Marlene Chavez, winner of the Steven Tamaya Scholarship Award, is the editor-in-chief of La Cima magazine at Rio Hondo College in Whittier.

Marlene Chavez loves working in media. She is finishing up her Associate of Science degree in print media, and will be taking statistics and courses in Mexican culture this fall.

But she didn’t limit herself to print. Chavez completed two internships, one at MTV and another more recently at KROQ-FM radio.

“I really liked being at MTV because there are so many networks there, and they also own Myspace,” Chavez told me. So, add social networking media to her still young college career.

A few posts back, and in a column in the newspaper, I wrote about the death of my friend and a former political reporter and legislative aid and governmental affairs officer Steve Tamaya 10 years ago this month, on July 3, 1999. A scholarship was set up at Rio Hondo College in Steve’s honor. I thought it would be informative to those who knew Steve to let people know how the scholarship is helping young people with their media careers.

I was more than overwhelmed when I went to Rio Hondo College a week or so ago and met Marlene, who was working on La Cima in Prof. John Francis’s class in the college up on the hill overlooking the San Gabriel (605) Freeway. Marlene is a bright, personable student who will be a media star someday.

She has plans to continue her media studies in public relations at Chapman University in Orange. She is excited about taking those classes within the major emphasis she has chosen.

Also at Rio Hondo that day I met Elan Lopez (pictured below) who was working on a new publication called Today’s Whittier magazine. Lopez was enthusiastic about his work and told me about the kind of lifestyle features (restaurant reviews, etc.) in the publication.

Donations can be made to the Steven Tamaya Scholarship Fund at Rio Hondo College in care of: The Rio Hondo College Foundation, 3600 Workman Mill Rd., Whittier 90601.