Elks reward top students

Thousand Oaks Lodge No. 2477 will celebrate Elks Youth Appreciation Week by honoring its young scholarship and essay winners with a spaghetti and meatball dinner on May 12 at the lodge, 158 Conejo School Road, Thousand Oaks.

Those receiving Elks scholarships are: $500 to Garrett Spiegel of Oak Park High School and Cathryn Boehmer of Westlake High School; $400 to John Schaffer of Oak Park High School and Arti Desai of Westlake High School; and $300

to Ryan Thorsen of Moorpark High School and Natalie Katz, who is homeschooled.

The theme of this year's Americanism essay contest was "What I Feel When I Look Up at the American Flag." This year the lodge received 126 entries from 10 Conejo Valley schools.

The essay winners are as follows:

Division 1 (grades five and six): First place to Amanda Zhoe, fifth-grader at Lang Ranch Elementary School; second place to Jason Blank, sixth-grader at Los Cerritos Middle School; and third place to Ashley Pelaez, fifthgrader at Manzanita Elementary School. All of these students attend Thousand Oaks schools.

Division II (grade seven): First place to Rikesh Patel of Chaminade Middle School in Chatsworth, second place to Jeffrey Zia of Medea Creek Middle School in Oak Park, and third place to Juyea Hoo of La Reina High School in Thousand Oaks.

The awards for the essay contest are a $300 U.S. Savings Bond for first place, $200 U.S. Savings Bond for second place and $100 U.S. Savings Bond for third place.