SoJO DJ, Erial Native Helps Local Charity

Heather DeLuca recalls with great fondness the days she spent hanging out at the Erial baseball complex and riding bikes in the neighborhood around her parents' Kohomo Avenue home during her childhood.

And, while DeLuca's parents have since sold their longtime home and while she has lived at the Jersey Shore for more than a decade now, Gloucester Township will always be home to the SoJO 104.9 FM on-air personality and assistant program director.

That's why DeLuca did not hesitate one second when asked to serve as emcee of the May 10 Lamaina Fund Charity Fashion Show, which will benefit Highland Youth Soccer Club.

The Gloucester Township Public Schools product—she went to Erial Elementary and Charles W. Lewis Middle—attended Paul VI High School, in Haddon Township, before enrolling at Camden County College in 1993.

A blog post DeLuca wrote in late March following the tragic death of an Erial Elementary School student in Philadelphia caught Lamaina Fund Charity Fashion Show organizer Annette Panasiuk's eye. Knowing DeLuca was used to addressing large crowds, the Blackwood woman reached out to the Northfield-based radio station's mid-day host to see if she would help the cause.

"This will be the first time I'm really coming back to Gloucester Township to be involved in a community event, and I'm really excited for that," DeLuca said this week.

(Click here to read DeLuca's blog about the upcoming charity fashion show.)

DeLuca returns to Gloucester Township about twice a week, checking in with old friends and her parents, Tony and Leslie, who now live in Cherrywood.

It was a serendipitous moment at Camden County College's Blackwood campus that led DeLuca into the radio world. Late to register for her first slate of classes as a college student, DeLuca found herself waiting in a long line that happened to go past the school's WDBK studio.

Interested by what she saw, the young student from Erial returned to the studio a short time later to further investigate what she had seen. She was hooked.

DeLuca credited WDBK alums who had since moved onto work at radio stations in Philadelphia and Atlantic City with giving WDBK a professional feel, despite being run almost exclusively by college students, during her years at the Blackwood school.

"That definitely gave us an advantage over the other college radio stations that were audible in the area. We had a following. We definitely had a following," she said. "We threw concerts and all kinds of stuff. ... The cluster of people I was friendly with and I worked with at the college radio station, we all came up together and we're all still close to this day."

DeLuca went on to Temple University, where she eventually graduated with a broadcasting degree. She did not work at the Philadelphia school's radio station, though. Instead, she quickly landed an internship with Star 104.5 FM, producing a show and working about 30 hours a week there.

After graduating from Temple and spending some time in cable TV development with such stations as Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, DeLuca returned to radio—this time with Atlantic City's WAYV 95.1 FM.

DeLuca has been with South Jersey's SoJO since 2009. While she loves working at the adult Top 40 station—think Pink, Maroon 5, Kelly Clarkson—there is definitely some music she'd like to play that just doesn't fit the station's profile.

"I would have to probably say Pink Floyd," she responded when asked what band from her personal favorites she would play if given the opportunity. "I'm classic rock at my roots, just from my time growing up. My parents influenced me with lots of Rolling Stones, Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Who, Elton John, very early Rod Stewart, Genesis."

Tickets for the Lamaina Fund Charity Fashion Show cost $45 and can be purchased online at Eventbrite.com. For more information, call Melissa Gordon at 856-816-8302 or send her an email to lamainafund@hotmail.com.

If you can't catch up with DeLuca at the charity event, you can listen to her on 104.9 FM Sunday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.