Superior Court Judge Sheila F. Pokras has...

Superior Court Judge Sheila F. Pokras has been appointed supervising judge of Los Angeles County’s South District branch court in Long Beach. Pokras, 50, is the first woman to hold such a post and will direct 10 other judges. After serving as a municipal judge for six years, she was appointed to the Superior Court bench in 1980.

Joseph A. Farina has been elected presiding judge of Los Cerritos District Municipal Court for 1986. Farina, the presiding judge in 1983, was appointed to the bench in 1980. He was an attorney practicing in the city of Bellflower for 13 years. In 1983, he received an award as Municipal Court Judge of the Year from the Southeast Bar Assn.

Rio Hondo College sophomore Suzette Jean Sampley has won the Wall Street Journal Award for excellence as a student in business administration. The Whittier resident has been on the dean’s list and honor roll in all three of her semesters at the community college, and is a senator for the Associated Student Body and a member of Alpha Gamma Sigma, the academic honor society.

Gregory Fosmire, 18, a senior at La Mirada High School, was named a winner of the 1985 National Council of Teachers of English Achievement Award.

Fosmire was nominated by his English teacher, Eleanor Jackson, in January. Each nominee submitted a sample of his best writing and an impromptu essay. The writing award, which has been conducted by the council since 1958, is given to outstanding high school seniors, who are then recommended by the council to college and universities for admission and scholarship aid. He was one of 88 students in California to win the award.

William Vasquez of Orange has replaced Curly Critzer as Bell’s parks and recreation director.

Critzer, who worked for Orange for 17 years, the last six as director, recently retired at age 65. The Bell resident will pursue various hobbies, such as gardening, golfing and raising koi and exotic birds.

Antoinette Bernard has been awarded a certificate of appreciation from the Bellflower City Council for her service to the city’s senior citizens. Bernard was president of the Thompson Park Senior Citizens Club in 1984.

Chetan Mehta, 16, a senior at Cerritos High School, was honored recently by the ABC Board of Education for his perfect Scholastic Aptitude Test score of 1,600. He was one of only eight students to achieve a perfect score out of more than 1 million who took the test nationwide during the 1984-85 testing period.

Dr. Edward Mongan, chairman of the department of medicine at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center, will be a guest speaker at the First International Conference on Rehabilitation of the Handicapped in the People’s Republic of China, to be held next month in Peking. The conference is being sponsored by the China Welfare Fund for the Handicapped, an agency established to allow the 20 million disabled people in China to fully participate in society and speed the development of welfare services for them. Mongan will discuss the rehabilitation process--who is involved, how to do it, and the results, design, implementation and time requirements of a rehabilitation plan.

Leslie Robinson of Paramount High School won first place as drum major during the South Gate Christmas Parade. The school’s 50-member marching band, directed by Doug Fisher, and the 30-member Pirate drill team, received second-place awards for their performances in the parade.