“I think I can trace it back as early as age 8 I’ve been dealing with anxiety and levels of depression, having very few friends, but stumbling upon books,” said Threets. “It just helped my brain relax. Help it come down just a little bit. Even on my darkest days, my hardest days, books were kind of like the rescue for me.”

That passion, joy and comfort never wavered and if anything else expanded as Threets became Fairfield Civic Center Library’s librarian. 

“I do have a sheer love for the library. I have a love for everybody who comes through those doors,” Threets said. 

But when the COVID-19 pandemic came around, Threets began sharing his love of the library with millions of people outside the library doors and in the process became something of a TikTok sensation.

Threets – like countless others – downloaded the app to eat up his newfound free time and although he “never intended to post” on it, began sharing his encounters and observations.

“Just this true joy of hearing kids’ stories at the library and relating to that and letting them have a place to talk while realizing library staff, library workers, all of it forming an all-encompassing safe place where they can be themselves,” Threets said. 

While Threets enjoys relaying children’s “silly unhinged stories of truth,” his message became one about mental health. He offers words of support for anyone dealing with anxiety and depression.

“I’m trying to reach those anxious kids,” Threets said. 

But most of Threet’s TikToks center around lighthearted, innocent and whimsical tales. 

“The only one that I can pinpoint to being a big one would be the one where I was telling the kids that I’m happy they’re at the library. I think that the one that everyone mentions to me so far is when I tell the kids, ‘I’m happy you’re here at the library.’ Which I genuinely am,” Threets said. 

Or one of his most recent tales about a group of kids who were walking a lizard on a leash outside the library. 

“That’s what people are gravitating towards. It’s a place where people can be happy … everyone belongs,” Threets said. 

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

This year, eighth grader Sarah Vender not only chose to take the course, but she also chose to take it somewhere very special.

“At first, I was a little unsure because I had never made a hand before,” Vender said.

By the end of the school year, Vender and her classmates had designed, printed and assembled a prosthetic hand for a third grader at their school, Trent DeSantis, who had been born without a fully-formed right hand.

“I really wanted to make sure this was perfect because this was going to change his life if it went well,” Vender said.

The whole journey started earlier in the school year when DeSantis’ mother approached Joanne Papini, the modeling class teacher. She asked if they wanted to take a crack at 3D printing a prosthetic hand for her son.

“At first, I was like, ‘That will be nice for college and high school kids,'” Papini said. “But I wanted to do something with it.”

When Papini brought the idea up to her students, they were all in, but it was Vender who seemed to take the most interest and became something of the project leader.

From start to finished hand, it took the students about a month to complete the job. Vender said there was lots of trial and even more error, pointing to the classroom’s “Fail Box” with all the pieces and parts that didn’t work.

Eventually, though, a working prototype was created and with it, DeSantis reached his right hand across the table to pick up a bottle of hand sanitizer, a feat that had never been possible before. The room erupted in applause, cheering, and even tears.

“I was so relieved it worked,” said Vender.

“I felt happy and was super excited to show my class,” said DeSantis.

The colors of the hand – teal and black – he had chosen himself to mirror his favorite hockey team, the San Jose Sharks.

Gudino is the school bus mechanic for the Campbell Union High School District. A driver was calling Gudino to tell him one of their buses wouldn’t start. 

“I was like, ‘That’s weird. That’s odd,’” said Gudino.

He began trying to diagnose the problem from afar.

“I go, ‘Check on the battery box where there’s a switch to see if that’s off.’ “When they opened that battery box, the batteries were missing.”

Gudino learned a group of thieves had climbed a fence and stolen the batteries out of the buses the night before. Gudino wasn’t planning on punching the clock that Saturday, but now he had to beat it. 

“We got to get these buses going because Monday comes around and kids got to go to school and we got to make this operation go,” Gudino said.

Unfortunately, all of Gudino’s normal suppliers were closed for the weekend. In desperation, Gudino placed a call to his local O’Reilly auto parts store. 

They didn’t stock batteries big enough for a school bus but they were willing to help Gudino in his search.

“They have a different warehouse where they can get stuff like that and were able to provide me and get that all together,” said Gudino. 

Gudino spent all of Sunday gathering, installing, and testing the batteries, and by the time Monday rolled around, the buses were ready to roll.

“I felt like Superman. The Kryptonite was not holding me down and I was able to save them. It felt good I felt good,” said Gudino. 

Gudino’s superhero efforts were recently recognized by the California Department of Education as one of their Classified Schol Employees of the Year. 

“For me, it’s like a no-brainer. It’s like I don’t care what it is. Pay or no pay. I’m getting these buses. I need to get them running. I know it’s serious,” said Gudino, the mechanic who bolted to the rescue and wrenched a solution. 

“You have to turn it off,” Hirsch said. “You have to put it away.”

The human drama Hirsch deals with every day at work is carefully kept outside her home and certainly not taken on vacation.

Still, on a recent trip to Death Valley, Hirsch came across a person in need and had to step in and help.

“There was somebody down,” Hirsch said. “If somebody’s down, you help.”

Hirsch, her daughter, and her sister were on a jeep tour of the area in early January. Their tour driver was taking them to see Badwater Basin when they came across something in the road.

“The tour guide said, ‘There’s a cyclist in the road,'” Hirsch recalled. “I said, ‘Stop. I’m a doctor. I need to get out.'”

Hirsch found a man on his side, moaning, and in the fetal position. A bicycle lay in pieces next to him and the helmet on his head had a chunk missing. Hirsch could see the man bleeding from a head wound but could only guess what his other injuries may be.

Although it had been twenty years since Hirsch had last practiced hands-on medicine in medical school, she jumped right in to help.

“I just knew I had to stabilize his head and neck because I could tell he had a head injury,” Hirsch said.

Hirsch enlisted other bystanders to carefully roll the man onto his back, all the while keeping his head and neck still to prevent worsening any potential spine injury.

For the next hour, until an ambulance arrived, Hirsch cared for the man, holding his head steady in her hands and trying to get information from him.

She learned the stranger’s name was Buzz Ayola. When she asked for the phone number of a relative, though, Rebecca recognized the area code and realized the two had something in common.

