Austin Eagle Scout meets Obama

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Jonathan Hillis is a 19-year-old college student who grew up in Austin. Along the way, he turned some heads.

As a child, he and a friend made a movie that claimed the top prize in the middle school division of the Young Filmmakers competition at the Austin Film Festival . A year and a half later, he drew the notice of then-Mayor Will Wynn for his leadership of a habitat restoration project for endangered salamanders.

When he showed up in the full uniform of the Boy Scouts for the Review Board meeting that would determine if he could become an Eagle Scout, he sported a Mohawk haircut.

"I'm really into breaking the stereotype and proving to people that you can be a good kid and have crazy hair," Hillis said at the time. "I can be a good person and have weird hair."

Not only did he pass the board and become an Eagle Scout, he later rose to the Order of the Arrow , the scouts' national honor society. Then he was elected to the post of national chief, the leader of the Order.

"It's a really interesting election," said Hillis. "They take all of the section chiefs---there are 48 of us across the nation---and we all meet up in Dallas at the national headquarters. We all get locked in a room in a hotel and it's kind of like a Papal election: Nobody can leave until the new chief has been named. Fourteen people declared their candidacy. Everybody runs and then you cut it in half and you keep going down until you get to the one survivor. It's a grueling process; it takes hours."

Hillis was elected on a platform of increased emphasis on local scout leadership efforts. After all, that's where he came from.

"It's very much camping and a lot of my love of nature and the outdoors, and possibly even my potential involvement in environmental studies now can be tied back to some of the camping experiences I've had in the Boy Scouts," said Hillis. "But it's really been a leadership in service program for me. The opportunities the program has given me at every level have been incredible. It's the only youth program that I know of that is truly youth led at a lot of levels of the organization. There are adult advisors but it's an organization that lets kids learn leadership by making mistakes and figuring out how to fix them and leading the organization."

Hillis' election to the post of national chief opened another door for him, the door to the Oval Office of the White House. Every year, a diverse delegation of scouts heads to Washington, D.C., to present the organization's " Report to the Nation " to the president and other government officials.

"The meeting with Obama was incredible," Hillis said. "He just has a magnetic personality and we were with him for probably about 15 minutes, but just the chance to talk to him a little bit and see what he's like in person was really incredible."

Just getting there was kind of incredible, as well.

"Normally, when people come to the Oval Office, they get taken to the Roosevelt Room," Hillis said. "You're in the big formal room and then you walk into the big double doors into the Oval Office. The problem was some of the cabinet members were meeting in the Roosevelt Room and their meeting ran late. So we were being held in the Hoover Building next door, sitting around in this beautiful room in the Hoover Building, and then all of a sudden we had to go.

"We rushed down to the White House and we came in through the back entrance. We were walking through really cramped cubicles and offices and it didn't feel, you know, like the White House. Then we get to this little cramped hallway and we're standing there and all of a sudden, a door opens up and it's Barack Obama. You see him so many times in pictures and on TV and it's a crazy feeling when he's standing right in front of you.

"So we all walked in and shook his hand and I'm sure my hand was cold and sweaty and I'm sure he gets that all the time," Hillis continued. "But as soon as we got into the room and started talking to him, everything changed. My heartbeat dropped back down and his personality was enveloping and he was really able to calm us down and we just had a great conversation and we were out before I knew it."

Actually, the meeting might have gone on a bit longer, if not for some events taking place on the other side of the planet.

"The reason we got cut so short was because we were there right when everything was going down in Egypt and stuff in Bahrain was starting to head south," Hillis said. "Hilary Clinton was waiting outside the door and peaking in waiting for us to leave and she did not look very happy. He had some important stuff to deal with and it was really great that he took the time to meet with us."

The trip also featured meetings with House and Senate leaders, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA Director Leon Panetta. The scouts also got behind the scenes tours at NASA's Goddard Space Center and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History .

Then it was back to