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# Elks Lodge honors Drug Awareness essay and video contest winners
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/community-briefs-20051031/
- Published: 2005-10-31T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T08:05:54.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Community, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*COMMUNITY BRIEFS*

Lawson Desrochers was last week’s mystery photo winner. Desrochers accurately described that this photo was taken outside Chez Jay. Desrochers has won a Santa Monica Daily Press baseball cap. Check out today’s edition for this week’s mystery photo contest. ly hosted an awards dinner honoring the winners of the Drug Awareness Essay Contest, the Drug Awareness Video Contest and the Soccer Shootout.

The theme of this year’s essay contest was “How Can I Keep a Friend off Drugs?”

The winners were Ruhi Bhalla, fourth grade; Juan Carlos Ruiz, fifth grade; and Lauren St. John, sixth grade. Each winner read their essay.

Lisa Meinhart, Drug Awareness chairman, gave a brief history of the types of drug awareness and education programs conducted by the Elks. Since the inception of the program in 1986, there have been millions of pieces of information distributed and thousands of youth conferences, peer leadership groups, drug-free parties, and essay contests conducted by more than 2,000 Lodges in the United States.

“We (the committee) had a difficult time choosing the winners because every essay had a special message,” Meinhart said.

There was a special essay written by 15-year-old Gabriella Koenig. Koenig was in Mexico with the Santa Monica Rotary Club building houses for the less fortunate families. Her poem was distributed to all those present.

The winners of the video contest were Kelly Wong, writer; Spice Walker, producer; Emilie O’Neil, director; and actors Chasin Bennett, Eran Bennett, Kamari Carter, Sky Krohen, Marie Perez, Tyler Anderson and Diego Aguirre. The video was then shown.

Seahorse Awards were presented to Aaron Young, M. E. Raco, Kendra Moore, Dominique Holland, Armando Diaz, Cassandra Black and Grady Sain in recognition of their support of all of the drug awareness programs.

In the Soccer Shootout, older division (ages 11 to 13) the winners were Ruben Radas, first place; Jack Lim, second place; and Jeremiah Hunt, third place. In the younger division (ages 8 to 10), Ricky Alba, first place; Alija Lee, second place and Dionte Willias, third place.

For more information call (310) 645-8989.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 31, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/103105.pdf?ref=smdp.com)