“She is one of the finest people you will ever want to meet,” said Knightdale Mayor Russell Killen as he announced the 2009 honored citizen, Elaine Holmquist. “I’m fortunate to call her a friend.”

“I do want to say thank you to everyone,” said Holmquist, a former Knightdale town employee for 30 years, as she received the award from Killen.

Holmquist said later that she gets pleasure from living in Knightdale.

“It’s just the people that are in this close community that make it great,” she said.

Killen said her record of community service is stellar. She is a volunteer for Meals on Wheels and has been involved in the planning and staging of numerous town events including the Christmas parade, the tree lighting ceremony and Volunteer’s Day.

She also has served on the board of directors of the Eastern Regional Center.

Holmquist, who now works in the special program department at Rex Healthcare, started out in Knightdale as the town’s tax collector. She moved to finance director and then to the position of town clerk and human resources director.

The 2008 Chamber of Commerce president, Gloria Lopez, announced that Duke Raleigh Hospital is the Large Business of the Year.

She thanked Raleigh Duke President and CEO Doug Vinsel for being vested in the Knightdale community. Duke Raleigh is building a facility in Knightdale off Knightdale Boulevard.

Lopez also announced Black Belt World is the Small Business of the Year and presented owner Master Jun Lee with a plaque.

“At the opening, guests came from halfway around the world,” she said. International students study at the tae-kwon-do school, Lee said.

Lee leads a 21-country global organization called Good Health and Good Friends that raised $100,000 last year to build schools in Ghana, India and the Dominican Republic.

Lee also has offered the giant pagoda pavilion at the business to the town for festivals and other large gatherings.

Dr. Cole Bradburn, of Trinity Chiropractic, was named Ambassador of the Year.

The presentations were made at the chamber banquet attended by about 200 people at the North Raleigh Hilton in Raleigh.

Guest speaker Wake Technical Community College President Dr. Stephen Scott said the college was like the “Sam’s of higher education.”

“You can walk into a cement floor building and walk out with filet mignon or fatback,” he said.

The college offers associates degrees, a four-year college track program, high school diplomas, instruction to students who are working at less than high school level, business outreach programs and continuing education programs, Scott said.

He said the 60,000-student, four-campus college in Wake County is the county’s largest college or university and is the second largest college or university in the state.

Scott also said students return to Wake Tech for additional training who already have master’s degrees and Ph.D.s. The college uses a “customer based model” for education, Scott said. He said at the college no class is larger than 60 students and the average class size runs below 18 people.

Incoming chamber President Jason Kucma said the chamber will focus on education in 2009.

“If education doesn’t go well in eastern Wake County, people are not going to move here,” he said. “We need to make sure we know what’s going on.