Erim Gomez remembers the day in 1998 when his sophomore science class at Coquille High School first hosted a guy from Medford to talk about some vague concept called environmental stewardship.

In walked Jim Hutchins, with his silver mane and public-radio voice who was about to disarm the teenagers’ innate distrust of anything adult.

As he spoke about caring for the nearby Coquille River and how those teens were connected to it, Hutchins’ words resonated with the kind of energy that could make reading the phone book sound interesting.

"He walked in with this big smile," says Gomez, now a 21-year-old environmental studies student at Southern Oregon University. "You could see how much he enjoyed teaching about the environment, stewardship and basic biology. But mostly, it was his smile."

"The moment you meet him," Gomez says, "you’re his friend."

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For 12 years, Hutchins has made hundreds of southwest Oregon kids his friends while showing them how and why to notice and care for the natural world around them. Now, it’s the world that is starting to take notice of Hutchins.

The 68-year-old founder of the Oregon Stewardship Program, which is part of the science curriculum in 20 area schools, is the region’s first recipient of a national volunteer award by the Department of the Interior.

The former landscape designer turned full-time stewardship volunteer is one of seven winners of the Bureau of Land Management’s annual "Making a Difference" awards for public service involving public lands.

The agency cites Hutchins for his work with kids doing salmon surveys in Bear Creek, "Fish Watch" projects that help clean up streams, trail restoration, and his hosting of a spring science fair focusing on teenagers improving the woods and waters near their homes.

"What we have here is a really cool guy winning a really cool award," says Cheryl Stanley, the BLM’s Medford District volunteer coordinator who nominated Hutchins for the award.

Most of his efforts are channeled through the Oregon Stewardship Program now present in grade schools and high schools in the five southwest Oregon counties.

Hutchins logs more than 2,000 volunteer hours a year and drives more than 1,000 miles a month to show kids the life cycle of a salmon, how to make a wood duck box and why keeping big trees around streams helps cool and protect all aquatic life.

"I don’t know if any of us ever makes a real difference," Hutchins says. "But one thing I can say is my kids from fourth grade on up know what ‘riparian’ means and why riparian zones are important to the environment."

"I love it," he says. "This is my passion."

Each day the passion spins toward connecting kids to the natural world. One day it’s a field trip to the ocean, another is spent showing the difference between pines and firs or sampling creeks for their temperatures and pH levels. Each lesson, each kid, gets a full dose of his infectious smile.

"He made everything exciting," says Emily Grami, another former Coquille High student. "He even made planting a tree exciting."

Hutchins’ volunteer work first took root in the Illinois Valley in 1992, as the area’s anglers engaged in a spirited debate over whether to close the Illinois River — one of Hutchins’ favorite steelhead-fishing streams — to angling as a form of protection for wild winter steelhead.

"These guys in this meeting ended up yelling and swearing at each other," Hutchins recalls. "I thought someone was going to punch somebody. Then I thought, geez, I’ll just go work with kids."

He set up his "Fish Watch" program at Illinois Valley High School in 1992 to give teens a vehicle for improving the river, which is home to native steelhead that were petitioned at that time for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Realizing anglers couldn’t differentiate between the river’s trout and infant steelhead, the Fish Watch crew eventually pushed through a new angling regulation that bans all fishing in all Illinois River tributaries and all basin waters upstream of Pomeroy Dam.

Not everything is regulatory. Often, Hutchins counts his successes in smaller doses.

"I use the word ‘interconnected’ a lot in class," he says. "If they can do nothing but understand riparian (zones) and feel interconnected to them, then it’s all worth it."

But it comes at a price. Oregon Stewardship, which has been a nonprofit foundation since 1995, operates on a $21,000 annual budget. Grants or donations ranging from a $25 membership to free use of a BLM pickup cover expenses.

Any leftover or extra money goes into college scholarships that helped get kids like Grami and Gomez started in college.

It has helped inspire Gomez. He’s planning graduate work in environmental studies with an eye toward teaching or work in the U.S. Forest Service.

"I really liked being around that guy," Gomez says. "I have great respect for that man."

Gold Beach teacher Kelly Margoli, who has watched Hutchins interact with fourth graders for five years, says Hutchins earns respect from kids like Gomez because he gives it to them first.

"Jim comes in and he has no judgment about them," Margoli says. "He lets them be who they are. The kids feel really safe with him. And I think that’s when learning starts to happen."

Over the years, Hutchins has learned to savor his days.

That’s why he took his 18-year-old son, J.P., to Washington, D.C., earlier this month for ceremonies as one of seven "Making a Difference" award-winners this year.

It’s also why he’ll be back in the classrooms this fall, shattering teenage skepticism and inspiring future Erim Gomezes one smile at a time.

"When I get tired, and when I get tired of kids, I’ll retire," he says. "But I don’t see myself retiring."