A winner was chosen at random Thursday from all those who entered the MB2 Raceway Summer Meltdown Ultimate Giveaway contest on The Signal's Web site.

Sara Ridnor, a sophomore at Saugus High School, was informed via email and telephone that she had won a valuable package of prizes relating to Saturday's Summer Meltdown concert at Golden Valley High School.

Ms. Ridnor won four admission tickets, four backstage passes, four food vouchers, four event T-shirts, autographs and photo ops with the bands, the latest CD by each of the 11 bands, a free subscription to The Signal for a year, and an on-stage presentation at Summer Meltdown.

Sara's reaction: "Cool!"

Click here for a preview of the concert staged by the Hart District's Yes I Can students.

On Friday afternoon, the day before the show, Sara, her sister Kelsey and their mom, Laura, visited The Signal's office on Creekside Road to pick up her Ultimate Giveaway bag of goodies.

As a student in the Yes I Can program at Saugus, Sara was getting ready to volunteer to help out during the Saturday event, but as the contest winner, she got to just enjoy the concert. She decided to take her dad, sister and mom as her three guests.

Among the highlights were an on-stage presentation, where Sara and her family were introduced and she got to throw sponsor merchandise to the crowd; getting autographs from the members of Trapt after the band's headlining set; and Sara's smile having her photo taken with Trapt lead singer Chris Taylor Brown.

"We had a fabulous time," Doug Ridnor said later. "I wasn't sure if we would be able to get Sara on stage (she is rather shy) but once she was up there tossing out T-shirts she got pretty excited and forgot about being nervous. Thank you to The Signal for participating in this event and giving Sara this opportunity. It's something she will remember always.

"I had a great time at the Summer Meltdown," Sara wrote in a note to Lieberman. "It was really fun throwing out the T-shirts from the stage and getting Trapt's autographs. Thank you for all the cool T-shirts, CDs and other stuff and making it such a fun day for me and my family. I can't wait until the 2009 Summer Meltdown."