The city of Bellevue has honored 15 individuals and seven groups with the President’s Volunteer Service Awards, a series of national honors available for volunteer service and exemplary citizenship.

The awards are issued by the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation, a group created by President Bush to recognize the valuable contributions volunteers are making to the nation.

Recipients of the bronze award included Rachel Jiang, Jackie Gray, Jack Mahler and Rhonda Younker. The silver award went to Mike Ryan, Don Marshall, Angela McInnis, Laurie Roberts, Cressida Stapely and Elise Troske-Roberts. The gold award recipients were Mike Matteson and Stacy Stensil.

Groups can qualify for the awards by serving more than 1,000 volunteer hours. Seven groups working at the Bellevue Botanical Garden qualified in 2008, including: the Botanical Garden Docents, Garden d’Lights, the Botanical Garden Trillium Shop, the Bellevue Botanical Garden Society, the garden’s Horticulture Volunteers, including Waterwise Garden, the Northwest Perennial Alliance and Genus II Plant Records Volunteers.

The President’s Call to Service Award goes to volunteers who have given consistently over their lifetime. To qualify for the award, an individual must complete 4,000 or more volunteer service hours. This year’s recipients were: Shirley Johnson, who volunteered with the Highland Community Center; Gerry Katt, a longtime Bellevue Police volunteer; and Randall Apted and Karen McClain, who logged 35,000 hours with Bellevue Youth Theatre.

“These recipients of the President’s Volunteer Service Awards are role models for all Americans,” said Bellevue City Manager Steve Sarkozy.