Group for Retarded Honors Benefactors

Individuals and firms that have shown strong commitment to the Orange County Assn. for Retarded Citizens in Orange were honored at a recent awards program held at Knott’s Berry Farm.

The honorees were Polaroid Corp., Contractor of the Year, and Huntington Beach Montgomery Ward & Co. and La Mirada’s city government, Employers of the Year.

Individuals recognized were Monica Nikles, Brea; Brad Hall and Greg Collins, Anaheim, and Gregory George, Stanley Roach and Karen DeKlotz, Buena Park.

Others honored were Mona Carter, Garden Grove; Glenna Bowen, Orange; Richard Sanchez, Placentia, and Shelly Becarra, Westminster.

Gail Kolsky, for 10 years a counselor and academic adviser at Cypress College, has been named Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year by the school’s Academic Senate.

Kolsky was selected on the basis of student evaluation, comments from colleagues and the recommendation of supervisors.

In addition to developing the college’s Adult Re-Entry Program, she has counseled students in several areas, including career guidance and crisis intervention.

Laguna Hills resident Donna Comny , a loan specialist, has been named winner of the Small Business Administration’s Quarterly ExCel All-Star Award in the Santa Ana District office for quality delivery of the SBA program through teamwork and quality individual performance.

Elizabeth Monette of Brea will spend the summer in Japan on a Youth For Understanding Corporate Scholarship sponsored by Toyota Motor Sales in Santa Ana.

A student at Rosary High School in Brea, Elizabeth was one of 337 U.S. students selected from a pool of 1,300 applicants. She will spend six weeks with a host family.

Orange County Food Service executives Tom Luberski and Ruben Villavicencio, both Placentia residents, were presented “Spirit of Giving” awards from the City of Hope Food Service Division of the Food Industries Circle for the City of Hope.

The awards were presented before 800 people at the Anaheim Marriott. The event raised $244,000 for the City of Hope.

First place and $450 was won by Shari Wilhelmi, an El Dorado High School student, for her essay in the recent American Free Enterprise Essay Contest sponsored by Rockwell International Corp.’s Anaheim/Newport chapter of the National Management Assn.

Tuong-Van T. Le of Valencia High won second place and $350, and Hitem Patel, also of Valencia High, won third place and $250.

The contest theme was “American Free Enterprise and How it Affects the Quality of Our lives.”

Diane Aust, sixth-grade math and leadership teacher at Hewes Middle School in Tustin, was selected Teacher of the Year in the Tustin Unified School District and will represent the district in the 1993 Orange County Teacher of the Year program. She has been a teacher in the district for 17 years.

And Lisa McCrystal Holley of Fullerton, a first-year teacher at Rancho Cucamonga Middle School in Rancho Cucamonga, has been named the school’s Teacher of the Year. She graduated from Claremont College last year.

Laura Amrofell, who lettered in soccer, cross country and track before graduating this year from Foothill High School in Santa Ana, has been awarded the $2,000 David Lee Shanbrom Memorial Scholarship.

Laura is the first athlete in the school’s 29-year history, male or female, to graduate with 12 varsity letters.

The scholarship is named for Shanbrom, a former Foothill High football player who was killed in a freeway accident in 1986.