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2026 PLV Scholarship Winner Ella Fogle on Finding Purpose and Belonging Through Music
Each year, choosing a recipient for the Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship reminds me just how much strength can exist behind a young person’s accomplishments. This year, I am pleased to introduce our 2026 PLV Scholarship winner, Ella Fogle. Ella’s application stood out to us for its honesty, resilience, and hope. She wrote candidly about living with mental health struggles, enduring bullying, feeling alone, experiencing financial hardship, and growing up in a home marked by conflict. But at the heart of Ella’s story was something else: music. Ella spent part of her childhood in Victorville, California. On weekends, her mother would pile Ella and her younger siblings into the car…
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2026 Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship
Graduating high school seniors in Orange County, California, are welcome to apply for the 2026 PLV Scholarship. I founded the scholarship in 2019 in loving memory of my mother, Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (1952-2014). The PLV Scholarship seeks to honor Patricia’s kind and giving spirit by supporting a graduating high school senior who has demonstrated academic excellence and overcome personal hardship or adversity. I welcome you to read more about my mother’s life and legacy in my inaugural PLV Scholarship post. Since 2021, this scholarship has been completely self-funded. Anyone who wishes to contribute to the scholarship fund to honor my mother and give back to the community can email me at…
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2025 PLV Scholarship Winner Fares Nassar on Immigrating from Syria and Rebuilding His Life in Orange County, CA
I am honored to introduce this year’s Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship recipient: Fares Nassar, a remarkable young leader whose integrity, resilience, and unrelenting pursuit of education embody the spirit of this award. Born and raised in Aleppo, Syria, Fares’s early life was marked by extraordinary challenges. As civil war swept across the country, he endured power outages, water shortages, missile strikes, and the loss of friends to both violence and migration. His family was displaced multiple times, and the world he once knew turned into one of survival and uncertainty. Yet amid the destruction, Fares sought light: through faith, through the hymns of his church choir, and through a…
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2025 Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship
Graduating high school seniors in Orange County, California, are welcome to apply for the 2025 PLV Scholarship. I founded the scholarship in 2019 in loving memory of my mother, Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (1952-2014). The PLV Scholarship seeks to honor Patricia’s kind and giving spirit by supporting a graduating high school senior who has demonstrated academic excellence and overcome personal hardship or adversity. I welcome you to read more about my mother’s life and legacy in my inaugural PLV Scholarship post. Since 2021, this scholarship has been completely self-funded. Anyone who wishes to contribute to the scholarship fund to honor my mother and give back to the community can email me at…
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2024 PLV Scholarship Winner Beatriz Palacios on Growing Up in a First-Generation Family & Overcoming an Eating Disorder
I am thrilled to introduce Beatriz Palacios, the winner of the 2024 PLV Scholarship and a graduate of Foothill High School in Tustin, my mother Patricia’s alma mater. Earlier this month, my husband Shawn and I had the pleasure of meeting Beatriz in person at a café in Irvine. Putting a face to her application reaffirmed our decision. We were moved by her heartfelt expression of gratitude and inspired to learn more about the forces that have shaped her — both the hardships and the incredible triumphs. From the time she entered elementary school, Beatriz felt driven to achieve, harboring what she described as “hidden expectations” of herself in her…
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2024 Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship: Ten Years Remembered
This spring, it will have been five years since the creation of The Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship, the eponymous scholarship that I founded in my mother’s loving memory (1952-2014). This May will mark 10 years since her passing — a decade that has been both reflective and transformative, not just for me but for all whose lives have been touched by my mother’s legacy. Patricia’s spirit of compassion and generosity continues to live on and inspire others, even so long after her departure. I welcome you to read more about my mother’s life and enduring impact in my inaugural PLV Scholarship post. Last March, my mother’s mother Irene Vermeulen…
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2023 PLV Scholarship Winner Anita Tun on Political Advocacy & Activism
On a sunny afternoon in late June, my husband Shawn and I met with 2023 PLV Scholarship winner Anita Tun, a graduate of Yorba Linda High School. After reading about her and her family’s unique and harrowing life experiences and consequent resilience in her powerful application essay, we were honored to have the opportunity to meet with Anita at a local coffee shop to get to know her better and hear more about her plans to study Global Affairs and International Business at Georgetown University. Anita was soft-spoken, respectful, and insightful beyond her years; it was immediately clear to us that we had selected a scholarship recipient who was committed…
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2023 Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship
Graduating high school seniors in Orange County, California are welcome to apply for the 2023 PLV Scholarship. I (Ann-Margaret Mercier) founded the scholarship in 2019 in loving memory of my mother, Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (1952-2014). The PLV Scholarship seeks to honor Patricia’s kind and giving spirit by supporting an outstanding young man or woman who has overcome personal hardship or adversity. I welcome you to read more about my mother’s life and legacy in my inaugural PLV Scholarship post. Since 2021, this scholarship has been completely self-funded. Anyone who wishes to contribute can email me at plvscholarship@gmail.com. Please note that while your donation is not tax-deductible, you can rest assured that…
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2022 PLV Scholarship Winner Aran Zakeri
I am pleased to announce Aran Zakeri as a 2022 winner of the PLV Scholarship.
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2022 PLV Scholarship Winner: Natalie Salvatierra on OCD, Anxiety & Striving to Make an Impact
Our second PLV Scholarship winner this year is Natalie Salvatierra, a recent graduate of Foothill High School in Tustin. My mother Patricia — in whose loving memory this scholarship program was founded — graduated from Foothill in 1970. There’s another parallel, too, connecting our paths: as individuals with lived experience of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), both Natalie and I have a keen interest not only in mental health, but in spreading hope and awareness to those who struggle. Having just returned from the International OCD Foundation’s (IOCDF’s) annual in-person conference in Denver, I was delighted to meet Natalie for coffee one sunny afternoon in mid-July. IOCDF conferences are unique…
