October 18, 2007

Blue Cross Names 2007 Angel Award Winners

For their outstanding volunteer service on behalf of Louisiana’s children, eight men and women from across the state have been named the 2007 winners of the Angel Award presented by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana.

A committee of past recipients of the Angel Award, now in its 13th year, considered 75 nominations from throughout the state before selecting Don O’Toole of Monroe, Dicie Gray of Mansfield, Carolyn Stewart of Bossier City, Catherine Tridico of New Orleans, Barry Guillot of Luling, and Lafayette residents Stephanie Bernard, Michelle Crouch and Cory Hebert.

• O’Toole has helped raise funds to grant wishes for terminally ill children in the Monroe region for nearly 21 years.
• Gray is director of the DeSoto Multicultural Center, which helps keep children off the streets with year-round educational and recreational programs.
• Stewart has fostered more than a dozen children whose extraordinary disabilities or problems prevented their placement in regular or specialized foster homes.
• Tridico is a medical student who has been working with disabled and mentally ill children since she was 12 years old.
• Guillot is a middle-school science teacher in Destrehan who created and coordinates the Labranche Wetland Watchers, a nationally recognized service-learning project.
• Bernard sponsors a yearly multicultural youth congress serving between 900 and 1,200 young people from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
• In memory of her only child, Crouch established the Jacob Crouch Foundation with a mission of suicide education, awareness and prevention.
• A 14-year veteran of the Lafayette Police Department, Hebert has played a vital role in fundraising for Stuller Place, which offers support services for sexually abused children.

Each honoree received a $20,000 grant from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation to be donated to a charity that benefits children. The winners were honored at a presentation ceremony on Nov. 12, 2007, at the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center.

The 2007 Angel Award winners join 95 men and women from all walks of life and all corners of the state who have been recognized since the program’s inception in 1995. Past honorees have included coaches, teachers, successful businessmen, a dentist, a mother and homemaker, a former opera singer and soap opera star, a former geologist-turned-public-school-educator and many more, ranging in age from 22 to 93. Grants to the charitable causes chosen by honorees over the years now total more than $700,000.

More information about the Angel Award, including nomination criteria, a nomination form and a searchable database of all past nominees, finalists and winners, can be found online. Learn more

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana is Louisiana-owned and -operated. Marking its 73rd anniversary this year, the company is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. It is a tax-paying mutual company, owned by its policyholders. Headquartered in Baton Rouge, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana also has district offices in Alexandria, Houma, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Monroe, New Orleans and Shreveport. The company’s subsidiaries include HMO Louisiana, Inc. and Southern National Life Insurance Company, Inc.