2 Students Win Community Awards
Two Orange County students were named top state winners in the national Prudential Spirit of Community Awards.
Jon Wagner-Holtz, 16, and Richard Hiatt, 13, were chosen from more than 11,000 students nationally for their self-initiated community service activities. The insurance company and the National Assn. of Secondary School Principals present the awards annually.
At age 11, Wagner-Holtz, now of Mission Viejo High School, founded a nonprofit cancer support group for young people called Kids Konnected. It was his way of coping with news that his mother, Robyn, had breast cancer. The group now has 18 chapters in 12 states.
Hiatt, of McAuliffe Middle School in Los Alamitos, organized a walkathon that raised $15,000 for Children’s Cancer Center at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.
The two teenagers were given $1,000 and a silver medallion and will compete this May with 104 middle and high school students from across the nation in Washington to become one of 10 national youth volunteers of the year.
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