Calabasas Students Excel at Spelling Bee

Teen-agers from a small private high school in Calabasas won three first-place prizes in a spelling bee staged Monday night for West Valley high school students by the Woodland Hills Chamber of Commerce.

Viewpoint High School senior Roxana Rafik correctly spelled “gerrymander” to beat 12th-grade competitors from Canoga Park, El Camino Real, Chatsworth and Taft high schools, contest officials said.

Other first-place winners from the 150-pupil Viewpoint High campus were 9th-grader Sloane Karron and 10th-grader Anita O’Neill, who tied with Taft’s Tommy Kim and Chatsworth’s David Hirsch when judges ran out of words for the pair. The top 11th-grade speller was Danny Holste-Lilie of Taft.