Despite being a mere teenager, Granite Bay resident Kiersten Schmidt is a hot ticket on the local lecture circuit.

With speeches given to local service organizations, classmates and even attendees at a golf benefit last year, 15-year-old Kiersten is becoming accustomed to standing ovations and flowers.

Her goal? To raise awareness about what it's like to have a disability, and to explain how her own life was transformed by Canine Companions for Independence (CCI), a nonprofit organization that matches the disabled with specially trained dogs.

That's no small feat for Kiersten, who at age 4 was diagnosed with autism.

Affecting one in every 166 births, autism impairs the development of communication skills, creating difficulty in establishing social relationships.

In fact, just two years ago, the last place you'd expect to find Kiersten would be at the center of attention. Shy and withdrawn, she would spend much of her time in her room.

"I always wanted to have friends, but I just didn't know how to make them," Kiersten said in a recent speech.

"As a parent, all you want for your kids is to be self confident, happy and enjoying life," says Charity, Kiersten's mom. "Kiersten was not a happy little girl, and there wasn't very much joy in her life except what I could create."

But her remarkable shift from a reserved girl to an affable young woman isn't due to some new scientific breakthrough. Instead, the credit goes to a rather low-tech invention - the dogs she's received from CCI.

"It forms a social bridge that wouldn't be there otherwise," says Bill Blake, national public relations director for CCI. "People with a disability often feel excluded in social situations. But when they have one of our dogs, immediately the focus changes."

Instead of focusing on a person's differences, Blake says, "a lot of the attention goes to the dog. People go up and talk to someone who has a dog who otherwise might never go up to that person."

The program, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, provides highly trained dogs to assist people with all kinds of disabilities. In Kiersten's case, that meant receiving a "skilled companion dog," which provides camaraderie and helps build social and communication skills for those with physical or developmental disabilities.

Kiersten first learned about CCI from a school presentation by a CCI-dog beneficiary. He too had a disability, and as he explained how his dog had become his best friend, Schmidt imagined herself with one of her own.

Armed with a bookmark she'd been given as part of the presentation, Kiersten went home to tell her mom about it.

"She put the bookmark under her pillow for many months," Charity says.

Finally, 13 months after the school presentation, Kiersten was accepted into the program.

"I was just jumping for joy," Kiersten says.

But her grandfather, whom she describes as the only friend she ever had, was diagnosed with lung cancer shortly afterward. He died just weeks before Kiersten was scheduled to attend a two-week training session at CCI's training center in Santa Rosa.

"We went down there with some pretty sad, broken hearts," Charity recalls.

At CCI's training camp, Kiersten was matched with a labrador/golden retriever mix named Horace.

The two quickly became best friends. And the entire family - including Kiersten's two younger sisters, Rachel and Rebecca, and the girls' father, John - credits Horace with helping in the grieving process.

"Even though it was Kiersten's dog it was a real healing for all of us," Charity says.

But only a year after bringing Horace home, tragedy struck.

Horace was suffering from chylothorax effusion, a disease that caused his lungs repeatedly to fill up with fluid. He died a few days after Christmas.

Almost immediately, the close-knit CCI community sprang into action.

"There's no way she could have got through it if she didn't have such a great family of support (at CCI)," Charity says. "We got tons of e-mails, and probably 50 cards and letters."

Soon after Horace's death, Kiersten was invited back to CCI's training grounds, where she was matched with Wella, another labrador/golden retriever mix.

"Their personalities are almost exactly the same," Charity said. "Kiersten is very gentle natured, and Wella is a very gentle dog."

Although Kiersten says Horace will always have a special place in her heart, today she and Wella are practically inseparable.

With the dog, which wears an eye-catching blue vest emblazoned with the CCI logo, she's always getting questions and interacting with strangers.

"Before I had a dog it was really hard for me to go up to a person just to talk. I couldn't just say, 'Hey, how's your day?'" says Kiersten.

Though she's still soft-spoken, today you'd be hard pressed to tell Schmidt apart from most other teenagers.

A freshman at Granite Bay High School, she loves singing in the school choir, which led to a recent opportunity. In an effort to raise awareness that disabled students are no different than anyone else, she shared her personal story with her choir class in early October. This experience led to a front-page story by Amy Holiday in the high school newspaper (The Granite Bay Gazette) in early December. She was also featured in The Press-Tribune and the Sacramento Bee.

All this media exposure led her to another unique experience. After seeing a story in the newspaper, radio station 1240 AM donated $300 to CCI and interviewed Kiersten live on the air in mid-December.

Now students at school know Kiersten as the girl with the dog and are more apt to speak with not only her, but also the other special needs students as well.

In February she will begin speaking with A Touch of Understanding, a nonprofit organization that brings the disabled experience to students through personal experiences. Though most of the speakers have physical disabilities, Kiersten looks forward to adding her story to the mix.

Kiersten is also active in her church and plays guitar. She's already started thinking about her future after high school - which she hopes will include working in some capacity for the organization that changed her life.

"It's a bridge to the social world, because once people meet Kiersten, they love her," Charity said. "And who wouldn't want to pet that dog?"