“925? Buzz, where do you live? He said, ‘I live in Dublin.’ I said, ‘I live in San Ramon.'”

When Rebecca asked him where he got his medical care, Buzz told her Kaiser Permanente in Pleasanton. “I work at Kaiser Pleasanton!” Rebecca told him. “So it turns out we are neighbors and I work at the healthcare facility where he receives his primary care.”

“Well, she saved my life,” Buzz said. “Didn’t know her before this. She was at the right time at the right place.”

Buzz had suffered not only a head injury but multiple broken vertebrae. If Rebecca hadn’t known what to do, Buzz could have been left unable to walk.

Buzz is not only grateful for all that Rebecca aid but for what he now considers her to be: “We will be lifelong friends. There’s no doubt about that.”

If they ever wish to see him practice it, they just have to look out the church’s front door any day of the week. That is where Lundquist recently set up the Help Box.

The Help Box is a 30-year-old newspaper vending machine, transformed into a mini food pantry for the needy. Community members who wish to participate can place food, water, and other supplies in the box. Those who are in need, are welcome to take what they require.

The idea began last Christmas when Lundquist asked parishioners to write down their hopes for the city on a paper ornament to hang on the church’s tree. 

“I would say a good 50% of those were; ‘I want to know my neighbors.’ ‘I want my neighborhood to feel like it cares for one another.’ ‘I want to feel like I live in a community and not feel like I’m an individual lost in the city,’” said Lunduist.

It wasn’t long after that Lundquist spotted a newspaper box in his neighborhood. It occurred to him that in the digital age, there must be plenty of old, unwanted newspaper boxes looking for good homes. There turned out to be not as many as he thought but Lundquist did eventually discover one gathering dust in the basement of a neighborhood coffee shop.

“I brought my car over. We loaded it up into the car and brought it back and some folks from the congregation. We spray-painted it one day. One of our kids helped put the letters on the front of it and got it all spruced up and got a new window for the front of it and put it all together,” said Lundquist. 

Once refurbished with a glossy coat of green paint, it was instantly put to use. Helping the less fortunate since the day it was planted outside the church earlier this month.

“I check on it every day that I’m here. I check on it every day that I’m here. Even more than what people are leaving we’ve had people come by and just be so excited about it. So excited that they now have a way that they can help,” said Lundquist. 

“I think it is easy to look out into our city. To walk around our city and to be brought down or to point out all of the things that are wrong. It’s another thing to get creative, to imagine something different, even more than that to do something.”

It is a pain that two decades have done little to diminish.

“It’s like you have this big hole in your heart and nothing can fill it,” Flores said.

Flores, a producer for NBC Bay Area, has done many things over the years to honor her late brother: getting a street named after him in their hometown of Milpitas and starting a program where veterans could get free parking on college campuses.

But in 2018, Flores found a way to not only honor her brother but bring a bit of healing to a Navy veteran and dozens of Gold Star families across the country.

It started with a Facebook post by Keith Sherman to a group for Gold Star families that Flores belongs to. After 26 years of active service, Sherman was about to retire and he had a plan: travel to all 50 states and interview the family of a fallen servicemember in each.

“I wasn’t really in a great place,” said Sherman.” I just wanted some way to try and heal and find a way that I could go across the country, meet people and heal in that process and not be relegated to the psychotropic meds.”

Sherman’s Facebook post was a request for families to interview but when he connected with Flores over the phone and learned she worked in television he realized she could help him in a different way: teach him how to do interviews.

“He goes, ‘I don’t know how to do anything.’ Flores recalled. “So you don’t know how to operate a camera? Nope. Lighting? Nope. Video editing software? Nope. Have you interviewed anyone before? Nope.

Initially reluctant, Flores agreed and ran Sherman through what he jokingly referred to as “media boot camp.”

Flores, alongside her husband Anthony, gave Sherman the knowledge and tools to complete his journey of healing. 

When Sherman’s tour began, Flores helped spread the word.

“I got coverage in each market that he went to so people would come out and do stories. He got coverage in every market that he went to,” said Flores.  

But as Sherman’s state-to-state expedition continued, Flores’s support expanded from just practical to emotional. 

“There were probably like three times he called me during this drive. He was like, ‘I don’t think I can continue. I don’t think I can do this anymore. It’s just too painful. It’s just too hard to sit and hear these horrible stories,” to which Flores replied:

 “I would just tell him, ‘You can’t. You can’t quit on these families. You can’t quit on yourself. You can’t do it. You can do it.’ And he’d be like, ‘Oh OK.’ Bring him back down a little bit. I was like, ‘This is what you wanted to do. You wanted to honor the families. You wanted to honor their sacrifice and their loss.'”

Her words of encouragement helped Sherman push past the emotional barricades that stood in his way. 

“She was the person to cheer me up and push me back out there. Like, ‘Listen you can do this. This is really hard,’” said Sherman.

Flores’s pushback helped Sherman push on.

He eventually made it to all 50 states including stops in Alaska and Hawaii. 

More importantly, he found what he was looking for – healing.

“This journey brought about for me this change that I don’t think I could’ve ever gotten anywhere else,” said Sherman. 

Flores tends to agree:

“The person he was at the end of that journey at the Library of Congress and really truly the person that he is now is not the same as what it was when I first met him. So I think that’s what the whole point was. Is helping him. Helping the families. Helping me and now we’re all in such a better place.”

It’s a thick stack of legal documents.

“This is really the story,” Cain said.

Cain was drafted by the Detroit Tigers out of El Cerrito High School in 1966. The hard-throwing lefthander pitched his way to the Tigers’ major league roster in seemingly no time, making his debut in 1968. But from there, time became a constant issue. 

According to Cain, he logged four years of playing time, which includes his time spent on the injured (then called “disabled”) list – enough to qualify for a pension from the league. MLB’s records, though, show Cain coming up short of that magic four-year mark.

His career ended up being cut short by shoulder issues, so Cain returned to Northern California and began careers in banking and public transportation. Still, he continued to fight the league for what he thought he was owed. Cain won a legal battle in the 1970s with Major League Baseball over a workman’s compensation claim, but his claim to a pension dragged on year after year.

