BOY ADDS PERSONAL TOUCH TO MEMORIAL.

Byline: DIANA PEYTON Community Columnist

Hot Wheels, G.I. Joes and Gameboys are not the only things one little boy from Studio City has been thinking about this holiday season.

Like many others, 9-year-old Tyler Robinson has been mindful of the families affected in the Sept. 11 attacks.

``One night my mom and I were on the Internet looking up the names of the victims, and I said, I hate it whenever the news talks about all these people. ... Can't we do something we can have fun with? I want everyone to remember one of the victim's names,'' he said.

The fourth-grader at Colfax Elementary and his mother, Karen Parks- Robinson, decided to make homemade holiday dough ornaments in memory of the victims.

Painted red white and blue, in shapes of doves and stars, the two wrote the names of victims on each one, starting with fallen firefighters and police officers. Parks-Robinson said their first customers were firefighters from Los Angeles City Fire Station 60 in North Hollywood. They've also sold the $3 ornaments to shoppers at the Studio City Farmer's Market.

``We've sold about 300 so far, and the reactions from people vary. Most are very touched by it,'' Parks-Robinson said.

Money collected from the project will be divided between two of Tyler's favorite charities, the Starlight Foundation and the Widows and Orphans Fund.

On Friday, a fund-raiser was held at Rantz Auto Center in Eagle Rock in memory of Ruben Ornedo, a victim on Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. The boy sold the homemade ornaments with Ornedo's name on them, and proceeds were given to his wife, Sheila, and their unborn child.

Giving attention to each victim's name is a challenge for the two.

``It's a huge project,'' Parks-Robinson said. ``But we just check one list at a time and are doing as many as we can.''

Employees of the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall fulfilled their commitment to give $200,000 to six Conejo Valley Unified School District schools during a Dec. 6 meeting of the Thousand Oaks City Council.

Current donations were presented, bringing their cumulative total for giving since 1999 to $411,425.

Ken Greene is the Auto Mall president.

In the academic world, two women have been selected for positions of distinction, and a donation has been made to California State University, Northridge.

The director of CSUN's National Center on Deafness, Merri C. Pearson, has been appointed by Gov. Gray Davis to the Statewide Independent Living Council for a three-year term.

CSUN student Michelle Renae Druyun has been inducted into the Golden Key International Honor Society.

The Sylmar resident was honored during a campus ceremony.

And a $5,000 donation has been made to university's Family Business Center by the Woodland Hills office of Arter & Hadden, a national law firm.

Rachel Comer of Oak Park has donated $1,000 to LIFE Animal Rescue. The 12-year-old earned the money by selling many of her old books at the Thousand Oaks Kids Swap Meet.

The Medea Creek Middle School seventh-grader spends her Saturdays visiting the rescue's adoption sites at PetsMart in Westlake Village and at Petco in Thousand Oaks, assisting any way she can, until she is eligible to be a volunteer at the age of 13.

She presented the donation at the organization's annual holiday party Dec. 7.

The Platinum Salon on Ventura Boulevard in Encino donated one day's receipts - more than $6,000 - to the Families of Freedom Scholarship Foundation of America.

Organized by Sandy Benson and Ann Benson Segal, the fund-raiser was held in memory of family friend Valerie Silver Ellis, who died in the Sept. 11 collapse of the World Trade Center. The funds will help children and spouses of victims to receive scholarships.