Seventeen-year-old fraternal twins Julia and Jake Palay move through their days with the synchronized urgency of people who understand that time is scarce.
Their schedules are dense with pre-dawn meetings, six AP classes, practices that stretch late into the night and the quiet pressure of college applications. Yet threaded through all of it is the LEO Club, the youth branch of Lions Club International — the first of its kind at Lynbrook High School — which they co-founded not as a résumé line, but as a living continuation of a family legacy.
Their grandfather, Bruce Mazor, an ophthalmologist and longtime member of Lions Club International, a volunteer service organization, was the gravitational center of that legacy.
“His qualities of respect, honesty and generosity all stood out to me, and I carry them with me every day,” Jake said. “He was a role model to me.”
When he died during their sophomore year, grief did not stall them. It sharpened them. The age requirement to start a club meant they had to wait until junior year, but by the time September arrived, they were ready — with a mission, a sponsor in the West Hempstead Lions Club and a clarity of purpose uncommon even among the most accomplished students.
Their grandfather didn’t just inspire the project. He shaped the lens through which they view service, leadership and purpose.
“My dad was the type of person who loved what he did for a living,” their mother, Paula Palay, said. “He always put others before himself, and I think my kids really took that away from him and his legacy.”
That inheritance first took shape when the twins were 13. For their B’nai Mitzvah project, they rejected the idea of a small, contained charity drive. Instead, they collected eyeglasses — thousands of them — because vision, they understood early, is not abstract. It is functional, immediate and often taken for granted.
By the time they brought that idea to Lynbrook High School, the scale had grown. Last year alone, their efforts yielded more than 6,000 pairs, sorted and shipped through Lions Club International to people who could not otherwise afford eye care.
“It was a pleasure working with Jake and Julia to establish this club at Lynbrook High School,” principal Matthew Sarosy said. “The cause is close to their hearts, and it was obvious to see their passion.”
Their service spans the five pillars of Lions Club International — vision, hunger, diabetes, childhood cancer, and the environment — but the work rarely announces itself in grand terms. It shows up as painted rocks with encouraging messages left around town during Mental Health Awareness Week; as bake sales and candy-gram fundraisers whose proceeds support the Ronald McDonald House; as brunch prepared for families living inside hospital walls; and as eyeglass collection boxes quietly placed in parks, schools and local businesses, waiting for people to notice how much they have and how easily they can give it away.
“Even the smallest thing could make their whole day — or their whole year,” Julia said.
Convincing a school full of overextended teenagers to commit to service was, paradoxically, harder than securing administrative approval. On club fair day, Julia and Jake repeated their pitch dozens of times, drawing initial interest from more than 100 students. The attrition that followed did not surprise them.
The numbers thinned quickly. Interest did not always translate to commitment, and the twins learned early that service requires patience as much as passion. It would have been easy to measure success by turnout alone, but Julia and Jake recalibrated.
What mattered was who stayed — and why.
Jake recalls a certain Saturday service day with unusual clarity. The 40-minute drive to the Ronald McDonald House gave him time to settle into a quiet anticipation, listening to the hum of the tires on the road and running through what the day might demand. When he and Julia arrived, the usual rhythm of volunteers and routines was punctuated by something unexpected: three freshmen, largely unknown to the group, had shown up not out of obligation but out of genuine commitment.
For the first time, they saw the club’s impact extend beyond themselves — carried by people who shared the same focus and intensity, even if it never made a headline.
“That really showed me and Julia that there really are some people out there who are committed to a cause just like us,” Jake said.
What distinguishes the Palays is not only what they do, but how deliberately they build structures that will outlast them. The LEO Club is not run as a hierarchy; it is cultivated as a community. Meetings are weekly, sometimes biweekly, and open-ended by design: idea-driven rather than directive.
Members are encouraged to speak, to propose and to lead without titles. The result is a core group of around 25 committed students, including younger members already positioned to carry the club forward after the twins graduate.
Their days are built with intention and very little margin. Julia and Jake arrive at school well before the official start: club meetings scheduled at 7 a.m., quick conversations with advisers, logistics handled while the building is still quiet. By 7:30, they slide into a full academic load that leaves no empty periods to absorb the strain — double classes, advanced coursework, long stretches of concentration that demand steadiness rather than brilliance.
By the time most classrooms fill, they have already made decisions that will shape someone else’s afternoon.
After the last bell, their afternoons harden into fixed commitments. Jake’s schedule is dictated by seasons: fall soccer practices that run several hours and demand endurance; winter basketball sessions that move from drills to full scrimmages; and spring track workouts that push repetition and stamina, with golf now added to the margins of his senior year.
Between school and practice, Jake often allows himself one small reset: a short nap, taken not out of laziness but necessity.
“School really takes a toll,” he admitted, describing the mental fatigue that accumulates over long days.
It is in these quiet pauses, rare and unscheduled, that the weight of expectation briefly settles before he gets up and goes again.
Julia’s rehearsals begin later and end later. As captain of the kickline team, she attends practices multiple nights a week, often for two hours at a time, learning and refining competition routines, adjusting formations, correcting timing and staying afterward to help underclassmen or rework choreography.
During football season, rehearsals are tied to game nights; during competition season, they intensify, pulling extra evenings and weekends.
She talks often about learning when to speak and when to listen, about recognizing that impact is not always immediate.
Together, these commitments structure their week with near rigidity, forcing the rest of their responsibilities — schoolwork, service planning, leadership roles — to be arranged around bodies in motion and time that cannot be negotiated.
As twins, they are often described as inseparable, but that shorthand misses the nuance of their partnership. They divide labor instinctively. When one is in practice, the other answers emails. When one is overwhelmed, the other steadies the pace. Their bond has matured alongside their mission, less about sameness than about trust.
By the time you finish watching them work — really watching, across months and milestones — it becomes clear that the Palays are not performing service. They are practicing it daily, as a discipline shaped by habit, intention and trust. And in doing so, they have quietly shifted the center of gravity at their school, proving that leadership does not always announce itself. Sometimes it just shows up early, stays late and makes room for others to see more clearly.
“Where there’s a need,” Julia said, “there’s a LEO.”