“All the time people ask me, ‘What? You played baseball wasn’t that the greatest thing you ever did?’ No. I drove a bus for 10 years,” said Cain, who now drives a shuttle bus for a Bay Area car dealership. 

Cain’s inability to obtain a pension isn’t from a lack of trying. He’s contacted several attorneys over the years, but found that, “At every turn, they just turn their back like I didn’t even exist.”

Recently, though, help has come for Cain in the form of someone he didn’t even know existed: Doug Gladstone. 

Gladstone is s a freelance journalist and lifelong baseball fan living in New York State. In 2010, he published A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB and the Players Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve. The book delved deeply into a 1980 deal between MLB and the player’s union, which left hundreds of players from Cain’s generation out of the pension program.

Through Gladstone’s research, he discovered Cain’s case. He learned that Cain’s circumstances didn’t put him squarely in the group Gladstone had written about. His case was different but, in Gladstone’s view, more clear-cut.

“‘Well, if you’re due a pension, what’re you waiting for?” Gladstone asked Cain during their first phone conversation. “Why don’t you try …’ And he cut me off and said, ‘Don’t you think I’ve tried? I’ve had attorneys look at this for years.”

Gladstone has since done his best to raise awareness about Cain’s case and discusses it any chance he gets with people involved with baseball. He believes Cain is in the right and is owed more than $1.5 million in back pension payments.

NBC Bay Area reached out to Major League Baseball for a comment but did not get a response.

When asked why he’s taken such an interest in Cain’s case, Gladstone quotes the late U.S. Representative John Lewis.

“You know when you see something that isn’t right, that’s not fair, that isn’t just, you have to speak up. You have to say something. You have to do something,’” said Gladstone. “That’s why I chose to try to help a man who lives 3,000 miles away from me.”

After all these decades laced with disappointment, Cain finally has an advocate, someone doing his best to help Cain add one more win to his career.

“I thought first of all, ‘He’s crazy!” Cain said. “He doesn’t have a dog in this fight, but he did. And that was his compassion.”

“There are days that I come home that I am mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted, but I never come home and wonder if what I did that day mattered,” the 37-year-old Cortez said.

While each and every case is different, it is common for Cortez to form a deep, emotional bond with a patient by the end of their time together.

That is not the case, however, with Connie Pico. 

That’s because it turns out Cortez and Pico already had a bond, one formed years before Cortez walked into the 65-year-old Pico’s room at Cupertino Healthcare and Wellness Center.

The first clue for Cortez was the name.

“I was like, ‘Connie Pico, why does that name sound so familiar to me?” Cortez said.

Once he discovered that Pico, like him, was from San Jose’s east side, everything came back to him.

“I asked her, ‘Connie, did you ever work with students for reading?’ And she said, ‘Yes,’” Cortez said. “I said, ‘You were my teacher and she said, ‘I remember that.’”

Cortez, the son of Mexican immigrants, grew up in a Spanish-speaking home. While his parents stressed the importance of education, he needed someone outside of his family to teach him English. 

At Dorsa Elementary School, Cortez found that person in Pico.

“I just remember how approachable she was, how warm, loving. I mean, it was like when you wanted to talk to her she was always so positive and she was always so engaged and she was always willing to listen,” said Cortez. 

Cortez said it was Pico who taught him not just how to read but how to love reading. It was the foundation of the academic and professional success Cortez has earned since then.

And to now be able to use all that he has learned to help Connie? It’s humbling, Cortez said.

“It was a moment that had me full of gratitude,” he said. “It was a moment of bliss and joy. It’s just a moment of peace.”

The first in a series of storms to punish the area this winter pushed an extraordinary amount of debris into and down Corralitos Creek. The debris plugged up the culvert running underneath the bridge on Grizzly Flat Road, forcing water to surge over the top. 

The bridge, now in danger of washing away, was the only route Hardy and six other families had to the outside world.

“It’s running a good two, two-and-a half-feet over the bridge and I can see already the retaining wall on the other side is already starting to compromise,” said Hardy. “I’ve never seen it just literally surging up like that. I told everybody, ‘Look, they’re forecasting more rains come tonight and this isn’t looking good. I think we are going to lose this bridge.'”

Knowing what a blow that would be to his neighborhood, Hardy acted fast before the bridge collapsed. He raced to the store and bought supplies to construct a zipline across the creek.

The zipline Hardy installed became the community’s lifeline for several months, using it to transport items that one needs to live. 

“For me, the zipline was mandatory for all of us to get supplies in and out – gasoline cans, propane tanks, groceries, hauling garbage out, all that kind of stuff,” Hardy said. “You try and live a normal life, but the main thing is being able to survive until things normalize.”

But January’s rain storm was just one in an unrelenting season of storms in a historically wet winter for the Bay Area, so Hardy’s job helping his community wasn’t done once the bridge was fixed.

The series of storms had become a particular problem for two of Hardy’s neighbors: two 70-year-old widows whose road to their homes had washed out, forcing them to park their cars and walk up a steep, half-mile hill to get to their homes.

“I’ve had to backpack my food up,” Lynn Morse said. “And beer’s heavy,” she concluded with a laugh.

Lynn Fonseca was facing even more dire shortages.

“I ran out of firewood last week and my propane’s almost done,” she said.

“I worry about these women,” Hardy said. “They’re up there by themselves.”

So, Hardy organized his neighbors into a work party one Sunday morning to begin the daunting task of repairing the women’s road – “Two Lynn Lane” Hardy calls it. They dumped truckloads of road base into the potholes and trenches to try to make the road passable by car. It’s a job that will take some time to complete, but Hardy says he is committed to getting the job done. It’s just what a neighbor does, he says.

“I’ve always been someone that wants to help people,” said Hardy. “It’s the natural thing to do. It’s not even the right thing to do. It’s the natural thing to do.”

She remembers the time (four years ago), the place (San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood), and she even remembers the weather (rain).

“There was a weather advisory,” Lisa Marie said. “I knew I shouldn’t have been out in that weather, but I didn’t care.”

