High school girl thwarts bicycle robbers.

Late last year, Alise Aurigemma, a 16year-old high school junior from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, missed her ride home from school and decided to walk to the nearby home of a friend. While walking along, she saw two boys she recognized from Fort Lauderdale High approach a younger boy named Patrick McAvoy and demand his bike.

The injustice of it bothered Alise, who knew young Patrick, and she immediately stepped in to thwart the theft.

Alise related the story to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "You ain't taking his bike," she told the two bullies. "You just can't do that. Look at him. He's scared. What are you trying to do?"

While Alise argued with the bullies, 14-year-old Patrick, who had previously had one bicycle stolen, decided to ride his bike to safety. One bully started walking away, but his companion inexplicably started laughing. Alise asked the boy why he was laughing and, in response, "he turned around and punched me, and he ran," she related.

Alise's father took her to the police station the following day to report the incident, but the girl did not want to file a formal complaint against the bullies. At school when she encountered the boy who had punched her, he made an apparently sincere apology, and the boy's mother also disciplined him publicly.

One of Alise's teachers, JoAnn Izzo, told the Sun-Sentinel: "It is not unusual for her to help her peers. I don't know how many other students would have stepped into that situation."

For her willingness to put herself at risk to come to the aid of the boy, Alise was named as her school's "student of the month" for December and received a gift card worth $25 from Best Buy and a certificate of achievement from her principal.