“You know people have actually gone in there and never come out,” he says.

The bedroom says a lot about the life of 18-year-old Cassie Annette Safrit, her father’s namesake. There are photographs, trophies, plaques and pom-poms from her nine years of cheerleading scattered throughout the room, which is painted light blue, as in one of the school colors at West Rowan High School.

Cassie started cheering for Hurley Elementary, located across the street from her home in Myers Place, and went on to cheer at West Rowan Middle and West High, serving as co-captain this, her senior, year.

It seems as if she’s been cheering as long as she has been able to walk, her father says.

“Actually,” her mother, Pam Safrit, says, “the yearbook had a thing in it that said, ‘Can you imagine if Cassie Safrit was not a cheerleader?’ ”

A certificate recognizing her as the recipient of the “Most Spirited” senior superlative is displayed on the large bulletin board overflowing with high school memorabilia. Cassie was also chosen as Most Valuable Cheerleader this year and was selected as a Universal Cheerleading Association All Star.

Cheerleader statuettes, including a Dreamsicles cheerleader the squad gave to senior members, are displayed around the room.

She still has every flower she has ever received, her mother says. Dried flowers are attached to the window valance, and the bouquet of flowers she received as the reigning Miss Rowan County Veteran are on top of the dresser. The sign that was taped to the car on which she rode in the 4th of July parade hangs on the wall behind her bed.

This is clearly a teenager’s room, where childhood and womanhood come together in a creative hodgepodge of treasured mementos. There’s a collection of Cabbage Patch dolls and stuffed animals in a basket beside her closet, where her ivory prom dress hangs over the door.

The transition from girl to woman is captured best in collectible porcelain “Growing Up Birthday Girls,” one for each birthday up to age 16, arranged in order on her vanity. Cassie’s grandmother, Martha Peeler, gave her one every year. “I always knew I was going to get one for my birthday,” she says.

There’s one for graduation, which Cassie will go through Thursday afternoon, and another for marriage and motherhood.

Cards from her May 4th birthday are displayed throughout her room along with an early graduation card. It arrived last Wednesday with a pre-paid phone card inside.

The card will come in handy when Cassie starts classes in August at Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y. She is one of 10 undergraduates chosen as recipients of the Park Scholar Awards, which will cover the full cost of tuition at the Roy H. Park School of Communications, room, board, books and fees along with a one-time $3,500 grant for the purchase of computer hardware and software.

“Overall, it’s probably worth about $120,000,” she says.

Cassie didn’t find out about the award until a couple of days before she had to decide where she was going. She turned down an $11,200 Poteat Scholarship to Wake Forest University to go to Ithaca.

The New York college sent her a packet of information after Cassie checked on her SAT test that she would like to receive information about different colleges and universities. “The more I looked and the more I compared it to other schools, it just seemed like they had so much to offer,” she says.

The Safrits went up last summer and visited the campus. “It’s a small private school,” Cass says, “and it has plenty of money.”

When school officials found out Cassie was interested, they encouraged her to apply for different scholarships. “They said, ‘Apply, and we’ll do what we can to get her up here,’ ” her father says. “Financially, it was the only way we could send her up there.”

Ithaca College was built on a mountain at the base of Cayuga Lake overlooking a valley in which the town of Ithaca is located. Cornell University, also on a mountain, overlooks the town on the other side. “So you have a town of 20,000 college kids,” Cassie says.

Cayuga Lake is part of three lakes referred to as the Finger Lakes. When Cass sees it on the Weather Channel, he says, “That’s where Ithaca is.” This fall, he says he’ll say, “That’s where Cassie is.”

Cassie will graduate Thursday with a 4.5 grade-point average, ranking among the top four in her class. She has made only one B in her school career, and that was in Honors English II. “Nobody made an A that year,” she says.

“That hurt,” her father says.

“It hurt all of us,” adds her mother.

Ironically, the teacher who gave Cassie the B is one of her favorites. “The more I look back,” she says of the B, “I say, ‘Who cares? It’s no big deal.’ ”

Her favorite teacher at the high school is Bess Johnson, who came out of retirement to teach. Cassie had her last year for AP English III. “I think I really learned how to write last year in her class,” she says.

As one of the top students in the school, Cassie was asked to select her all-time favorite teacher to be honored at the annual countywide Time Warner Cable Star Teacher Banquet. She chose Johnson.

Though she’s not sure whether to major in radio, television or journalism, Cassie’s dream is to be a broadcast journalist.

It’s something she has wanted to do since working on WDOG, West Middle’s closed-circuit television station. Students involved in the video production class switched roles ranging from anchoring to filming to editing and taped segments for a news show for the whole school to watch every Friday. “I loved it,” she says.

Cassie’s dream job would be to follow in Barbara Walters’ footsteps.

“She gets the interviews everybody wants,” she says. “I really admire her. She’s so tactful in the way she interviews people. She definitely gets the story, but it’s not in an underhanded way.”

Sportscasting is another area in which Cassie is interested. She has been the PA announcer for men’s soccer and has watched sports all her life with her father. Cass Safrit played baseball for Pfeiffer and the American Legion before going on to play for the Orioles in the minor leagues.

His love of baseball has been passed on to his daughter. Cassie was one of two statisticians this year for the West baseball team. She also watches her boyfriend, who lives in Burlington, play baseball for Pfeiffer College.

“For a girl, she knows a lot about baseball,” her father says.

It took almost two typed pages to list all of Cassie’s school and community activities and awards and honors for scholarship applications.

Among her school activities are the National Honor Society, of which she is secretary; the Student Government Association, for which she was elected as junior class vice president; 1st Priority Christian League; the Key Club; the Bible Club; Junior Civitan, serving as public relations coordinator this year; and SADD.

The community activities in which she has been involved include the youth group and choir at Stallings Memorial Baptist Church, where she is a lifelong member; a church mission trip to Alabama last summer; the Rowan Regional Medical Center Junior Volunteen program; the DARE mentor program; and the Rowan-Salisbury Special Olympics.

Awards and honors include being selected as a Salisbury Post All-County Scholar, a delegate to the National Young Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C., as Best Attorney in the Wade Edwards Mock Trial Competition and a junior marshal.

Cassie says her parents and grandparents have had the greatest influence on her life. “I’ve always had a real supportive family,” she says. “All of my family is here except I have one cousin who lives in Ohio.”

Pam, a kindergarten teacher at Hurley Elementary, has four brothers and sisters, and Cass, who works at Norandal USA, has three, so Cassie has a lot of cousins. “My cousins have been like my brothers and sisters,” she says, “because I didn’t have any.”

Though she says she’ll miss her parents, they plan to keep in touch by telephone and e-mail. “She’s got to teach me how to do instant messages on the computer so we can talk,” Pam says.

“They’re doing to have to teach me to do e-mail,” Cass says.

Cassie laughs. “Dad touches the computer,” she says, “and you know he’s been there.”

Cass says he’ll miss his daughter a lot, probably even more than he realizes now, but he worries the most about what his wife will do without her. “She and her mother are very close,” he says.

“Don’t even ask me,” Pam says, on the verge of tears, when asked how she’ll deal with the separation.

The proud parents will be in the audience at 2 p.m. Thursday when Cassie is to be among 220 seniors to graduate from West Rowan High School.

“Everything’s going to be different after that,” she says. “I won’t see the same people everyday. I won’t do the same things. I’ve had a lot of good times in high school.”

But like the other seniors graduating in Rowan County this week, Cassie has a lot to look forward to. First, she and seven of her friends are leaving on a graduation trip to Cancun, Mexico, after which she’ll spend the summer babysitting and on a family vacation on Hilton Head.