A 17-year-old from Tulsa will meet with Oklahoma’s lawmakers in Washington, DC.

He's one of only three Oklahomans to earn the Congressional Gold Medal this year.

It's the highest youth civilian honor awarded by Congress.

As the saying goes, old habits die hard. Drew Ebert's were formed over the past four years.

“I am no longer doing it for the award,” he said. “I am doing it because it's a habit and because I truly want to help other people.”

Through his actions, Drew is now the recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal. 

“I was kind of in a state of disbelief for a while. I had to recheck the numbers and make sure everything added up because I have been working on it for four years,” he said.

To earn the award, Drew had to meet the program’s requirements: 400 hours of community service, 200 hours of personal development, 200 hours of physical fitness, and a five-day expedition.

He started working toward his goal when he was 13.

In those years, Drew volunteered at the food bank, shadowed people in different careers, including meteorologists at News On 6, and even went on a 21-day hiking trek.

“That's a lot of physical fitness hours,” he said.

While he's happy to see the hard work pay off, Drew says it's more about the lessons he learned along the way.

“It didn't really click in until a long time after I started just how long it would take me and the time it did, it had become a habit to just keep doing it, but I think even then I would have been really pleased with how much this program really changed me,” said Drew.

His path does not end here because those habits will stick beyond the gold medal.

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