When his name was spoken before the crowd, Richard Trahan was so stunned he couldn't move from his seat.

Somebody grabbed his arm, yelling "Get up! Get up!"

Trahan had been summoned to the front of a convention hall in Reno, Nev., where he was spending the week with his friends from the Houma Elks Lodge.

The 58-year-old Bourg resident had been voted Louisiana's top drug-awareness chairman for his tireless work masking his face in pastel paint, twisting balloons and journeying nearly every week to Terrebonne Parish schools to teach youngsters the dangers of abuse.

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