CHATSWORTH : Teen-Ager Recognized for Ham Radio Work

Elissa Mather’s classmates know her as a freckled 16-year-old cheerleader at Alemany Catholic High School in Mission Hills.

But on airwaves throughout the world, she is known as ham radio technician KB6WDL, one of the youngest members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Disaster Communications Service volunteer radio force.

Mather, who was one of three teen-agers recognized for community service by the Chatsworth Coordinating Council this month, became a licensed ham radio operator at age 10, following in the footsteps of her father, who is also a licensed operator.

Bob Osborn, volunteer coordinator for the Disaster Communications Service, said Elissa is one of a handful of teen-agers in a volunteer force that includes about 300 ham radio operators in the county.

Today, Mather, of Chatsworth, still stays up late to take advantage of clearer frequencies available in the early hours of the morning. She chats with operators in Japan and Europe, calls her father at work and studies Morse code after school in preparation for her next exam.

Her classmates, she said, “think I’m kind of strange,” she said. But rising at 3 a.m. to answer emergency calls for help from the Sheriff’s Department has its rewards, she said.

After the earthquake in San Francisco in 1989 and hurricanes Hugo and Andrew, and during last year’s riots, Elissa and her father Ted Mathers were called into the Calabasas sheriff’s precinct to field calls between emergency service agencies and relatives desperate to know the whereabouts of their loved ones in the absence of phones.

“It can be really stressful,” Elissa said. “But people are very appreciative.”

Elissa, who took the Federal Communications Commission’s Morse code test five times before she finally passed and was awarded her license, has surprised her parents with her determination to succeed in the world of amateur radio.

“With the cheerleading and all that you think she’d be anything but a technical, nerdy type,” said Ted Mather. “But when she sets her mind to something, she’s tenacious.”