With Valentine’s Day rapidly approaching, many members of the Palo Alto community will experience an urge to recognize their sweetheart. Rather than buying chocolate, the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) for Special Education in the Palo Alto Unified School District is preparing to recognize its sweethearts by organizing its second annual Sweetheart Awards, which will be presented on Monday, Feb. 13.

The Awards are a unique opportunity for community members such as teachers, parents or students to give their thanks to special individuals who have in some way helped a child with special needs. The winners of the award receive a “CAC Sweetheart Certificate,” recognition, and the actual letters used to nominate them.

The Awards were established last year when a good friend of CAC’s chairman who lives in Massachusetts told of the truly touching tales of her own group’s Belmont Special Education Advisory Council Appreciation Awards.

“I shamelessly stole their idea and our own ‘CAC Appreciation Awards’ were born,” said Tina Underwood, chairman of the CAC steering committee and organizer of the Second Annual CAC Sweetheart Awards. “Since it was so close to Valentine’s Day, we simply decided to rename it the ‘CAC Sweetheart Awards.’”

According to Underwood everyone nominated for the award wins, creating 64 winners for the 2006 Sweetheart Award, up 10 candidates from last year’s 54. Five of these winners were nominated twice, and seven or eight were nominated both this year and last year.

While the candidates know that they have been nominated for the Sweetheart Award, they will not know who nominated them, nor the reason for their nomination until the night of the awards show, when their nomination letters will be read. The letters are typically heartwarming because of their genuine feeling, which result in a tearful and sentimental atmosphere. This sense of gratitude was clearly expressed and felt by all at last year’s CAC Sweethearts Awards.

“At the beginning of the ceremony, the audience was asked to hold their applause in order to save time,” according to a brochure distributed by PAUSD. “As the first nominee came up to receive her award, it was clear that it was impossible not to applaud.”

This year’s CAC Sweetheart Awards ceremony is open to the public, and the group is expecting to attract an immense crowd.