Four Pleasanton residents and the Pleasanton Police Officers Charitable Foundation will receive 2023 Juanita Haugen Awards during the annual Pleasanton Community of Character Collaborative luncheon at the Pleasanton Senior Center on Wednesday, May 17.
The foundation will be honored for its commitment to helping needy children and seniors, including the Shop with a Cop program for children from disadvantaged families at Christmas and its contributions to Officers Give Hope, which helps match patients with bone marrow donors, and Miracles for Kids, which provides financial aid, subsidized housing, and counseling for families with critically ill children.
Last year, the foundation also helped fund a program providing backpacks for needy children in the Pleasanton Unified School District (PUSD) and the Adopt a Senior at Christmas program.
Individual awards will be presented to George Bowen, Tina Ghai, Bill Butler, and Todd Utikal.
Butler and Utikal will be recognized for their work on the "Yes on I" campaign to approve a PUSD bond measure, including hosting meetings with individuals and community groups, neighborhood door-knocking, and engaging people at the Pleasanton Farmers' Market.
A former Navy pilot, Butler has also served as a board member for the Pleasanton Cultural Arts Foundation, campaign chair for the Firehouse Arts Center, and youth basketball coach. He is a graduate of the Leadership Pleasanton program and received the first Jenny Doehle award.
Utikal, a member of the Pleasanton Rotary Club, has chaired various committees to raise money for scholarships, wheelchairs, and other nonprofits. In 2020, he started a group called “We are Pleasanton,” raising over $475,000 for projects at Amador Valley and Foothill High Schools.
In 2007, Bowen, a 38-year resident of Pleasanton, helped start the Sacramento-based nonprofit, Impact Teen Drivers, which works with schools and first responders to promote traffic safety education after the death of a friend’s 16-year-old son.
With his own son serving with the Marnes, Bowen also visited hospitalized soldiers and organized a benefit concert with Pleasanton Military Families, a Tri-Valley support group, that raised more than $70,000.
As a second career, Bowen custom builds acoustic guitars. When he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) earlier this year, some of his best-known customers held a benefit at the Bankhead Theater in Livermore for the ALS Cure Project
Ghai is an artist who donates the proceeds from her sales to various charities and individuals without health insurance who need medical treatments. She also drives seniors to the grocery store and doctor appointments and donates school supplies for teachers.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, she coordinated the distribution of 2,000 cooked packets of food for the sick and elderly and sick and had groceries delivered to essential workers, caregivers, and people who lost their jobs. She also stitched 4,000 facemasks for essential workers.
The Juanita Haugen Awards are named for a longtime PUSD board member and community volunteer, Haugen also cofounded the Pleasanton Community of Character program, which encourages the values of responsibility, compassion, self-discipline, honesty, respect, and integrity.
Tickets to the luncheon, which is open to the public and begins at 11:30 a.m., are $45 and available at the Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce website, pleasanton,org.
