Allison developed a fear of hair entrapment drownings after learning about an incident where a child drowned because of hair caught in a swimming pool drain cover. Ashton, Allison’s sister, knew this frightened Allison so she would deliberately scare her by pretending that she was stuck underwater on the drain cover. Ashton’s acting was so good that she terrified Allison.
This fear and perhaps the desire to one-up Ashton for taunting her, propelled Allison to try her hand as an inventor. She entered the Astounding Inventions competition while only in the fourth grade and her pooper scooper with a brush won her the second prize.
Her success drove her to try another invention, a Safe Filter for pools, which included a blade under the pool drain cover that would cut hair or swimsuit straps free should they get sucked into the pool’s suction system. Her prototype used spare parts found at home including a spare pool filter and a blade from a portable heater.
Leaning the mechanics of pool filtration and about how the power of suction to do harm in certain circumstances. Allison figured that suction alone could propel the blade. She also learned that if she used a particular plate above the blade, she could make it cut off any hair or bathing suit material that it might encounter this making it safe for kids.
Safe Filter won Allison, a fifth grader at the time, a first-place ribbon at the city level round of Astounding Inventions. The prize winner caught the eye of a local newspaper photographer and a photo was published of Allison with her blue ribbon and her mom in the city paper.
A lawyer from a local firm viewing the photo was impressed with Allison’s practical and complex prize-winning invention. He contacted Allison’s family and offered to work pro bono to get a patent for the Safe Filter. This was not the only offer Allison received but other companies wanted the family to put up money before developing the product.
Allison and her family learned how slow the patent application process is. Large packets of information kept them apprised of the process. In December 2011, seven years after winning her blue ribbon, Allison became the first Astounding Inventions winner to receive a patent for her Safe Filter. The patent itself is framed and hangs in her family’s home office. Allison hopes her Safe Filter can be manufactured and put into pools to keep kids safe.
Allison is now 18 and attends a local junior college where she plans to complete two years and then transfer to a local university to study law and political science.
