Just 13 years old, Brandon Theurer is already an Eagle Scout.

Most boys don’t achieve that honor until the age of 18, but this eighth grader at Evergreen Junior High School likes personal challenges and planning way ahead.

He comes from a family of Eagle Scouts, so it was never a question of “if” but “when” he would attain this goal, said his mom, Julie Theurer. We asked Brandon how he shaved five years off the process.

“The youngest scout in my troop who had ever become an Eagle Scout had been 14, so I wanted to break the record. I went to merit badge clinics which really helped and also went to summer camp-outs to get more merit badges,” he said.

To satisfy the requirement for a large-scale service project, he called parks throughout the community to ask who needed volunteers and what they could do. Another boy from his troop, number 597, sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Novelty Hill, had done some work clearing invasive plants at Marymoor Park, but it’s an ongoing battle to keep that under control. So Brandon made a plan to clear out about 100 square feet of Scotch Broom and blackberry bushes near the interpretive trail on Marymoor’s east end.

On June 21, Brandon and 40 volunteers that he recruited, managed to clear not 100 but 1,440 square feet of undesirable plants within two hours.

His Eagle Court of Honor took place on Oct. 19. Now everyone’s saying to him, “You’re an Eagle Scout, so you’re done, right?,” but he’s far from finished, said Brandon.

He’s earned five more badges since his Court of Honor and is working toward earning bronze, silver and gold Eagle Palms. He wants to become a Varsity Scout when he turns 14 and has applied to attend the Boy Scouts’ 2010 National Jamboree outside of Washington D.C.

Brandon also cited his “church duty to God, requirements to do things for family and the community.”

When he turns 19, he will embark on two years of missionary work for the Mormon Church and at 21, wants to enroll in Brigham Young University for undergraduate studies. He aspires to be a paleontologist, so it helps that science is one of his favorite subjects.

But for now, when he’s not busy with Scouting activities, he enjoys piano lessons and baseball and is working on a movie called “Star Wars Episode 7: Last of the Sith.”