Orange Coast College Students Reap Honors

Orange Coast College machine technology students Garth Larwin of Laguna Hills, Ross Tucker of Laguna Beach and Sam Ranca of Garden Grove swept the field in the recent California Skill Olympics in Sacramento.

The performances saw the three students win the gold, silver and bronze medals in the precision machining contest sponsored annually by the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America.

Larwin staged a strong rally on the final day of the three-day competition to win the gold medal. He will compete in the national Olympics in Louisville, Ky., June 21 to 26.

Tucker won the silver medal and Ranca won the bronze medal.

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Dick Yarger of Orange, who volunteers with Rehabilitation Institute of Orange, was named Man of the Year by Soroptimist International of Orange.

Capistrano Beach resident Rose Sparks, a staff pharmacist at South Coast Medical Center, was named Pharmacist of the Year by the Orange County Pharmacists Assn.

Currently the chairwoman of the California Pharmacists Assn. HIV/AIDS Task Force, she was honored for her work at the local, state and national levels on behalf of the Orange County unit.

She has also served on the Laguna Beach HIV/AIDS Advisory Task Force and is currently a committee member of the American Pharmaceutical Public Affairs Committee in Washington.

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Oliver (Newt) Seal of Mission Viejo has been named Elk of the Year by Mission Viejo/Saddleback Valley Elks Lodge, which recently was awarded first place for its public relations program by the California/Hawaii Elks Assn.

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Max Selga, a psychiatric technician instructor at Cypress College, was awarded the Outstanding Individual Occupational Educational Award for 1992/93 by the California Community College Assn. for Occupational Education.

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A family party celebrated the 90th birthday of Rachel Canetti D’Jivre of Santa Ana, who rises daily before dawn to commute by bus to Costa Mesa where she works as a foster grandparent at Fairview State Hospital.

With little education, D’Jivre speaks six languages fluently, according to her niece, Oro C. Carson of Santa Ana.

D’Jivre was born in Turkey but settled in New York City before moving to Santa Ana, where her late husband owned Hollywood Studios, a photography business.

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Nicole L. Peoples, a Huntington Beach resident and graduate of Ocean View High in that community, has been assigned to Paraguay as a Peace Corps volunteer.

The University of Redlands graduate, who earlier was a real estate agent and loan officer, will work in a low-income housing program in the South American country.

“Peace Corps offers me the opportunity to live in a foreign country and use my skills for a community that needs them,” said the 26-year-old Peoples.

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Shannon Prum’s photograph, entitled “Imaginary Eyes,” was awarded first place among 66,000 entries statewide in the California PTA Reflections Contest. Shannon is a sixth-grader at Laguna Road School in Fullerton.

It was her first entry in a photography contest and was judged by professional photographers.

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Florence Martin, a German and French teacher at Pacifica High School in Garden Grove for 13 years, was named California’s Outstanding Foreign Language Teacher by the California Foreign Language Teachers Assn.

The award was presented in front of more than 900 delegates attending the organization’s annual conference in San Diego.

The Costa Mesa resident, who received her degree from UC Berkeley, was nominated for the honor by the Foreign Language Teachers Assn. of Orange County.

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In the May 15 Three Cheers column, the identification under the photographs of Evelyn Weiss and Sharon Ratliffe were reversed. They had been named to an international leadership training program for college female administrators.

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Sharon Towne of Mission Viejo was named Outstanding Physical Therapist of the Year by the Orange County District of the American Physical Therapist Assn., an honor she also received in 1989.