‘Cream of the Crop’

Jerome Gooch already credits Amgen with saving his life. Now, the Thousand Oaks biotechnology company has done a little bit more.

Gooch was one of five local educators recognized by Amgen on Wednesday for teaching excellence. The award program, in its ninth year, carries a cash prize of $10,000 per winner and is bestowed on primary and secondary school teachers in Ventura County.

Gooch, a teacher at Gateway Community School in Ojai, said his non-Hodgkins lymphoma recently went into remission, in part because of an Amgen product, Neupogen, that elevated his white blood cell count and allowed him to safely continue his chemotherapy treatments.

“Because of Neupogen, I was allowed to leave the hospital after being there a month and go home,” Gooch, 58, said.

Two of his students, Brent Stafford and Jessica Stogsdill, both 16, secretly nominated him for the prestigious award in January.

“He makes school worth coming to,” said Brent, who said he has accumulated enough credit for his diploma but still attends the county-run school because of Gooch.

The other Amgen winners are Javier Gomez, a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher at Haydock Intermediate School in Oxnard; Aleta Lepper, a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary School in Ventura; Betsy Potts, a 12th-grade English teacher at La Reina High School, a Catholic girls’ school in Thousand Oaks; and Miriam Ritchey, who teaches fourth-grade at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School in Thousand Oaks.

This year, Amgen received more than 1,000 letters nominating 463 teachers. The five winners were chosen by a panel of three judges, who based their decisions on the recipients’ positive effect on students, parents and other educators, a spokeswoman said.

This year marked the first time that private school educators won.

“Every year, we always get the teachers with the greatest stories,” Amgen spokeswoman Charron Smith said. “They’re the cream of the crop.”

Amgen is the county’s largest private employer, with more than 4,000 workers at its Thousand Oaks headquarters.

Haydock teacher Gomez, who also runs an after-school program five days a week at Inlakech Cultural Arts Center in Oxnard, said colleagues from the center nominated him.

“I was surprised and very delighted,” said Gomez, 49.

He said he plans to use the award money to pay for new mariachi costumes for the students at the cultural arts center. Gomez, who described Inlakech as a Mayan term that means respect for yourself and others, said he tries to incorporate that philosophy into his teaching at Haydock.

“Respect is a key concept that junior high kids need to understand,” said Gomez, who teaches bilingual social studies, mathematics and journalism.

At Lincoln school, Principal Valerie Chrisman said she nominated Lepper because of her dedication to teaching.

“It’s not just a job to her,” Chrisman said. “It’s a calling.”

Lepper, who has a master’s degree in gifted education, teaches a cluster of gifted children in her fourth- and fifth-grade class.

She missed a gathering of the award winners Wednesday evening because she was returning from a fifth-grade class field trip to Santa Catalina Island.

“I can’t think of a more rewarding career,” she said in a written statement.

Ritchey, 65, who is retiring this year after teaching for 13 years at St. Patrick’s, also was modest about winning. She said she didn’t even know she had been nominated.

“I was completely shocked, I didn’t expect anything,” Ritchey said.

One of her students, 9-year-old Natalie Kamajian, praised her teacher.

“She explains things so younger kids can understand,” Natalie said. “And when she uses big vocabulary words, she explains what they mean.”

Potts, a 26-year English teacher at La Reina High, said she had been nominated for the Amgen award before but had not won. This year, she said, she was caught off-guard. She attributed her repeated nominations to her subject.

“We English teachers have this special thing,” she said. “We get to know our students’ hearts and souls.”

When she heard that she had won, her “first thought was I should go buy some Amgen stock.”

Now she plans to use some of the money to fly her family members to town for the awards ceremony May 2 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and to contribute to a scholarship fund for graduating seniors.

Gooch also thought of Amgen stock when he heard he had won. An avid investor, he said he already had purchased some when the market was down last week.

“Now, i’m going to go buy some more,” he said.