Times Awards $5,000 Each to 10 Nonprofit Groups

The Los Angeles Times made awards of $5,000 apiece Thursday to 10 nonprofit organizations in the Ventura County and San Fernando Valley area.

The winners were announced at the newspaper’s second annual Community Partnership Awards luncheon at the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills.

“You have been heroes to those whose lives you’ve touched,” the keynote speaker, Gayle Wilson, Gov. Pete Wilson’s wife, told the audience. About 400 people attended, representing a wide variety of charitable organizations.

The winning organizations and their categories were:

* The Ventura County Coalition Against Household Violence, Ventura, which operates a shelter and provides counseling for battered women (social services).

* Little Broadway Productions, Sherman Oaks, which performs musical shows for children in the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County (cultural arts).

* The Antelope Valley Senior Center, Lancaster, which provides services to the elderly. With the grant, it intends to establish a grocery-shopping service (social services).

* The Associated Students AIDS Speakers Bureau at Cal State Northridge, which trains and sends students to speak to classes about acquired immune deficiency syndrome (education services).

* Heads Up, Saugus, which gives therapy on horseback to disabled children (health services).

* The Homestead Hospice and Shelter, whose Pioneer Home in Van Nuys has cared for more than 100 AIDS patients (health services).

* Lancaster United Methodist Church, for an afternoon telephone help line for schoolchildren at home without supervision (youth services).

* The Pledger Counseling Center, Pacoima, which conducts drug-rehabilitation classes and gives hot meals and shelter to homeless addicts. The center was started in 1989 by Clara Pledger, a student at Mission College, using her own money and with help from a faculty adviser (social services).

* The Valley Trauma Center, Northridge, which counsels victims of sexual assault and their families (health services).

* The YWCA of Los Angeles, for an infant day-care center and parenthood classes for students at San Fernando High School (education services).

Jeffrey S. Klein, president of the Valley and Ventura County editions of The Times, presented the awards.

The judges, who picked 10 winners from about 200 applicants, were LeRoy Chase, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of San Fernando Valley; Dr. Jack Fujimoto, acting president of Mission College; Gerald Isom, president of the Transamerica Insurance Group; Joan Dempsey Klein, 2nd District presiding justice of the California Court of Appeal; Marshall C. Milligan, president of the Bank of A. Levy; Carmen Ramirez, executive director of the Channel Counties Legal Services Assn.; Joseph Schillaci, president of Six Flags Magic Mountain, and Sophia Waugh, president of the 34th District PTA.