Debbie Pearsall, former Newsday intern, 21

When Oceanside High School refurbished its football field with lights for nighttime play but limited it to boys' sports, Debbie Pearsall stepped in and took action, her family said.

She lobbied school officials to let girls use it as well, and before long she was organizing the all-girls Powder Puff touch-football game between juniors and seniors to benefit breast cancer.

"She was a doer," said her father, Keith Pearsall, of Oceanside. The benefit "was Debbie's baby. It had never happened before."

Debbie Pearsall, a former Newsday.com sports intern and a senior at Lehigh University, died Saturday of two pulmonary embolisms. She was 21.

Pearsall was a go-getter who even at her young age had amassed several internships in the field of journalism. She was also the editor of the school newspaper at Lehigh, the Brown and White, a post she landed as a junior, her father said.

Debbie Pearsall made an impact on the campus, he said, particularly with a series of articles she wrote about riding on patrol with campus police -- whom some students did not always think highly of. Pearsall's stories showed how tough their job was, and the stories earned them new respect among many students, Keith Pearsall said.

"She changed the dynamic at Lehigh of how the kids looked at the cops," Keith Pearsall said. "If you walked across the campus, the kids would go out of their way to say hello to her."

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Debbie Pearsall graduated from Oceanside High School in 2008, and was a two-time girls shot put champion in Nassau County. She was recruited to attended Lehigh and was a member of its Division I track and field team.

While in college, she landed internships at The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pa., Men's Health magazine in Emmaus, Pa., News 12 Long Island, and the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, through a Dow Jones News Fund summer program for promising young journalists.

Pearsall "was a fantastic intern, with a dedication to journalism and a cheerful attitude," said Jamshid Mousavinezhad, editor of Newsday.com. "Anyone who knew her will always remember her upbeat demeanor and willingness to help out in any way."

Pearsall is also survived by her mother, Janet, and her brother, Christopher of Oceanside. A service will be held at Gutterman's Funeral Home in Rockville Centre at 10 a.m. Thursday. Burial will be at Mt. Lebanon Cemetery in Glendale, Queens. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the Brown and White, the Lehigh college newspaper, "the paper she loved," her father said.