There was, in all honesty, a lot Lisa Marie didn’t care about. Battles with abuse and addiction had led to Lisa Marie living on the streets in San Francisco. By the time that storm arrived, she had been there for eight years. Lisa Marie had been seriously considering ending her life.

“I was a shell of myself. I lost the essence of who I really was and at that point, I no longer knew myself as myself. I was just empty running on E,” said Lisa Marie.

Realizing that she was never going to be capable of fixing her life, Lisa Marie turned to a higher power to help.

“I asked God to help me and to save me from myself and to save me from this misery,” she said.

What followed were four years of hard work in drug court and recovery programs. The work paid off. Lisa Marie began to put her life back together, staying sober and reconnecting with her family. When she eventually found herself living in a sober living environment, Lisa Marie began to befriend others recovering from trauma and helping them along the path she had so recently walked.

What Lisa Marie didn’t realize at the time is that she was engaged in job training.

“I was doing it without noticing that that’s what I was doing,” she said. “I was just doing it because I thought I would be a good friend and do those things.”

A friend then told her she would be perfect for the position of peer counselor at Carmelita Women’s House in Marin County. A partnership between Catholic Charities of San Francisco and the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services, the home provides eight women with a supportive home and services. Their newest program is centered around the treatment of trauma through holistic healing experiences for their residents. 

Lisa Marie helps the residents with, “spiritual stuff, with going to meetings and helping them with their hair, and showing them fashion, cooking.” 

In essence, Lisa Marie sees herself as a “professional friend.”

Helping other women achieve a similar success story as her own has become Lisa Marie’s life purpose. 

“My mission in life is to now help other people that have gone where I’ve gone and have been where I’ve been and know that it’s OK and there is a different way,” said Lisa Marie. 

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

“I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if they are hungry,’” Sharon said. “I went to the Kentucky Fried Chicken and bought 100 pieces of chicken and bought some of the juice and all that stuff, got some plates and it was a hit.”

It was such a hit that Sharon began to regularly donate warm, home-cooked meals to the homeless every Sunday night. It was immediately clear to Sharon what the benefit was to the homeless she was feeding but she soon started to realize what it was it was doing for her. “I feel like I’ve found my purpose in life,” Sharon said.

“They’re giving their love and respect and we’re giving it back. We just happened to have a hot meal to give to them every Sunday,” Sharon said.

Sharon eventually decided to make the operation official, calling it Arthur Jean Safe Place, named after Sharon’s late mother who she remembers as a “giver.”

But life began to change for Sharon starting last fall, and not in a good way.

Her long-time partner, Ron, passed away in November, and then in January, she was forced to leave the home they had shared together for 12 years. Suddenly, Sharon was not just someone who helped the homeless, she was now homeless herself.

“That was devastating,” said Sharon, who is now sleeping on friends’ couches and in her own car with her 18-year-old grandson.

In spite of all that, Sharon has not missed a week providing meals. Relying on donations and the use of a friend’s kitchen, Sharon is continuing to provide homecooked meals to the homeless, even though she is now without a home.

“I’m not going to let this take away my smile. I’m not going to let this take me to where I’m going to feel sorry for myself and give up,” said Alexander. 

“When I go out there it’s like I take everything I am going through, push it to the side and it’s like I’m in a whole another world because giving where you can and when you can even if it’s just one moment in time it’s a beautiful feeling.”

But as Bryan Tsiliacos turns 30, he can’t help but look back at the previous years. It was, after all, the one that transformed his life.

“You know, it’s really hard to put into words,” Tsiliacos said.

A year ago, upon turning 29 and feeling grateful for all he had, Tsiliacos pledged to do 30 acts of kindness before turning 30.

We were the first to share his story as he completed his first act: baking, then delivering, hundreds of individual flan desserts to every firefighter working in San Jose.

It wasn’t the last time a news organization wanted to talk with Tsiliacos.

By the time Tsiliacos was working on his second act – school supply boxes for every middle school teacher in Oakland – stories about Tsiliacos were appearing all over the world. People magazine even crowned Tsiliacos one of the kindest people in America.

“I had no idea it would get this much attention, I didn’t,” Tsiliacos said. “Honestly, I wasn’t prepared for the flurry of media, magazines, talk shows, blogs, websites, you name it.”

On the very day Tsiliacos turned 30 in late February, he was at it again. This time, Tsiliacos packed and delivered care packages to the staff at the Oakland Zoo. It was another successful mission, although the same cannot be said for Tsiliacos’ goal of 30 acts by this day.

“I’ve done 10,” Tsiliacos said.

Tsiliacos’ acts have turned out to be so big and require so much planning – not to mention the fact Tsiliacos has a full-time job – he only managed to get one-third of the way to 30.

When he looks at what he accomplished in the course of those 10 acts and the attention it received, however, Tsiliacos considers his mission already a success.

He has inspired others to follow in his kind footsteps.

“One woman messaged me saying, ‘Hey, I was making dinner and your story about giving to firefighters came on. Just so inspired to see it. I want to give back to my community,'” Tsiliacos said.

So, as Tsiliacos enters his 30s, he is giving himself the next year to complete all 30 acts. Still, he is sure even then he won’t be done.

After hundreds of hours on the phone filled with comforting words during stressful times and stories from their past, LaForce and Creger finally met in person at Ruth’s Table in San Francisco’s Mission District.

“I’m overwhelmed,” Creger said while hugging LaForce for the first time.

LaForce and Creger’s friendship is one borne out of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The two were initially connected in March 2020 through a program called Social Call. Run by the nonprofit Front Porch and supported by a $95,000 grant from a Kaiser Permanente fund at the East Bay Community Foundation, Social Call links elderly residents living alone with volunteers willing to make weekly phone calls in the hopes of staving off social isolation.

Creger, who retired from a career in HR just before the pandemic started, was looking for volunteer opportunities she could do while sheltering at home. She found Social Call and was given LaForce’s number.

“When Rita and I got started we would talk sometimes for over two hours because Rita’s stories were really interesting to me and I’d love to hear about them,” said Creger.

LaForce says she was initially skeptical about the idea of talking to a stranger. It didn’t take long, however, for LaForce to consider Creger a friend – and a vital one at that.

