Poway High partnered with the local Aaron Ford dealership to unveil two potential scholarships valued at $1,000 each as a facet of a larger car giveaway. As much as Tik Tok is generally frowned upon in most academic circles, creators were rewarded for their skills in this turn of events at the Poway Auto Club car show April  at the Poway Auto Club car show April 8 .

The contest grounds were simple – create a TikTok or short formatted video answering one of the qualification questions, including where they would go on their first road trip, what the car would be named, and who they would share their first ride with. Videos were submitted to an online portal (Tik Tok) where the scholarships would go to the most viral and most creative videos.

Scholarship winners included junior Bella Amiraslani Cataldo, who won the scholarship prize for the most liked video. As of April 24, Cataldo’s meme-filled montage had racked up 459k views, 89k likes, and 510 comments, by far the most popular video under the challenge hashtag #aaronfordbroncogiveaway.

“I wasn’t expecting to get that many views…before the challenge I didn’t even have a Tik Tok account. But it was really cool and touching to see strangers rooting for me. I’m planning to use the money on either saving for college or purchasing a used car,” Cataldo said. 

She spent hours editing her video, which Cataldo notes was a welcome way to procrastinate on homework. Her video answered not just one but two questions – where she would go on her first road trip (the moon) and who would accompany her there( AP US History Teacher Curtis Lewis, who she would humorously abandon to “escape the forsaken burden of APUSH’)’. Cataldo’s video can be found under her username @bellaisextremelycool. 

The scholarship winner was senior Kaiden Campbell who won the scholarship for most creative, which also came with a $1,000 prize. His Tik Tok was a comedic diss of Prius drivers, and he narrates the fictional tale of how his ‘car’ (in reality an old auto shop demolition car) was destroyed by the reckless drivers of the popular hybrid vehicle.

“My mom encouraged me to enter, before I hadn’t really thought about it. I filmed it during auto tech and went with the flow of things instead of planning it out. I plan on using the money to save for college,” Campbell said.