Special Teacher Gets Sweet Summer Send-Off

A student candy sale at Canoga Park High School had an unusually sweet ending this week--for a teacher.

Teen-agers forfeited the individual prize incentives they won for selling candy bars to earn a Hawaiian vacation for a foreign-language teacher they look upon as a surrogate father.

A group of 150 students pooled the sales credits from more than 3,000 bars to surprise instructor Rudy Lugo and his wife with travel tickets.

“He’s kind of the dad of the campus,” said 17-year-old Mike Vazquez, who helped organize the sales campaign, which was kept secret from Lugo. “He’s the person you go to to talk to when you’ve got a problem. He knows the way we relate to things.”

Lugo is a 1965 Canoga Park High graduate who returned in 1972 to teach Spanish and coach several sports teams. Since then, his compassion for the school’s 2,200 students has become something of a campus legend, say teen-agers there.

“He’s the first teacher I heard about when I came to this school,” said 11th-grader Debbie Bass, who said she has never taken one of Lugo’s classes but has frequently turned to him for advice.

“I don’t think there’s one student in this school who isn’t comfortable around him. He’s a giver, not a receiver.”

Bass, 17, said she sold 30 of the $1 chocolate bars to help with the Hawaiian trip.

Senior Mike Murata, 18, hawked 60 bars to his family and neighbors. “I’m proud to have been one of those involved. There were a lot of tears when we gave this to him,” said Murata, who is on Lugo’s wrestling team.

Keri Cohen, the student body president, sold 30 bars. “They were hard to sell too, because the whole school was selling them as a fund-raiser,” she said.

Cohen, 18, said she joined in because Lugo is a good teacher as well as a good friend to students. She has taken Spanish classes from him for three years.

“If you’re doing bad in class, he takes time to explain the lesson to you on your own. He’s almost doing everything except taking the test and doing the homework for you,” she said.

“He’s going to get eight days and seven nights, air fare and hotel accommodations for two, and a lei greeting upon arrival,” Cohen said, describing the gift to Lugo.

School officials said the 150 youngsters earned the trip by giving up personal sales-incentive gifts for themselves. Depending upon the amount of candy sold, those gifts included sports watches, school pins, stereos, video recorders and use of a limousine for the senior class prom--which will be tonight at the Bonaventure.

$14,000 Raised

Lugo was not the only one to benefit from the candy sales campaign. Students sold 28,000 candy bars in all, raising $14,000 that will be used for such things as new band uniforms, athletic equipment and extracurricular activities, school officials said.

Lugo said he was flabbergasted Friday by his good fortune--and by news that students had also arranged child care for his two children when he takes his vacation this summer.

“I had no idea they were doing anything like this. My wife, Nancy, and I had planned to take our honeymoon in Hawaii but couldn’t because we spent so much on our wedding,” he said. “I’m really blessed.”

Principal Ted Siegel said he has never known of students treating a teacher to a vacation trip.

“I’ve heard of teachers being honored in lots of ways, but nothing like this. There’s a lot of love here, and it’s a both-ways thing,” Siegel said.