“I could not have gotten through it without her and I am so grateful for her because it was her constant friendship,” said LaForce. “She’s the most interesting person.”

Creger’s original commitment to Social Call was a weekly call for one year. Three years later, she’s still calling every Tuesday at 11 am.

“I was bringing pleasure to her, she was bringing pleasure to me because I loved hearing her story and we have a lot in common,” said Anderson. “She was really helpful to me as well.”

It was on one of those walks that Ross came across a little girl behind a little stand.

It was not the classic scene of a young person selling lemonade. For one thing, the girl had cookies on the table. More important to Ross, however, was the fact she wasn’t selling them.

“I realized the cookies were free,” Ross said. “Here during this dark time, she was doing her part to cheer people up and I thought, ‘I want to give her an award.'”

Now, an award for kindness was something that Ross had been thinking about for a while but this little girl gave him the inspiration to move forward.

With the help of a long-time friend, Terri Chytrowski, they came up with the Chris Kindness Award: a monthly $1,000 award given out to someone demonstrating kindness in the city of Berkeley. People in the community are asked to nominate those they feel are worthy of the award, Ross and Chytrowski select three finalists, and the public then votes on who the winner will be.

The latest recipient is Berkeley resident Bernie Peyton. Peyton is a world-renowned origami artist who, every Thursday, volunteers to teach origami to young patients at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.

“We want to reward people who are doing things that inspire others,” Chytrowski said.

Inspiring others is just what Ross and Chytrowski say Chris Walton, the man who the award is named after, was all about.

“He was the kindest person I’ve ever met,” Ross said.

Walton was a preschool teacher to both Ross and Chytowski’s children when they were young, and though Walton died a decade ago, they still think of him to this day.

“His kindness, it just quietly radiated,” Chytowski said. “He had a different vibe about him that was extra special.”

Peyton is the third recipient of the Christ Kindness Award. It previously went to a teacher who had gone above and beyond to befriend a student with special needs, and a volunteer and advocate for the homeless.

It is Ross and Chytrowski’s hope that by rewarding past good deeds they will inspire new ones and that by getting people to talk more about kindness they will start acting kinder.

It has already happened to them.

It had, however, nothing to do with language. 

“When I told people I was studying Russian they ‘oohed and ahhed’ and I was so shallow and insecure I needed that ‘ooh and ahh’ and I followed that all the way to Stanford,” Kautz admitted. 

Shallow, insecure, and as Kautz sadly confesses, “intolerably arrogant,” too.

Now, just a few years later, Kautz is doing his best to be the opposite of all those things. He is the founder of Tent City Barbers, a non-profit providing free haircuts for those in need.

The change began when Kautz took a long, hard look at himself and realized how poorly he had treated others throughout his life. Around that time, Kautz also stumbled upon a documentary film by comedian Chris Rock called “Good Hair.” He was captivated by it. “I must have watched it 30 times,” Kautz said.

The film rekindled in Kautz a love of hair and hair styling that began when he was a little boy and would style the hair of his cousins and put on impromptu “hair shows.” The passion was pushed aside as he grew older because he didn’t feel it was a “serious” line of work.

Telling someone you are a hairstylist didn’t elicit the “oohs and ahhs” that his Russian studies did.

Hair, however, was now going to be the key to Kautz making over his life. Working as a stylist, he would finally be doing a job that brought him joy. And, by volunteering to give free haircuts to people living in homeless shelters and encampments, Kautz would be doing “penance” for his years of mistreating others.

“I want to give them a break from just unspeakably difficult circumstances. Just for 20 minutes, I want to pamper them,” said Kautz. 

But as Kautz says, he needs them more than they need him.

“They lead me out of this place where I’m just focusing on myself and been kind of a bridge out of myself and a bridge out of fear and a bridge out of ego,” said Kautz.

In return, Kautz offers them what he calls a mini vacation from a life that’s anything, but one. 

“I know that this is making a difference and this is one thing I’m doing right with my life and I’m going to run with that.”

It’s an unlikely calling, considering her previous experience with wetlands – or lack thereof.

“I knew nothing about wetlands. I don’t know that I knew the word,” said Hayes, who grew up hundreds of miles away in the Butte County town of Paradise.

But in the early 1990s, Hayes was living in Vallejo and was drafted by her neighbors into the effort to fight a proposed development. Once Hayes understood the value of what she was working to preserve, there was no turning back.

“The wetlands definitely do not wow you like Yosemite,” Hayes said. “They seep through your skin into your bloodstream and you really have to just be there.”

In the interest of getting others to just “be there,” Hayes has organized for the past 28 years the San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival on Mare Island. Primarily a gathering for birders to watch just some of the millions of birds that migrate to the Bay Area each year, Hayes hopes that non-birders find their way there as well. 

She is convinced that if she gets someone to spend even a small amount of time on the shores of San Pablo Bay, she will have won a convert to her cause.

“My psychology professor said way back in college, ‘You don’t love who you don’t know.’ So proximity causes you to fall in love,” said Hayes.

Over the years, Hayes has had both success and failure when it comes to her preservation efforts. In one case, it happened with the very same plot of land.

In 2009, Hayes led a group that opened more than 100 acres of the former Naval Station on Mare Island to the public. For a decade, Hayes and her group, the Mare Island Heritage Trust, were stewards of the property, but then the city removed them from oversight of the land and restricted public access. Hayes has been eager to get it back.

“Our Change.org petition has over 10,000 signatures, requesting our return as managers and hosts,” she said.

Hayes says her mission is fueled by the knowledge that once gone, wilderness can never be returned.

“That is my drive. That is what wakes me up in the middle of the night, keeps me awake long periods of time,” she said.

Her first paid shoots were in product photography; taking pictures of objects just sitting there. Now, though, Jordan is keen to branch out into taking pictures of things that don’t always sit when you want them to: dogs.

“I think really capturing a dog’s personality is going to be fun,” Jordan said.

Looking for experience and a chance to grow her portfolio, Jordan, a dog owner herself, has decided to offer up free pet portraits to dog owners in her neighborhood.

