Media Vista Corporation of Collier County and LeeSar Healthtrust Partners of Lee County won the 2007 Southwest Florida Blue Chip Community Business Award.

Oswald Trippe and Co. Inc. sponsors the annual business award program to recognize small-business owners who have overcome adversity to achieve success. The program’s aim is to share their stories in the hope that they will instruct and inspire other entrepreneurs.

Any for-profit business in operation for at least three years and that employs five to 400 people are eligible for the award. A panel of independent judges chose the winning entries.

Orlando and Mayela Rosales, who own Media Vista Corporation, came to Naples in 1996 from their hometown of Maracaibo, Venezuela. Both were college graduates with careers, he in computer engineering, and she in communications.

In Naples, they found jobs, studied English and dreamed of starting a communications company to serve the area’s growing Hispanic population.

They launched Media Vista in 2001, buying half-hour segments on Saturday nights on Comcast, producing news and lifestyle shows in Spanish. The couple struggled to win over advertisers who had to be convinced they had a viable product. Over time, their efforts began paying off. They expanded to an hour show, then 90 minutes.

Next, they developed a D’Latinos Magazine, and in 2003, a Web site.

In 2005, Comcast offered to produce a daily version of their show so they no longer had to pay for air time.

The show, “D’Latinos al Dia,” is broadcast every weekday, the only daily live Spanish language TV show in the region, reaching some 400,000 homes, 91,000 of them Hispanic.

Last year, Media Vista expanded again, this time partnering with Azteca America, the Mexico City broadcast channel. Working with Comcast, Azteca America now is a 24-hour-a-day channel on the Comcast digital lineup, which includes Media Vista’s nightly news show from its state-of-the-art TV station in Naples. Azteca America now runs on DirecTV channel 14, as well.

Media Vista staffers also write and design Vista Semanal, the Naples Daily News’ weekly Spanish language publication.

LeeSar Healthtrust Partners was on the verge of closing when Robert Simpson took over as president in 2002.

The firm serves as a medical product distribution center, courier service, provider of pharmaceutical repackaging and customer surgical packages, and also maintains medical records for area hospitals.

But the company was slow to react when its customers needed something changed or upgraded, and wasn’t supplying the kind of cost-saving measures for which it was hired.

The first thing Simpson did was to increase fill rates from an unacceptable 62 percent to its current 98.5 percent.

He hired an experienced CFO and began introducing cost-saving measures, such as developing a method to more quickly make changes in surgical package procedures and in the pharmaceutical repackaging process. Simpson created his own fleet of trucks and vans, rather than outsourcing them.

Simpson increased salaries and vacation time, began a tuition reimbursement program and started an employee bonus program.

Since 2002, the number of employees has increased from 34 to 153, and sales have gone from $2.9 million a month to a $8.9 million.