COUNTYWIDE : 2 Student Essayists to Ride Rose Float

Two Orange County students will take their places on a Rose Parade float before a television audience of more than 300 million people on New Year’s Day as a reward for their commitment to community service.

This week, Magda Soto, 17, of Santa Ana and Elizabeth Crawford, 13, of Newport Beach won trips to the annual parade in Pasadena after winning essay contests. They won first-place awards for their essays that explain why community service is important.

The essay contests were sponsored by IBM, on whose float Soto and Crawford will ride with six other student winners from San Diego and Los Angeles counties.

“We want to help the schools encourage children to get involved in their community,” said IBM spokeswoman Nancy Beverage.

On Thursday morning, as she sat in French class at Saddleback High School, Soto heard the names of the contest finalists announced over the intercom. Then, school and IBM officials entered the classroom and handed her a bouquet of roses and congratulated her for winning. She stood, speechless, as her classmates clapped and cheered.

Soto competed against 49 other 12th-graders in her school’s essay contest.

Soto, a UNICEF volunteer and a member of the Key Club and several other school organizations, said later: “I think it’s good to be recognized for community activities and to let people know that they should be involved in groups. It helps everyone. It betters the community, and no one loses if you’re a volunteer. People just gain from it.”

In her essay, Soto described a world in which no one helped anyone else and people were left to take care of themselves. “I do not want this to happen,” she concluded.

“I figured that if I do not get involved in the school, then I can not complain to anyone about the problems it has,” she wrote.

Crawford, an eighth-grade student at Horace Ensign Intermediate School, was announced as a winner during Wednesday’s noontime assembly.

Twenty-four finalists were introduced out of 131 Horace entrants. Crawford’s mother burst into tears as her daughter was named the winner and was given a dozen red roses. Then, dozens of students raced to hug and congratulate their schoolmate as she stood in disbelief.

Crawford’s winning essay described how she will collect “leftover” items from garage sales in her Balboa Peninsula neighborhood to give to the needy.

“By allowing me to collect and distribute unwanted items of clothing and household goods, the people of the community will have a chance to look into their closets and garages and then into their hearts and give to those in need--through me,” she wrote.

“I like helping people in need, because they should have things like the rest of us do. They shouldn’t be left out,” Crawford said Thursday.

The two Orange County girls will sit atop IBM’s Tudor-style country home float with a bridge decorated in cedar bark, crushed sweet rice, strawflowers, roses, and poinsettia petals.