ShareThisPLUMAS LAKE, Calif. - Louis Braille was 12 when he began inventing a system of reading and writing by raised dots.
Thomas Alva Edison was a teenager when he invented a telegraphic repeating instrument.
Tharon Trujillo of Plumas Lake was just 10 years old when he invented a safety gate that helps keep children and pets from falling through sliding screen doors.
It's taken a few years to get the product ready for distribution -- the safety gate will hit stores this month -- but Trujillo has collected a bounty of awards for his innovation and has earned the respect of entrepreneurs, business leaders and teachers.
Not to mention his parents.
In November, he won the Thomas Edison Innovation Award and was one of six young inventors inducted into the National Museum of Education's Student Inventor Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
Yet the 13-year-old wasn't shooting for fame or potential fortune when he developed the Lock N Block Safety Gate.
"You can actually save lives and help someone's family," Tharon said.
Trujillo was watching television in his living room one day when his baby sister, Daysha, tripped on the rug in front of their open sliding-glass door and tumbled through the screen.
Daysha was fine. Her older brother wasn't.
"I told my dad there needs to be a safety gate for the sliding-glass door," Tharon saido.
Father James Tharon and son headed to the family computer and searched the Internet to see if such a device existed. No other safety gates on the market could fit in a sliding- glass door.
So the two went to the garage and built a prototype out of scraps.
Then the boy did something most children wouldn't have the patience to do: He read a book on patenting and attended a patenting seminar at Sierra College by instructor Bob DeMatteis, inventor extraordinaire and founder of From Patent to Profit, an inventor education group.
"Going through (DeMatteis') process is very easy," said Erika Trujillo, Tharon's mother.
Though the patent is still pending on the Lock N Block Sliding Door Gate -- the process usually takes three to four years -- the Trujillos formed a partnership through a licensing agreement with Cardinal Gates, a safety-product company based in Atlanta.
"I saw it as a unique product, something not in the market at all, and just saw the benefits of this product," said Craig Heiser, Cardinal Gates' president.
The gate will retail for about $80 at retailers still to be determined, and will be for sale soon at www.cardinalgates.com.
The Lock N Block, which fits into the track of a sliding-glass door and clamps into place, isn't just a child-safety gate -- it helps keep pets safe too.
It was the first time the company has worked with such a young inventor.
"He's very mature for his age, so it was interesting," Heiser said. "He just has the idea and the passion behind it, and that's refreshing."
But Tharon also is a normal teen, in many ways. He plays on the basketball team at Riverside Meadows Intermediate School, where he is in the eighth grade. He has a girlfriend. His favorite subjects are PE and art. He hopes for a spot in the NBA.
But he also owns three suits. And he looks adults in the eye when he talks to them.
In 2008, the Lock N Block Safety Gate won an innovation award from the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, picked as one of the Top 10 juvenile products that year.
He also snagged another coveted innovation award for his Lock N Block Window Guard from the Juvenile Product Manufacturers Association last fall, beating out more than 100 products for infants and children.
Trujillo is the first child inventor to have won the award and the first one the organization has heard of who invented a product on his own, said Amy Chezem, the association's spokeswoman.
He has been asked to attend the 2010 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards as a guest speaker.
Trujillo has put away some funds for college from his awards; the family declined to say how much the teen might make from sales of the gate.
But his success is unprecedented in the eyes of some experts.
"Tharon is, without question, the single most successful young inventor of that age," said DeMatteis, the inventor and Sierra College instructor. "That's pretty remarkable."
Family support is key. James Trujillo, a stay-at-home dad, and Erika Trujillo, an accounting manager for the California State PTA, negotiate with companies, keep track of Tharon's schedule and run day-to-day operations of the business.
At least one parent travels to events and trade shows alongside their son, who they try to keep grounded with friends and sports.
The sacrifice involved is worthwhile, however, when they look at the confidence and success their son has achieved. And they encourage other parents to follow their lead.
Tharon Trujillo had his own bit of advice for young inventors.
"If you have an invention, follow it through because you never know where it's going to take you in the future," he said.
(E-mail reporter Niesha Lofing at nlofing(at)sacbee.com. For more stories, go to www.scrippsnews.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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