People

Spotlight on achievers

Lynn Becktold

Professor of English at Saddleback College, Mission Viejo

Becktold has been elected secretary of the English Council of the California two-year colleges. The council presents the concerns of community college English departments to policy-making groups and promotes excellence in English instruction.

The group also sponsors statewide conferences and has representatives on state government committees.

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James Lemmerman

Deputy sheriff, San Juan Capistrano

He was named by the City Council as deputy of the year for 1994. Lemmerman, with an expertise in narcotics, has served as a deputy in the city for the past four years.

In a recent one-year period alone, Lemmerman was involved in more than 60 drug-related arrests and 78 felony criminal arrests. He was unanimously nominated by his supervisors for the city’s Deputy of the Year award.

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William M. Reitzell

Charter member of the city’s Associated Senior Action Program, San Juan Capistrano

Reitzell was recently honored by the City Council with a community service award for coordinating special events for the Associated Senior Action Program. As coordinator, he arranges for senior volunteers to help work crowd control and traffic control at special city events.

He is also part of a van patrol that issues citations to illegally parked and abandoned vehicles.

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Greg Bills

Instructor at Irvine Valley College

Bills recently published his first novel, “Consider This Home,” a story about a woman raised in a Mormon community in rural Utah who marries a religious zealot. Bills, a graduate of the UCI graduate writing program, was raised in Midville, Utah, near the setting of his novel. The Corona del Mar resident says his book is not an attack on religion, but it does question the relationship between women and the church. The locale for his next novel is Irvine.

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Mario Reyes

Secretary, Tustin High School’s counseling department

Reyes recently received the Outstanding Contributions to Education award from the Orange County Department of Education for his work as an interpreter. He translates school documents and letters into Spanish and helps produce a newsletter for parents. Reyes has been with the Tustin School District for the past three years, and served as a bilingual aide and secretary at Columbus Tustin Middle School.

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Pat Ward Williams

UC Irvine associate professor

of fine arts

Williams recently was awarded a $20,000 Visual Artist Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Williams will use the grant money to travel to South Africa for a photographic project.

--COMPILED BY LESLIE WRIGHT WITH JEFF BEAN AND RUSS LOAR