Throughout middle school Dawn's main focus was The Baby-Sitters Club. She only ever hung out with the specific group of girls; her best friends. On occasion she also hung out with Stacey and Claudia and their other group of friends, as well, even going on a few dates with boys from that other group. But for the most part she was a member of the BSC through and through. Except for 8th grade. She moved to California and spent all of 8th grade there; changing and growing. She made new friends, lost old ones, and gained a baby half sister in Elizabeth. After Eizabeth was born, Dawn spent the summer in Connecticut with Sunny and then decided to stick around for high school. She always felt guilty for leaving Sunny in California without her mom and for leaving her family there and new baby sister. But she had missed Stoneybrook and her friends there.
Ironically Dawn joined the Environmental club in Stoneybrook High School and began to drift from her old BSC friends. She did however click again with Lewis Bruno. She and he began a recycling movement at the school, putting bins all around SHS. They became so focused on this clean air movement that she didn't babysit as often as she one had. She made all new friends. She also began to date more often. First it was a guy in the Environmental club with her, during her Freshman year. She was infatuated with him all year long. Then over the summer she went to California and he went away to summer camp. They broke up when they returned because he cheated on her at his summer camp where he was a CIT. She was heartbroken, over dramatic over it, but threw herself once again full speed ahead into the Environmental club once the fall came around and she began her sophomore year.
During the first few months of her sophomore year she met Grant, a senior. Stacey was the one to introduce him to Dawn. Stacey was one of the few that Dawn still often hung out with besides Mary Anne, of course. Dawn was so focused on getting his attention that she briefly forgot all about her motives once again, focusing on a guy. When Dawn is passionate about something/one, she goes full force into it. Grant and she hung around, went on dates, even kissed a few times. Then right before he graduated, Dawn had just turned 16, they had sex on the night of his senior prom which he took her to. She had been a virgin. He was her first. She is allergic to latex and was not on the pill, and at that present time had no alternative birth control methods, and she stupidly chanced it, naively figuring she ate healthy enough and took care of her self well enough that nothing would happen and being so in love and all she went for it. She was the 1% and got pregnant on her first time.
That summer she was pregnant and went back to California for another visit. Elizabeth Grace was now 2, Jeff 12. Sunny was still there. She had a bout of homesickness, probably pregnancy hormones. She missed Palo City. For a brief moment she almost decided to stay in California for her junior year. But at the last moment she went back to Connecticut.
She spent the rest of her junior year pregnant, hiding from everyone, just blending in. She was a statistic, a Teen Mom. She was still a member of the Environmental club but she wasn't actively present in anything. She just skated by. She did her school work, passed her classes, she just was.
Dawn does not believe in abortion or in adoption. Since Grant had went off to college only a few months after the baby was born, she decided to of course keep the baby. And as her junior year came to end, she gave birth to Jamie Lynn Schafer. She spent her junior year caring for her daughter, working nights, while her family babysat littl Jamie. She couldn't go back to California that summer. And that summer Sunny decided to come and stay with Dawn for awhile. Little did she know that Sunny was going to finish her senior year in Stoneybrook with Dawn.
Her senior year was spent babysitting for her own daughter as she became a single mom.
Her mother and stepfather, Mary Anne and Sunny, helped where they could, babysitting at night so that Dawn could finish high school and work part time at the movie theater to earn money to raise her small daughter.
She applied to all colleges in California, wanting to move away, move back home with Sunny, and start over fresh with her child.
When Dawn graduated high school, a single mom from high school she had a one year old on her hip. And she did exactly what she said she would. She and Sunny and baby Jamie took off for California. When there, her dad, step mom and little sister helped her watch Jamie while in classes. She had day care for the small child, and worked nights to support her.
Today she works as a science teacher at TBD and every summer as a Camp Director of Operations. She loves going back to her roots and spreading joy to the kids of Stoneybrook again. It reminds her of her old Baby-Sitters Club days. Her daughter is now old enough to be a camper at the camp and so this is the most convenient situation for her.
