KAWC's Dave Riek Named Arizona Media Association Lifetime Service Award Winner

KAWC and Arizona Western College announced March 2, 2026 that KAWC and Border Radio General Manager Dave Riek has been selected to receive the Arizona Media Association’s Lifetime Service Award, to be presented at the Arizona Media Icon Lunch on April 2 in Phoenix. The award recognizes his more than 40 years in public radio and comes as “this year marks his 20th year leading KAWC and Border Radio,” station materials state.

Riek began his public radio career in 1985 as a student volunteer at KNAU-FM in Flagstaff and has worked “nearly every role in broadcasting, from reporter to operations manager,” official summaries note. Local reporting and KYMA coverage list specific roles including reporter, news director, producer, recording engineer, and operations manager, and cite interviews Riek conducted with Arizona governors ranging “from Evan Mecham to Katie Hobbs,” underscoring a statewide reporting footprint across several administrations.

Station records credit Riek with leading technical and coverage projects that reshaped local service. One of his early major projects was moving KAWC’s FM transmitter to Telegraph Pass, east of Yuma, completed with a generous contribution from Timothy Conovaloff, funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and listener support. KAWC says the move “significantly improved our coverage of both east and west Yuma County, reaching as far as Dateland, Arizona, and the outskirts of El Centro, California, on the I-8 corridor.” In 2018 KAWC brought an FM translator online for AM 1320, changed the call letters to KOFA, and rebranded the AM feed as Border Radio.

The station broadcasts from the Robert E. Hardy Radio Studio Complex on the Arizona Western College campus in Yuma at 2020 S Avenue 8E. The studios are dedicated to “Uncle Bob” Hardy, KAWC’s first general manager from 1970-1992; Uncle Bob passed away on January 5, 2016. KAWC’s organizational metadata lists the station’s founding year as 1970, a company size of 2–10 employees, and 23 associated members on LinkedIn.

Campus recognition has tracked alongside industry honors. Vice President of Advancement and Executive Director of the AWC Foundation Lori Stofft presented Riek with the AWC Advancement 2025 Team Champion recognition in a June 18, 2025 video posted on the KAWC Public Radio YouTube channel; that clip registered 24 views and 2 likes at the time it was captured. KAWC social posts congratulating Riek recorded single-digit engagement counts in the samples provided.

Riek commented on the work that earned him the AMA honor: “One of my favorite things about working in radio is that every day is something new. While news (like history) sometimes repeats, it is always a little different every day.” Colleagues at KAWC credit him with steady leadership and a strong commitment to serving local and tribal communities, language included in the station’s announcement.

The Arizona Media Association is described in KAWC materials as “a non-profit corporation that acts as the official trade association for Arizona’s local radio, TV, print and digital industry” with a mission “to amplify the unique role local media can play in every Arizona neighborhood.” Riek’s selection ties two decades of local management to a career that began in Flagstaff and included technical projects, rebranding to Border Radio, and coverage improvements that extended KAWC’s reach across the I-8 corridor. He will accept the Lifetime Service Award at the April 2 Arizona Media Icon Lunch in Phoenix.