Scholarship Award Winners

In Loving memory of Cara Surace Bluth

2023 Scholarship Award Winners

Cara’s Love announces 2023 scholarship winners

Winners from Atlantic City, Cedar Creek & Oakcrest

Ventnor, NJ – Cara’s Love, a charity founded by the Bluth, Surace, and Schaffer families following the passing of Cara Surace Bluth, an Atlantic County educator who passed after contracting Covid-19 in February 2021 at the age of 45, has selected the 2023 recipients of the scholarship fund created in her memory.

Five recipients were selected from an exceptional pool of applicants. The 2023 Cara’s Love Scholarship winners are:

Jafrin Jenice, Atlantic City High School

Kieralyn Edmunds, Cedar Creek High School

Lauren Ashley Waldron, Cedar Creek High School

Mia Pellerito, Cedar Creek High School

Lillea Soreth, Oakcrest High School

“We are so pleased to recognize these five excellent graduates,” said Joetta Surace, Cara’s mother. “We love that Cara’s legacy will be to help other creative, enthusiastic, and joyful people find their way to the classroom. We saw something of Cara in each of these students’ stories and we are so happy that we will be contributing to their future successes.”

Cara grew up in Port Republic, cheering in Galloway Twp. for the Mustangs, before attending Absegami High School. She earned a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University and worked in Washington, DC for ten years before returning home to pursue a teaching career. While teaching first grade in Atlantic City, she earned a master’s degree in Educational Administration from Stockton University. In 2017, she was named an NJ Governor’s Teacher of the Year winner at Chelsea Heights Elementary School in Atlantic City. Cara was working as a vice principal at Hess Elementary School in Hamilton Twp., a job she loved, at the time of her passing. She was a long-time resident of Ventnor and loved spending time on the beach just blocks from her house.

For more information about the charity, go to www.caraslove.com.

2022 Scholarship Award Winners

Hannah Derringer

Derringer intends to study early childhood education/family science and human development at Montclair State University. Her goal is to be a preschool or kindergarten teacher in a New Jersey public school. The child of educators who worked in Hamilton Twp. Public Schools, where Cara served as a vice principal, she shared many of the sam

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Josiah Casanova

Hannah Derringer

Casanova will study mathematics at Florida Memorial University and hopes to eventually earn a master’s degree as well as a Ph.D. He would like to become a teacher to motivate other students and inspire them to be great. Like Cara, he is very motivated to help children and to make schools a welcoming, positive place where they can explore their interests and learn.

Sarah Flanagan

Hannah Derringer

Sarah Flanagan

Flanagan plans to study secondary special education and biology at The College of New Jersey with a goal of becoming a high school environmental science teacher. Flanagan was inspired to pursue a career in education thanks to her mother, a special education math teacher at Hess Elementary School in Hamilton Twp. Public Schools. She is v

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