Sixteen-year-old Emily Perez, a Pueblo, CO, Centennial High School sophomore and outstanding member of that school’s track team, was named winner of the Colorado Potato Administrative Committee’s Healthy Choice essay contest.

For her essay entitled “Loving Healthy Colorado Potatoes,” the student athlete received an Adventure Pack valued at $300. The pack contained redeemable gift cards which enable Ms. Perez to continue her “healthy and active lifestyle and having fun at the same time.”

Rivermaid Trading Co. in Lodi, CA, handled sales of stone fruit and other products grown and packed by WesPak Inc. during the 2012 season, following a merger of the two companies’ sales groups April 1, 2012. On Oct. 1, following the end of the shipping season, Rivermaid and WesPak finalized a full merger that brought WesPak into the Rivermaid group of companies and significantly expanded the Rivermaid product line, according to Blair Richardson, president and managing partner of WesPak.

Hothouse-grown cherries were available from California in commercial volumes for the first time this year, according to Jim Hanson, a salesman at Grower Direct LLC in Stockton, CA, exclusive sales agent for O-G Packing Co.

“We have completed the season now,” Mr. Hanson told The Produce News in late April. “We are currently harvesting [field grown] cherries“ out of districts from Arvin to Fresno. The company expected to continue shipping cherries through June, with production peaking out of the northern districts in California late May and June.

When Sam Ingardia was honorably discharged from the Navy in the early 1970s, he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted to do, but he knew he wanted to work for himself.

He went to work in the Southern California community of Costa Mesa where soon a vacant store front opened up next to his place of employment. “My father was in the shoe business but my uncles had a fruit stall in a produce market in Sicily and that sounded like something I could do.”

Mark Carroll, director of produce and floral purchasing and merchandising for Southern California-based Gelson’s Markets, believes that organic continues to be a “good avenue of growth” for any retailer willing to make the commitment.

The Grower-Shipper Association of Central California held its Annual Meeting May 23 at Corral de Tierra Country Club in Salinas. Mark Borman, the Association’s new chairman of the board, was inaugurated at this event in front of more than 75 members and dignitaries.