Students walk 8 miles to school

It happens only in movies, right?

Four boys walk toward their school campus, arms raised triumphantly after finishing a heroic journey.

Boys and girls eagerly awaiting their arrival at the school gates run screaming to greet the heroes. Parents and teachers watch the spectacle, sighing and rolling their eyes, baffled but impressed by the boys’ ingenuity.

What boy hasn’t, at one time or another, fantasized about being cheered by his peers, only to be startled by a displeased teacher standing over him?

Unless he happens to be Charley Howarth, Kent Willett, Cameron Paskerian or Adin Dobkin.

The four Pegasus School students loomed larger than life Friday morning as they walked the last 100 yards of their 8-mile hike from Mariners Park in Newport Beach to their school in Huntington Beach.

Howarth, who organized the walk as part of the school’s Earth Week celebration, came up with the idea on a whim.

“I wouldn’t consider myself an environmentalist,” Howarth said. “This is kind of out of nowhere for me. I just thought that it would be fun to get involved, and everyone drives to our school, so I wanted to show people that there are other ways.”

Claire Ratfield, Howarth’s sixth-grade teacher from Lincoln Elementary, describes the boy as a “pied piper of kids,” a natural-born leader who could get groups of children to follow him anywhere.

“The word charisma comes to mind, with a capital C,” Ratfield said.

The boys set out at 4 a.m., long before sunrise, and marched through Costa Mesa under the cover of darkness on a voyage they dubbed The Trek.

“It was pretty crazy walking in pitch black,” said Willett. “There were no cars. We just walked in the middle of the street.”

Six other boys chickened out on the Lord of the Flies-esque expedition at the last second and decided not to come, according to Dobkin.

Stopping once for a breakfast of steak and eggs at Norms wasn’t enough for their adolescent appetites. When the boys arrived at Pegasus they were still munching on sandwiches from their post-breakfast breakfast at McDonald’s.

For 10 minutes, the boys stood and fielded excited questions and absorbed the adulation of their loyal fans, then the 8 a.m. school bell rang and the buzz turned to silence as everyone walked to class.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.