Age Is Just a Number

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For Koroknay-Palicz, the mission began at home. An only child, he grew up in a working-class family in Holland, Mich. His father mans the midnight shift at a power plant. His mother took classified ads for the Grand Rapids Press until a couple of years ago.

"There was always love in our family," Koroknay-Palicz says. "What I didn't have was respect. My parents didn't respect me."

He had a paper route when he was 9 years old and his own checking account when he was 10. He felt financially self-reliant and he wanted to spend his money as he saw fit, but, he says, his parents didn't let him. Like the time in middle school when he wanted to buy a mini-fridge to put in his basement room. They said no.

Koroknay-Palicz says he was annoyed by his parents' desire for control. At one point he even thought about filing for legal separation from his parents, known in youth-rights circles as emancipation.

His parents, however, don't have the same memories. "Alex sees that there was conflict in our family; we see it as parents setting down rules," his mother, Margo, 53, says in a phone interview.

"We raised Alex to be an independent person," father Robert, 61, says. He adds that it looks as though they have succeeded.

"Be careful what you wish for," Margo says.

She is proud of her son: "He does not drink. He doesn't smoke. He doesn't do drugs. He's a good person." He doesn't want anything controlling his life, she says, alcohol or chemicals or other people, including his parents.

"I remember him wanting to be emancipated," she says. "But I don't remember the mini-fridge incident."

As a senior in high school, Koroknay-Palicz and his friend, Buddy Halbert Jr., noticed that a few small convenience stores had put signs on their doors forbidding entry to more than two students at one time. "They were akin to the Jim Crow laws that I had studied in school," Koroknay-Palicz says.

Eventually, Koroknay-Palicz appeared before the city council. The city's human relations committee got involved and the signs were removed. That was the genesis of Koroknay-Palicz's youth rights advocacy campaign.