Above: Focus Comic Hero of the year Awards and Graduation Event 2025
Above: Class of 2025 photo
Congratulations to our Focus Comic Graduates and Hero Award Recipients. On May 3rd, we successfully hosted our Hero event in celebration of our free Hero art program which took place during autism awareness month. Over 135 autistic and special needs students throughout Maricopa participated in this program. Free Classes were hosted online, at independent classroom venues all over Maricopa including local schools (Thank you Seeds for Autism, Autism Academy, Litchfield Elementary School District, Rise, Brighton Charter School, Inspire Academies, Dreaming Summit for inviting Yvonne Wan as a guest art teacher to their schools). Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate our students accomplishments, autism acceptance, and honor our local heroes. Congratulations to this years Hero award recipients.
The Focus Comics Hero awards is a celebration honoring local heroes for their courage; sacrifice, selfless service, patriotism, compassion and leadership. It is an honor to present these awards to 5 distinguished individuals for embodying the values and ideals of the nation. Each individual representing a military or first responder category in Arizona.
Focus Comic Hero Award Recipients:
- Hero of the Year Award Recipient 2025: USAF Category: Gabe Howell, Airman, Luke Air Force Base
- Hero of the Year Award Recipient 2025: Fire Fighter and Paramedic: Nathan Mulcock, Glendale Fire Service // Jill Voit, Wildland Fire fighter
- Hero of the Year Award Recipient 2025: Fire Fighter and Paramedic: Jill Voit, Wildland Fire fighter
- Hero of the Year Award Recipient 2025: Fire Service Public Information Officer: Shawn Gilliland, Rural Metro Fire Service
- Hero of the Year Award Recipient 2025: Law Enforcement: Sergeant Amie Duong, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office
Living Legends Award Recipients:
- Aaron Duggins, Fire Chief, Luke Air Force Base
- Mario Santos, Fire Fighter, City of Goodyear
Our heroes were honored by our dignitaries: Aaron Duggins, Fire Chief of Luke Air Force Base and Jeff Gentry, the under sheriff of MCSO, and the Luke Air Force Honor Guard. We thank the Luke Air force honor guard for performing the presentation of colors ceremony and saber ceremony during the national anthem. Thank you Luke Air force base Airman Gabe Howell for singing the national anthem live on stage. Thank you Governor Hobbs for signing certificates of commendations in honor of our heroes.
Check out some of the event photos here:
Click here to see our full photo album. Please email [email protected] for high resolution images.
Thank you MSCO for the CPR demo on how to save a life:
Check out some of the art work here:
Our students learned how to draw and color Focus the autistic super hero and different hero vehicles during autism awareness month. They learned technical drawing skills, water color application techniques, how to develop comic character designs and tell stories through comic art. We are proud to champion young autistic and special needs talent in the community.
Thank you Yvonne Wan for leading this project in terms of organizing it, gifting portraits to our heroes, teaching the students, designing the custom certificates for our graduates (so it resembles a Focus comic cover with our students art on it) and handling the film and editing the photos. Thank you Rural Metro Fire for offering a great venue, providing vehicles for our attendees to explore at the event, donating gifts for our graduates and helping with some of the photography. Thank you MSCO for providing vehicles, and public safety demonstrations for our attendees, some of the photography and donating gifts for our students. Thank you Blick Art Materials for donating art supplies for our graduates to. Thank you Buckeye fire fighters for their support to.
We would like to thank everyone for making this our biggest autism acceptance program to date. Please support us in any way you can so we can continue our good works. We are in need of a corporate sponsor for 2025.
Blessings, Yvonne Wan. Focus Comic Creator. Certified Social Cultural Anthropologist.