By Naomi Tsuang
News Editor
The Manhattan Beach Rotary Club awarded the Sandy Casey Memorial Scholarship to El Camino College student Chinemelum Abada on May 21 in honor of Manhattan Beach Middle School teacher Sandy Casey, who passed away during the Oct. 1 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas.
The Rotary Club and Costa’s Interact Club hosted a benefit concert on Dec. 9 in the small theater to honor the memory of Casey and used the proceeds from the concert to provide a scholarship to a Mira Costa or El Camino College student interested in pursuing a career in special education.
“We wanted to do something to honor [Sandy Casey’s] memory and legacy as a teacher,” Rotary Club member Joel Ruben said. “We tried to do something meaningful in her memory.”
Abada is currently completing her two-year degree at El Camino College and works as a special education teacher’s assistant with the Los Angeles Unified School District and as a volunteer in elementary schools. Abada plans to use the $4,000 scholarship to pursue a teaching credential in early childhood special education at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
“She had the best demonstrated interest and is someone who has experience and wants to carry forward with special education,” Ruben said. “She appreciates the gravity of this honor because she may be the only one that receives it.”
The Rotary Club also presented the annual Manhattan Beach Unified School District Teacher of the Year awards at its meeting, where MBMS honored Casey posthumously as its Teacher of the Year and showed a video that MBMS students made to honor Casey.
“Sandy Casey was a wonderful person,” Ruben said. “We could not have a more impressive person to honor.”
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