Los Gatos High School students from teacher Sharon Smith's speech and debate program participated in the annual Richard D. King Youth Speech Contest at the Rotary Club of Los Gatos on Feb. 7 at the Los Gatos Lodge.

Students presented a prepared five-minute speech on the topic "reach within to embrace humanity." The topic is the theme for Rotary International during 2011-12.

The winners were:

• Neela Easwar (senior)—first place
• Pryce Turner (senior)—second place
• Amy Gregory (senior)—honorable mention
• Kevin Luu (junior)—honorable mention
• Sean Zdanky (sophomore)—third place

Students earn cash prizes and the opportunity for competition at the Area and District level.

Neela will compete again on Feb. 28 at the Rotary Club of Los Gatos, 12 noon, at the Los Gatos Lodge with first-place winners from four other Area 8 Rotary Clubs.

Rotary District 5170 has about 90 clubs in communities from Oakland to Gilroy. Area 8 has nine clubs in the West Valley.

The Rotary Club of Los Gatos is a community-based service organization with two active groups in Los Gatos and more than 34,000 clubs worldwide with more than 1.2 million members.

The Tuesday afternoon Rotary Club of Los Gatos meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Los Gatos Lodge. Its president is William Piche.

Thank you to Los Gatos Patch readers Marguerite Padovani and Bob Chrisman for sharing this photo with us and helping us obtain this information about this important event. Please send photos and write-ups of your events to share on the site to sheila.sanchez@patch.com. Much appreciated!