 “It’ll be a really good learning experience for me and then people get fun pictures of their dog,” Jordan said. “I think it is a win-win.”

Jordan posted on Nextdoor, letting people know she’d be at Precita Park in Bernal Heights one afternoon and anyone was welcome and get a free pet portrait. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Jordan spent two hours on a Wednesday evening in the park taking pictures of a dozen dogs for their grateful owners.

“I figured it would be a really nice way to meet people and get people really nice photos of their dogs,” said Jordan.

When the San Jose couple both found themselves without work during the pandemic, they chose to fill their newly-found free time with one of their favorite passions: helping dogs in need.

Dan and Rachel had, for years, taken an interest in the dogs in their neighborhood that could use some assistance: an outdoor dog that needed a dog house or the many dogs living in a nearby homeless encampment.

With their extra time, they decided to do some extra work.

“It quickly became obvious to us when the pandemic settled in and the first stay-at-home orders were given that we weren’t going to be working so we figured we could just focus all of our efforts on the dog rescue stuff,” said Daniel. 

So, Dan and Rachel doubled down on their efforts, forming a nonprofit called Adopt My Block to help fund their work. They were not only able to offer more food and supplies to owners who couldn’t afford them, but they would also provide transportation and payment for those wanting to get their dogs spayed or neutered, and they began setting up a network of foster families to help keep unwanted pets out of shelters.

As the pandemic wound down, however, Dan and Rachel noticed the number of dogs needing help exploding.

“Right now it is currently a shelter crisis so there is a population explosion and people are surrendering and re-homing their dogs at an alarming rate now,” said Rachel. 

So, in 2020, Dan decided to make running Adopt My Block his full-time job.

“Once we realized how much of a need there was for the work and I kind of fell in love with it, too,” said Daniel. “I never met a dog I didn’t like. I felt like if I can do this full-time, I should do this full-time.”

The rise of “Pandemic Puppies” skyrocketed dog adoption rates during the lockdown, but with normalcy largely restored, owners can’t give their “Pandemic Puppies” the care and attention they once were able to. 

Shelters became over capacitated and if a dog found its way there, it most likely wouldn’t find its way out. 

“The shelter didn’t used to just euthanize dogs and it wasn’t just immediately a death sentence for dogs going to the shelter,” said Rachel. “Right now it is currently a shelter crisis.”

Adopt My Block has done what it can to mitigate the crisis. 

That’s the message Daniel wants to send forward.

Whatever it is, big or little, just do what you can. Anything is better than nothing.  

“If you can help, then help. If you approach it from that angle then I feel like most of the time you have success,” said Daniel. 

Still, everything Chatmon needed to know about how poorly schools treat Black and brown boys he learned firsthand in elementary school.

“The unfortunate experience I had in public school is one nested in trauma,” Chatmon said.

Chatmon said his spirited, talkative nature as a child was seen by his teachers as something to be fixed, not nurtured. He said he was regularly paddled and, in third grade, had his desk removed from the classroom by a teacher and placed in a coat closet.

“They really tried to break my spirit and get me to conform,” Chatmon said.

It took years for Chatmon to understand that it wasn’t his fault and that he wasn’t alone. “All of us (Black and brown students) had really bad experiences. That’s when I was like, ‘You know what, I got to do something different.,’” said Chatmon.

It was that realization that set Chatmon off in his quest to reform how schools, teachers, and administrators work with Black students, particularly boys. It is what led him to all those years working within and studying the system.

But Chatmon now has taken all that he has learned and struck out on his own, creating Kingmakers of Oakland.

Kingmakers is a nonprofit organization Chatmon founded that offers young Black boys in Oakland access to a wide range of opportunities they normally wouldn’t be exposed to. The goal is to not only provide young men with practical skills that will help them succeed in school, work, and life but to get them to believe in their own potential. 

“They’re walking around with crowns in their pocket and unfortunately the systems that we go through they would never know that they are kings and what we are trying to do is help them understand just who and whose you are,” said Chatmon.

Those crowns are discovered through programs like Kingmaker’s Media Academy, where youth are taught all aspects of film, video, music, and animation. In their new, 8,000-square-foot headquarters, young men will design and produce apparel.

These programs are all on top of Kingmaker’s academic support of its members.

Miles Pare is a 17-year-old going to Skyline High School. Pare said Kingmakers opened his eyes to the opportunities available to him, particularly when it came to college. He now has his sights set much higher: he hopes to attend an HBCU or Stanford after graduation.

“Those are pinch-me moments where you realize this king, he found his crown,” said Chatmon.

Unless that is, you do it like Ken Clausell and Ingrid Christiansen. When the two South Bay athletes go for a run, their teamwork is a sight to see (and hear).

“She’s my eyes and I’m her ears,” Ken said.

Ken is blind and Ingrid is hearing impaired. “Unless I have hearing aids, I don’t hear much of anything,” Ingrid said.

Out on a run, each clues the other into what they may be missing. Ingrid calls out obstacles on the road Ken can’t see and Ken alerts Ingrid to things she can’ hear. 

“When runners come up beside her and say, ‘I’m on your left and she can’t hear them,’ She’ll turn to me and say ‘What did that runner say?’ I’ll say, ‘The runner said I’m passing you on your left,’” said Kenneth. 

Distance running has long been a part of Ken’s life, even after he began losing his eyesight as a teenager but using an official running guide like Ingrid is a relatively new concept. Before then, he would use other runners who appear to be running his pace.

“I would just use people without them knowing that I am actually trying to follow them,” said Kenneth. “Watching their feet. When they step up, I step up.”

Ken met Ingrid this past summer through the Too Legit Fitness Group. Ken shared with Ingrid a series of races he had run at Disney World called the Dopey Challenge (four races, from 5k to marathon, run on four consecutive days). Ingrid was intrigued and they decided to train for and tackle the 2023 Dopey Challenge together.

Earlier this month in Floriday both Ken and Ingrid completed the combined 48.6 miles of the Dopey Challenge, each giving each other credit for helping them reach their goal.

Shirley also didn’t like the fact that there was a huge clock on the wall directly in front of her, reminding her just how many tedious hours of work lay in front of her. “I didn’t like it,” Shirley recalled.

