Two White Eagle Elementary School students took away top honors for their grade levels in Metra's annual Safety Contest.

Second-grader Adrien Mehra earned first place and also was named the contest's "People's Choice Award" winner. Kindergartner Anika Paranjape placed second.

Each year, Metra's Safety Contest invites students in grades K-12 throughout its six-county service area to submit poster and essay entries highlighting the importance of railroad safety. This year's contest theme was "Safety First: Look, Listen and Live."

"Nothing is more important to Metra than keeping children - and the public - safe," said Alexander Clifford, Metra CEO, in a press release.

More than 5,000 student from almost 250 schools throughout the region entered the contest. A panel of 20 judges, including government officials, representatives from safety and education advocacy groups, business and community leaders, members of the media and Metra representatives, chose the winners. Additionally, 600 members of the public participated in the Safety Poster Contest "People's Choice Award" voting at displays at each of Metra's downtown commuter stations.

"I would like to commend each and every person who participated in the safety campaign for their leadership - parents and schools who share safety lessons with children, our panel of judges and commuters who helped select the winners, and most importantly, the students who participated in the contest learning what they can do to keep themselves and others safe around trains," Clifford said.

The first-place poster designs will be featured as safety posters and distributed to more than 2,000 schools in northeastern Illinois. The posters also will be featured in station displays, in Metra's 2012 safety calendar, on monthly tickets and on Metra's contest website and Facebook page. Winning safety essays also will be featured in the same places.

First-, second- and third-place winners were chosen from each grade level for the Metra Safety Poster Contest. One winner from each grade group - elementary school, middle school and high school - was chosen for the Safety Essay Contest. First-place poster and essay contest winners receive a laptop computer, while second- and third-place poster contest winners receive $250 and $100 gift cards, respectively. The "People's Choice Award" winner receives a $250 gift card. Metra also recognizes the school with the most entries submitted in the poster contest. The top participating school receives a computer.

To date, campaign outreach efforts include the distribution of more than a million safety posters, 10,000 Metra Safety Calendars and more than 2 million pencil kits to schools throughout the region.

"We are committed to doing everything we can to ensure safety is foremost when people are on or around trains and we could not be more proud of the role the Safety Contest has played, as the cornerstone of our campaign, to raise the level of awareness to train safety throughout Northeastern Illinois," Clifford said.

First-place contest winners will be honored at Metra's regular monthly meeting of its August Board of Directors. A list of all the Safety Contest winners is available at www.metracontest.com and www.facebook.com/MetraContest.