Ten Paddock employees honored for excellence
Ten employees of Paddock Publications, publishers of the Daily Herald, Reflejos and a variety of specialty publications, were honored Wednesday for their work and dedication to the company and its customers in the company's annual Award of Excellence recognition for 2009.
Each year Paddock honors at least one employee in each department for exceptional service, as well as singling out one supervisor and one part-time worker from throughout the company and one employee who demonstrates a high level of service to the community outside of work.
Winning employees are presented with a check and celebrated at a luncheon with the chief executive officer and other top company officers.
Winners honored Wednesday include:
• Advertising: Multimedia sales representative Karen Blonn, was recognized as competitive, an advocate for her clients, motivated, persistent and someone who gets the job done. Company officials said she exceeded all her annual quotas by spending a great deal of time in the field and working late to process her orders efficiently.
• Circulation: Branch Manager Felipe Gonzales was credited for retaining carriers and keeping turnover low. Supervisors said he gained four additional towns to manage during 2009 and still provided a first-rate level of supervision and customer service. "I just want to be the best at what I do, in anything I do," Gonzalez said in accepting the award.
• Community Service: Financial Operations Manager Greg Foster and his wife, Kim, run a charity called Shorthair Rescue, which earned him the company award named after the late Robert Y. Paddock Sr. The Fosters take in dogs that have been abused, surrendered by their owners or become strays. Then, they evaluate and improve the health of the animals and find them new homes.
• Corporate: Operations Manager Mark Stallings and Philippe Hall, programmer and systems administrator, were honored as a team for their accomplishments in developing and upgrading the Daily Herald's Web site, www.dailyherald.com, and other online operations.
• Editorial: Columnist Burt Constable, who has worked at the company for 28 years, won the award both for his years of service as one of the newspaper's leading writers and for work in 2009 that his supervisors said continued to outpace even many of his previous accomplishments. Constable became a columnist in 1988 to complement the addition at that time of veteran Chicago journalist Jack Mabley's column. Editors called Constable an "exquisite journalist."
• Manager: Sales and Operations Manager Linda Siete was described as a driving force behind the success of Reflejos, a weekly bilingual journal marketed to Latinos in the Chicago suburbs. Display revenue for the publication has been steadily climbing, in a large part, because of her efforts, company officials said. She also spearheaded an effort to develop Mango, a monthly entertainment section in Reflejos.
• Part-time: Mary Ann Shere, who works in the circulation department, earned the award after 30 years of employment with the company. She has been nominated numerous times, company officials said, praising her ability to take an average of 18 calls an hour helping solve customer problems - even to the point of occasionally dropping off papers to a customer on her way home from work.
• Production: Pressroom crew leader Frank Sinkovits has worked at the company for 32 years and taken only one sick day. He tells supervisors that when he is absent, it affects the crew. Company officials praised him as the model for reliability, accountability and trustworthiness.
• Support: Fox Valley Office Manager Sara Ward "does it all," officials say. "There is hardly a department in the company that hasn't benefited from her cheerful willingness to help," said Community News Coordinator Chris Gerke in nominating Ward. "She inputs ad orders for display staff and works with them on special projects, she also helps out the customer service desk with calls, handling dozens of phone calls daily."