Debbie Dillon This year's Lew Roth Award winners will be honored tonight, Jan. 25, for their commitment to serving the Simi Valley Unified School District. The award dinner at the Grand Vista Hotel begins at 6 p.m.

The Lew Roth Awards have been given out by the Simi Valley Education Foundation for the last 16 years, in memory of the man who spent 23 years on the SVUSD school board and founded the Simi Valley Education Foundation in 1989.

For the first time ever the foundation is honoring a family- Phil and Mary McPherson and their daughter, Krista- by presenting them with its Legacy Award.

In 2003, at the age of 8, Amanda McPherson lost her life to heart failure related to a rare genetic birth defect.

Through the Amanda McPherson Foundation nonprofit they created, the McPhersons have supplied many elementary classrooms in the district with equipment to support special education students.

Following are the other Lew Roth Award winners:

Debbie Dillon, an English teacher at Simi Valley High for six years, has been working in the district for 32 years. Winning the Lew Roth caught her by surprise.

Jean Gagne "It's a great honor," Dillon said, "I've worked with some amazing people. . . . There are so many teachers doing so much more than I am. It's humbling."

In addition to her English classes, Dillon teaches a Renaissance and a Teachers of Tomorrow class at Simi Valley. She spent 20 years teaching physical education and leadership classes at Sequoia Middle School and six years at Valley View Middle School. She's coached volleyball, basketball, gymnastics and track and field.

Opening the minds of her students gives Dillon, 53, joy.

"The students light up," she said. "Sometimes they don't light up until 20 years later, but they do light up."

For night custodian Jean Gagne, winning the Lew Roth Award is a great retirement gift.

After working for 14 years at Crestview Elementary School, Gagne, 73, plans to step down at the end of the school year.

Patricia Hauser "It's kind of scary, actually," Gagne said about winning the award. "I thought they had the wrong guy."

Camarillo resident Gagne- no relation to former Los Angeles Dodgers closer Eric Gagne- has owned his own landscaping business, managed a restaurant and worked as a subcontractor at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, among other jobs.

In his free time once he retires Gagne hopes to stay physically active and to take up painting with charcoal and acrylics.

"It's a nice award," he said. "It's like the movie- it's one more thing to take off my bucket list. It's a good way to go out."

Patricia Hauser got her first SVUSD position 31 years ago, teaching math at Valley View Middle School.

"It was the fulfillment of a childhood dream," Hauser said. "When I was a little girl, I'd play school and made my sisters be the students when I was the teacher."

Tonight, Hauser, the school district's current coordinator for elementary programs and assessment, will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Simi Valley Education Foundation.

Anthony Karch Raised in Reseda, Hauser, 61, was Santa Susana High's first principal, leading the Troubadours from 1996 to 2001.

"It was a rare opportunity to actually start a school from the ground up," Hauser said. "We started picking our teachers and creating our vision of what we wanted that school to be. It took a lot of hard work, but it was very rewarding."

The Camarillo resident was principal at Sinaloa Middle School from 1991 to1996 and has worked as a counselor and assistant principal in the district.

Katherine Elementary School principal Anthony Karch worked as a teacher and a counselor in Los Angeles Unified School District for 11 years. It took one break to find his way to Simi Valley.

After his position as interim assistant principal in Pacoima ended, Karch applied for the assistant principal job at Garden Grove Elementary.

His wife, June, currently a teacher at Big Springs Elementary, was working at Mountain View Elementary at the time. Karch landed the job, and 10 years later, he's got a Lew Roth Award.

Charlotte Maciel "It's definitely an honor and a privilege," said Karch, who's in his third year as principal at Katherine Elementary. "We all do a great job here. My colleagues, the people I work with, they're all collaborators. I don't know if there's anything in particular I did other than be in the middle of collaborating with the staff."

Karch, 44, spent two years at Garden Grove and five years as principal at Crestview Elementary before coming to Katherine Elementary.

Charlotte Maciel volunteered her time when her children were in school.

Now, she's volunteering again- for her grandchildren.

Maciel, whose granddaughter has moved on to high school, has a grandson in the fourth grade at Katherine Elementary School.

Although she doesn't spend time in the classroom, Maciel, 60, helps teachers make photocopies of lessons if there aren't enough books to go around and also goes on field trips.

Liz Walbridge "I'm elated to win this award," she said. "It's a great honor. It's great to volunteer a second time around."

Maciel has lived in Simi Valley since 1971. For her, volunteering is a way of life, and it's a way to remember one of Simi Valley's finest educators.

"To volunteer, it's always a challenge; there's always something different, something new," she said. "It's a very good feeling to know I can still help out."

Maciel said she still recalls and admires the namesake of the Lew Roth award.

"I remember when Lew Roth sat on the board when my children were in school. He was dedicated to the schooling and education of kids here in Simi. I thought he was a very great, great man," she said.

Liz Walbridge went back to school, just like Rodney Dangerfield.

However, Walbridge, a special education teacher at Wood Ranch Elementary School, went back for a more noble purpose.

When one of her sons qualified for special education schooling, she became interested in the field. She earned a master's degree in special education from Cal State Northridge in 2001 and has been a special ed teacher at Wood Ranch for the last three years.

"(I enjoy) watching the kids progress," she said.

Walbridge, 51, started as an instructional aide in SVUSD in 1998. Later she worked as an elementary special ed teacher in Conejo Valley Unified School District and then at an Oxnard middle school in 2004 and 2005.

The Woodland Hills native finds satisfaction helping elementary students who may have trouble focusing or relating to their peers.

"These are kids who need extra support in language arts or math, and we do a program here where we don't pull the kids out of class; we keep them in the class," she said. "We sit with them while they're in there so they're still getting the core curriculum and they're still with their peers. We are just there to support them."