessup also shared her self-defense program with the FBI.
When she was 16, Jessup wrote a book, “Young Revolutionaries Who Rock,” with tips and inspirational stories for teens interested in starting non-profits.
On Saturday, several residents escaped the 85-degree heat to hear Jessup promote her book and DVD in the air-conditioned confines of Borders at Redmond Town Center.
The bookstore stop was one of several Jessup has planned for the summer to advertise the book she wrote and the DVD she scripted. She also plans to stop in Portland, San Francisco, Virginia and Mississippi to talk about her work.
She is one of about a dozen authors scheduled to speak at Borders this year.
“They set up the event because she’s going off to college, and they wanted to do a promotional event before she left,” said Jason Piontek, a manager at Borders who helped coordinate the event.
Dallas Jessup’s mom, Maggie Jessup, is her public relations manager.
A former reporter for several newspapers including The Houston Chronicle, Maggie Jessup currently runs a public relations firm in Vancouver, Wash., called Platform Strategy.
When asked if she ever got tired of driving her daughter across the country to sell her books, her mother said, “She’s out there saving the world. It’s so inspiring. You can’t not do it.”
Kaitlin Strohschein is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.
Meet Teen Author Dallas Jessup
• Age: 17
• Siblings: none
• Summer Reading List: “My summer beach books included the Twilight Series but for inspiration from an amazing author, I’m a big fan of anything by Maya Angelou.”
• Favorite Subject in School: “My high school had a terrific Mock Trial class; I learned how to argue and have fun at the same time – what could be better than that?”
• College Plans: “I’m 17 and starting at Vanderbilt University in August, majoring in communications and business.”
• Heroes: “My heroes are big-impact kids who take a stand against injustice; I wrote about a few in my ‘Young Revolutionaries Who Rock’ book.”
• Future plans: “I’d like to get involved in the media to do just that: bring attention to and raise awareness of, good solutions to important social problems that just need to be spotlighted to get support.”
• Hobbies: “I’m really busy and have an insane travel schedule so there isn’t a lot of time for traditional hobbies but I do keep up on martial arts (I’m a Tae Kwon Do black belt and a second degree in Filipino Street Fighting) and having fun where I travel.”
• What’s the greatest injustice of our time?: “It’s when people clearly see a problem and see how they could contribute to a solution – but they just sit back and expect others to take care of it. There are many terrible injustices in our world and I think if each of us focuses on solving just one, then together we can cause massive change.”
