Classmates

Not Your Long Island Stereotype
By Cara Schweikert

Hillary Trautmann stands a mere 5’2 and is attractively petite but embodies a persona that is larger than life. She has dark brown-wavy hair and chestnut colored eyes. She comes from a Polish, Bulgarian, German and Italian background, a mix of different ethnicities but says that her family is “extremely Americanized.”

Born and raised in Roslyn, Long Island, she is not the typical Long Island stereotype, you know the type, bleach-blond hair, shallow, fake, “spoiled little rich girl”. Trautmann is unique in every sense of the word. She is independent when it comes to her style and character, an individual who, “doesn’t try to be fake, and I don’t wear what everyone else is wearing just because it’s expensive or “in”. She is a modest, free spirited individual when it comes to her religious beliefs, relationships, and just her everyday way of thinking.

Trautmann was born on August 18, 1986 to Jodi and Adrian Trautmann and has an older brother whom she “gets along with pretty well.” Her mother is a paralegal who she describes as, “very caring and supportive, I tell her almost everything.” Her father, however is physically “non-existent”, her parents divorced when she was three and she has not seen him since she was seven years old. She says he “calls occasionally on my birthday, but not every year and never on the right day.”

She describes the town in which she grew up as, “a very Jewish community, wealthy, and I am neither of those.” Until age six she says, “I was pretty quiet, after that I became very wild and talkative.” Her favorite childhood memory was hanging out with neighborhood friends who she remains in contact with, “a handful of them.” Her worst childhood memory, “My dad.”

Now she is a full time student at Marymount Manhattan College and works as a delivery driver for “Hunan Taste” a Chinese restaurant, which she says, “the money is good.” Her major focus is becoming a journalist for a major newspaper or magazine such as Vogue, Elle, or NY Times and after reading her Diversity Story, “Making a Choice: Family Over Career” she appears to be well on her way.

She is currently involved in a serious relationship with her boyfriend, “Brett” whom she has been with for the past three years. “He is pretty great and we are very supportive of each other.” She also says she believes in love at first sight because that’s how she and Brett “ended up together”.

One thing that she has learned from her past relationships, “is that you are with different people throughout your life that compliment you at that time. Then, that love may fade, but that’s the reality. You can’t be scared to hurt someone’s feelings if you don’t want to be with them anymore because you have to do what’s good for you.”


Her relationship with Brett is “natural and we don’t push things, we understand one-another.” She hopes to be married once her career is established and she plans to have kids when she is financially stable because she, “wants to spend as much time with the kids as possible”.

Trautmann’s religious beliefs are pretty much as open-minded and accepting as her persona. She says, “I don’t think I believe in God, but I do believe in Karma to an extent, if you are a good person, good things will happen to you, and if you are a bad person, bad things will happen to you.”

Is there something about her family, herself, or her significant other that she has always wanted to know but never asked, “I’ve always wanted to know why my father doesn’t want to be in my life. My parents divorced when I was young and at first my brother and I continued to see him, but by the time I was about seven we just stopped seeing each other. I guess I’d like to ask him why it isn’t important to him to know his own children.”

Trautmann says she is proudest of the fact that, “I guess that I’m not easily influenced by other people and I’ve always been told that I have a good head on my shoulders”.

That is clear as day.