Former St. Catharines Regional Councillor Sandie Bellows is being honoured by Crime Stoppers of Niagara with a first ever Citizen of the Year Memorial Award.
Bellows, a former Crime Stoppers board member, passed away last October after a battle with cancer.
The award will be presented annually to recipients who are advocates for justice in Niagara, and display outstanding community service and distinguished leadership qualities.
Bellows was serving her first term as a Niagara Region Councillor representing the City of St. Catharines and also chair of the Niagara Parks Board at the time of her death.
She also served on St. Catharines city council from 2014 to 2018, along with volunteering for a number of community organizations.
She spent most of her professional career in sales and business development, including as a senior account executive at Telus.
Bellows was a public speaker and victims' rights advocate following her horrific 1990 kidnapping, rape and attempted murder.
She was 28 yrs old when she was kidnapped infront of a credit union in the city, taken to another location, where she was raped and stabbed, but eventually saved by a retired OPP officer.
She had been a keynote speaker for many government and law enforcement agencies, including conferences for the Ontario and Canadian Police Chiefs, hostage negotiators, victim services, Canadian American law enforcement agencies, and was invited by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the Victims Bill of Rights ceremony.
Directors on the Crime Stoppers of Niagara board will call for nominations from the region each year to choose the person who will be selected by an independent panel as recipient of the Crime Stoppers of Niagara Citizen of the Year award in memory of Sandie Bellows.