At its Regular meeting on February 25, 2002, the City Council, acting on a recommendation from the Parks and Recreation Commission, created the Jake Kuredjian Citizenship Award in honor of Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Hagop "Jake" Kuredjian. Deputy Kuredjian was killed in the line of duty on August 31, 2001, while he and other law enforcement personnel were engaged in a shootout with a suspect in Stevenson Ranch. Deputy Kuredjian often worked as an Armenian interpreter for the Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the FBI. The Gold Meritorious Conduct Medal was presented to Kuredjian in 1989, for rescuing a woman from a cliff while stationed in Malibu.
The Jake Kuredjian Citizenship Award is presented annually to recognize those outstanding individual or group who give their time and resources to enhance the quality of recreation programs within the Malibu community. Past recipients of this award have demonstrated a commitment and involvement in addressing some aspect of recreation in Malibu, and in doing so demonstrated the highest level of citizenship, making a lasting contribution to the community.
Past Award Recipients 2002 Doug O’Brien, Joel Castro, Jill & Harold Smith, Maud Ann Sunderland, and Ron Bloomfield 2004 Jack “Papa Jack” Schultz 2005 Tim Biglow, Danny Klein, and Nick Tidy 2007 Bruce Young, Mike Doyle, James Whalen, and Steve Rodriguez 2008 John Paola 2012 Dermot Stoker 2013 Michael Zweig 2014 Steve Ciniglio 2015 Joan House 2017 Bob Stallings 2018 Mike Mulligan and Justine Petretti 2019 Kasey Earnest and Steve Hotchkiss 2020 John Bell and Ellen Reich 2021 Sandy Banducci and Rob LeMond