Many of the winners have gone on to do amazing things and their career paths have taken them away from Dayton. But one winner, Kettering native Kelly Rindler Savino, won the Penn Station Athlete of the Year Scholarship in 2001, graduated from Ohio University with a degree in dietetics, returned to her home town and stayed to raise her family.
“I graduated from OU in 2005 and completed an internship at Kettering Hospital,” Savino said. “I wanted to come back because my family is here and I love being around my family. Dayton just feels like home to me. I was born and raised here.”
Savino’s internship led to full-time employment with Kettering Hospital where she remains today as a clinical dietitian.
“Now that I’m married and raising two kids here in the Dayton area I realize it’s a great place to live and work,” Savino said. “The cost of living is low. It seems like a small town and with kids and there’s a lot of things to do. We like to go hiking and go to museums. There is a lot of things to do for families.”
And Savino continues to sing the praises of Dayton for all of its many areas, including downtown. “It’s exciting because I remember growing up we rarely went downtown,” she said. “Now we go downtown all the time and everything feels easy to get to. Traffic is never horrible.”
Savino met her husband, Aaron, when they attended grade school at St. Charles in Kettering. They were both Alter High School graduates, though Aaron graduated from the University of Cincinnati. She said they both love the seasons in Dayton and enjoy the opportunities to enjoy the outdoors with the family.
“You don’t get seasons like this everywhere,” Savino said. “The leaves changing in fall and the snow in the winter. I bike and run a lot and I try to compete in triathlons. I’ve never come across a time if I wanted to sign up for a race that I couldn’t. There is always something going on.”
The Savino family also enjoys biking on the local bike paths and appreciates how much has been put into the growth and expansion of those trails.
Savino’s job as a clinical dietitian involves working with the inpatient population at Kettering Medical Center, so she works with anyone admitted to the hospital who may have a need.
“Many patients who are malnourished when they come in may need intervention,” she said. “We also do a lot of diabetic education to help prevent re-admissions. A large part of our workload is around Type 2 diabetes.”
And when she thinks about Penn Station and the scholarship program they offered her that allowed her to attend college in Ohio and remain in the hometown she loves, work and raise a family, she is forever grateful.
“Penn Station is an Ohio Company,” Savino said. “They recognize people for what they are doing and they give back and it has made a big impact on my life. It meant that I didn’t have to work as much and I could study more and I could graduate on time. That’s notable for that company that they do that. Not every company would go out of their way to do that and I’m thankful for that.”
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