So, when her husband one day pointed out a help wanted ad in the newspaper, Shirley was interested. San Francisco was hiring school bus drivers. Now, even though Shirley had never driven a bus (or even knew how to drive a manual transmission), she did have a clean driving record. She applied and was hired.

52 years later, Shirley is still driving San Francisco’s children to and from their schools, now working for Zum, the tech-enabled student transportation partner of SFUSD.

“The job is too easy to walk away from,” Shirley said. “And the people are nice. I like everyone and they like me.”

To say “everyone” likes Shirley does not seem like an exaggeration. Particularly when it comes to the parents of the district’s students with special needs. For most of her career, Shirley’s responsibility has been getting that precious cargo to school and back.

“The bus driver is a big deal to me,” said Marie Hudson, whose 19-year-old daughter, Sparkle, has been driven by Shirley for the past year.

“I’m reassured by Miss Shirley because she is so patient,” Marie said. “She will always go the extra mile for Sparkle.”

Marie recalled one day this school year when, after drop off at home, Sparkle’s key was not opening the front door. Instead of continuing back to the bus depot, Shirley called Marie on her cell phone to let her know about the problem and to let her know she wasn’t going anywhere.

“She was going to wait until I got home to make sure Sparkle got into the house,” Marie said.

“It didn’t hurt and nobody else was on the bus, so why not?” Shirley said.

It was an act of kindness and compassion that was not out of character for Shirley. In fact, last year Zum awarded her the first-ever “Paul Stein” award for her decades of dedication to San Francisco’s school children.

But for the past couple of years, owner Ali El Safy didn’t know if he’d be able to deliver those same smiles due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. 

Like other restaurants during the lockdown, Bistro Vida – a French restaurant in Menlo Park – was forced into doing deliveries and to-go orders only.

Ali knew he had loyal patrons, but didn’t know if it would be enough to stay open or keep all 25 members of his staff employed. 

Thankfully for Ali, his loyal patrons stepped up in a big, unexpecting way, doling out donations to keep Bistro Vida up, running, and fully staffed. 

“They are the ones that kept us floating because every month we’re getting checks from certain clients, can’t mention names but I know who they are. They support us, me and my crew,” said Ali.

In the end, Ali went through the entire pandemic without laying off any of his 25 employees.

“None. None. Not even one person. I kept them all during the whole time,” said Ali.

As a way to say thank you, Ali held a concert with – as you guessed it – free food. 

“I’m in the right place. I’m in the right community,” said Ali.

Many locally loved restaurants like Bistro Vida didn’t make it out of the lockdown phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is why Ali knows better than anyone how lucky he is to have loyal customers come together and pitch in. 

“I am thankful and I’m proud,” said Ali. 

But the closed door opened another one up – her front door to be exact.

Anna started a mail-order business inside her home and had delivery drivers coming every day. With their daily visits, she began to realize the dedication and hard work they put forth. 

“I come from a poor country, right? Which is the Philippines, so I know struggle,” said Anna. “I know they have a family because they are working so hard. One time I talked to them, ‘Oh it was 7:30 and you’re still,’ and she said, ‘I’m working until 9 o’clock.”

So, this holiday season, Anna has been setting up a waist-high bookshelf on her front porch packed to the brim with cookies, chips and soda – easily portable items for drivers to enjoy while making their rounds. Anna wants them to know how grateful she is for all their hard work.

“Every day and especially now with this holiday, I’ve been seeing these people lifting heavy boxes, carrying more than 10 or 20 boxes,” said Anna. 

Without their services, Anna wouldn’t be able to run a business, but it’s also in recognition of the added stress and workload they receive from the holidays. 

“Whether it’s farmworker or grocery worker, the delivery driver, we have to say thank you for them because they are working for their families, too, and they have to,” said Anna. “Living here is not as easy as 1, 2, 3. It’s always a struggle for everybody. Whether you’re a big worker, small worker, it’s always about struggling.”

Getting her four children into the habit of showing gratuity is also a key component of why Anna does it.

“That’s what I want my kids to see and for them to say thank you for these people,” said Anna. 

The Acol-Acol porch is filled with refreshing and enjoyable on-the-go snacks and a foundation for compassion. 

“They are good people, so for me, I told my kids we have to step up and let them know how grateful we are for them,” said Anna. 

Shortly after, another batch was dropped off. 

Before Carol knew it, her day was filled with a continuous loop of doorbell chimes and dropped-off bags of groceries from friends and neighbors. 

At first, Carol had no clue why people were delivering all this food to her home. It was only later that she learned her younger son Eric was the reason for this outpouring of generosity. 

Eric, a 19-year-old living with autism, had seen an email from his school on Carol’s phone. It was informing parents that San Jose Unified’s Liberty Advanced Career Education Program was hosting a Thanksgiving food drive for members of their community who needed help during the holiday season.

“So the email was sent to my cell phone,” said Carol, “and Eric always reads my messages and he read about the families that needed Thanksgiving dinner.”

Eric, however, did more than just read the email. “I forwarded it to myself,” Eric said. He then proceeded to send the message to everyone in his entire address book, which was quite a few people. 

“Our friend John Rowden showed up at the door with a huge box of canned goods and I said, ‘Oh what’s that for?’ And he said, ‘It’s Eric’s email for his donations.’ Then it clicked. I knew what he had done and then I started getting calls from neighbors and friends to pick up donations,” recalled Carol.

Eric’s generous act caught Carol off guard, but his capability of doing it comes as no surprise to anyone who knows him.

“Eric is the type of person that [when] the neighbor is sick he takes in and out their garbage every week,” said Carol. “He does it without them ever having to ask them to do it,” said Carol. 

In the end, Eric was responsible for one-quarter of all the food his school collected during the food drive.

“I was sitting on my front lawn and my sister’s boyfriend at the time was playing an acoustic guitar,” recalled Victor. “He was playing the start of More Than a Feeling,” by the band, Boston.  It was a moment that would change Victor’s life, as he would go on to a successful career as a rock musician.

As fate would have it, Victor would one day become a member of Boston himself, touring for years with the band. It was during one of those tours that another moment happened that would also change his life.

