Teen-Ager Has a Date With Soviet Youths

Orange teen-ager Clara Shin is leaving today for Helsinki, Finland, where she and 34 other Americans will meet a delegation of students from the Soviet Union in a weeklong summit to discuss world peace.

After the summit, the students will travel to Moscow, where they are scheduled to meet Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. On their way back, they will stop in Washington for an appointment with President Reagan and in New York for a talk with U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

According to the conference program, the delegation plans to present the superpower leaders with “an agenda for the 21st Century” in support of “radical U.S. nuclear weapons reduction.”

But Shin is under no illusions that she can change the world with one trip.

“Let me explain this with an analogy,” Shin, 17, said Thursday.

“Once they asked Tommy Lasorda why did he always argue with the umpires if he knew he would always lose the discussion? Lasorda answered that after talking to the umpires five or six times during a game, the officials would think about it twice before going against him in close call. There’s the difference. If kids keep asking world leaders for peace, maybe one of these days they will listen.”

The trip is sponsored by Direct Connection, a San Francisco-based, nonprofit organization that promotes student exchanges between the superpowers. Chin first came in contact with Direct Connection representatives during a leadership conference at Stanford University last summer, she said.

After watching a video by Soviet students about their fears of a nuclear holocaust, she said, she realized that the young people from both countries share their hatred of nuclear war, and she wondered if there were other things they shared.

She signed up for the trip and was picked from a nationwide pool.

Born in Korea, she was brought to the United States at age 5. Her father is a dentist and her mother is a former schoolteacher. The family recently moved to Orange from Cerritos; Shin still attends Whitney High School in Cerritos.

As president of the California Assn. of Student Councils--Los Angeles County, Chin has drafted a bill that legislators in Sacramento are currently debating, said Chin’s counselor, Rosalyn Ledbetter. Shin is also an “A” student, a cheerleader and a classical flutist.

As she walks across the school hallway, she returns greetings to her left and right.

She said she will ask her Soviet peers “what type of guys they think are cute,” and “what do girls carry in their purses.” To meet Gorbachev, she says, she got her braces removed a month ahead of schedule.

“I’d be so embarrassed to meet him with my braces,” she said.

On a more serious note, Shin points out that she firmly supports the INF treaty to ban intermediate nuclear weapons from Europe, and that she backs Gorbachev’s glasnost policy of openness.

But with all the excitement about the trip, Shin’s main worry these days is securing a date for her senior prom, because she will return to Orange County only three days before the big ball.