---

WRENTHAM

Christine Dowd has had to deal with far more than your average graduating senior.

Christine, 17, who will receive her diploma from King Philip Regional High School today, lost both her parents but has managed to make it through her school years in admirable fashion.

After a four-year battle with cancer, her mother died when she was just 11, and her father died of a heart attack when she was a sophomore. She then went to live with relatives in Reading for about six months and since then has been living with friends of her father, Robert and Leslie Lincoln in Norfolk, where she had lived since moving from Brockton in the seventh grade.

Christine has two older sisters, but they live elsewhere. Her best friend, Rawley Chaves, has also been there for her.

"We have been friends since I moved here," Christine said. "She has been really a good support for me."

Her uncle, Steve, "has been here a lot for me, too," she said of her father's brother.

Christine also credits Julie Pavao, head of the KP guidance department, and Jan Rumsey, a school adjustment counselor, for helping her make it through school.

"I would talk to her almost every day. She was really awesome," Christine said of Pavao.

"She has really overcome a lot, and she is a wonderful young lady," Pavao said.

Christine has been a commended student on the honor roll list at KP and was in the school's drama club her junior year.

"It was kind of hard. I had a lot going on. I didn't really get a lot of opportunity to get involved," she said of her high school years.

She enjoys theater, movies and writing, with her favorite school subject English.

Christine, who works for a dry cleaner in Norfolk, is going to Framingham State College, where her close friend is also headed. "I really wanted to make my parents proud and not let them down," she said.