Two students from the Porter County Career Center, Rachel Diaz and Ryan Malarik, took first and second place, respectively, for the Drive Safe Chicago PSA contest, sponsored by The National Road Safety Foundation.
Rachel and Ryan, both Portage juniors, are first year students in the Video Production & Media Studies class at the Porter County Career Center in Valparaiso. Each student in the video production class sent in their scripts to the contest, as an assignment.
Rachel Diaz, by taking first place, won $2,000 and had her script produced by Emmy-award winning director Alan Weiss who flew in from New York with other members of his production company last week. With her classmates, Kennedy Starcevich (Boone Grove High School), Sam Miller (Valparaiso High School), Johnny Newell (Boone Grove High School), and Matthew Kiley (Portage High School), Rachel was able to participate in the production of the public service announcement on Wednesday, February 4th, at Portage High School.
Later that evening Rachel helped edit the PSA with members of Weiss’s company. Rachel will be attending a press conference to talk about the contest and her PSA at the Chicago Auto Show on Friday, February 13th. The PSA is set to be shown on local news stations and will premiere at the Chicago Auto Show.
Photo was taken by Bob Phelps