Victor was asked to visit a children’s hospital and play some music for the patients. 

He was originally supposed to play for a few, but once he got started he didn’t want it to end. “I ended up visiting everyone in their rooms and playing songs and singing together and listening to them sing,” Victor said. “It was an important day. I remember walking out of there and thinking, ‘There’s no higher or better use of music than for this.’”

The experience prompted Victor to start his own non-profit, Harmony & Healing, through which professional musicians connect virtually with patients and play whatever music will bring the patient joy.

“We try to line up the right musician with the right patient,” said Victor. “If somebody likes country music we have a country artist. Children, we have Disney. Older folks, I have a gal that does show tunes.”

For the patient, the music can be a welcome distraction from the seriousness of their situation. Victor has played for many patients nearing the end of their lives. The joy they get from a personal serenade from a professional musician can brighten spirits even during the darkest of times.

“They’re not in great shape right and you’re doing something that’s so profound. Patients will cry and just be having this wonderful life-altering experience. As a musician you know that you’re doing the right thing in that moment,” said Victor. 

“It sounds cliche to say, ‘Oh, it’s the biggest high I’ve ever had,’ but it really is.”

The Ottowa, Canada, couple had given birth to four children. Two of them, a son and a daughter, are healthy. Two others, both daughters, died before the age of two. Qureshi and Brashir, it turns out, are both carriers of a disease: infant-onset Pompe. Children with it usually don’t live more than a couple of years without treatment.

Still, in spite of the odds and their own experience, Qureshi and Brashir wished to continue growing their family and, in 2021, Qureshi became pregnant once again. Knowing the family’s history, doctors tested the fetus for Pompe. The test came back positive.

“It was devastating, obviously,” Qureshi said.

The outcome this time, however, would be much different, thanks to the efforts of a doctor more than 2,000 miles away in San Francisco. 

Qureshi and Brashir’s daughter, Ayla, is now 16 months old, her organs showing no signs of damage typical of Pompe sufferers, and the toddler is meeting all her childhood milestones.

“How do you thank somebody like that? I don’t know what to say, but we are just so, so, so grateful to her,” said Qureshi.

Dr. Tippi MacKenzie is the pediatric surgeon at UCSF Medical Center who pioneered Ayla’s treatment. Five years ago, she and her team set out to treat a series of diseases, including Pompe, while the patient was still in the mother’s womb. It was a type of therapy that had never been done before.

Success in the lab was promising enough that it was approved to be tried in humans. It was then that Qureshi and Brashir first talked with MacKenzie.

“We literally said, ‘You would be the first in the world. We have no idea that this is going to work. What do you think?’” said MacKenzie.

With zero hesitation, Qureshi and Brashir agreed to it. 

“It was amazing to know that there was maybe a possibility of giving her a better chance at life and a better quality of life,” said Qureshi. “I jumped at the idea of it. ‘OK, how do we make this happen?'”

With the help of physicians at The Ottowa Hospital and CHEO (Qureshi and Brashi could not travel due to COVID restrictions), Ayla received infusions both before and after she was born.

Her doctor and her parents could not be happier about the results.

“It’s an enormous privilege. What we do is an enormous privilege,” said MacKenzie. 

The 18-year-old Leigh High School graduate, went to classes at West Valley (Kyle was studying business with an interest in real estate). Kyle then raided the family’s refrigerator before heading off to a friend’s house.

That, however, is when typical turned into tragic.

With no warning signs, Kyle fainted at his friend’s house and passed away at the hospital that night from sudden cardiac arrest. Kyle’s mother, Jennifer Sarmento, would later learn that Kyle had been living with an undiagnosed and undetected medical condition: an enlarged heart. 

To Jennifer, Kyle’s death was as startling as it was unfathomable. He had played sports his whole life, was physically fit, and got a clean bill of health after a physical just two months prior. 

“I couldn’t tell at the time what it meant, but I told my husband and my daughter, ‘His life isn’t ending here,” Jennifer said. “We are going to continue it in someway.'”

That way has turned into The Kyle J. Taylor Foundation. 

Beginning in 2019, Jennifer and other volunteers have been going to high schools to provide free electrocardiograms for high school students, particularly athletes.

The goal of the screenings is to detect cardiac issues that aren’t normally tested for in routine checkups. A screening such as this, Jennifer says, could have detected Kyle’s condition. 

“I can’t just sit by and not help people know that this can happen to your child,” Jennifer said. “You start hearing all these other stories in your community and that it’s not as rare as everybody thinks it is.”

So far, of the 2,000 screenings the foundation has done, two dozen cases have come up needing further investigation.

As gratifying as those results are, the work isn’t always easy for Jennifer. Every day, surrounded by the teenagers she is screening, she’s reminded of the pain and heartbreak of losing a healthy teen boy in the blink of an eye. 

But the pain she feels is evened out by knowing each screening is another parent who won’t find themself in her shoes. 

“There are some days that I don’t want to be doing this. I don’t want to be doing this work. But, I know that it’s making an impact and I know that Kyle is making an impact. It warms my heart to know that I am hopefully helping a family avoid this grief. That means everything to me.”

She enjoyed traveling the world and had a tech sales job that she was passionate about. Behmaran also maintained a physically fit lifestyle, doing pilates and yoga. She considered herself as healthy as one can be. 

But some things were out of her control.

One day while showering, Behmaram noticed a lump in her breast and immediately knew something was off. Her intuitions were correct. It was breast cancer. 

“When I found this out in June 2020 I just thought, ‘Thank God I traveled’ and I was so grateful,” recalls Behmaram. “I wasn’t angry. Just heartbroken.”

Behmaram threw herself into educating herself about her prognosis and her options for treatment. She chose to have a single mastectomy followed by breast reconstruction, something equally as important to her as defeating the cancer.

“I wasn’t focused on cancer at all,” recalls Behmaram. “I know that’s not normal, maybe. But I really wanted to look like myself and yes. It was really important to feel like I didn’t lose myself.”

For her reconstruction, Behmaram chose to have it done by Dr. Kamakshi Zeider, of Aesthetx. Behmaram was thrilled with the outcome but what she couldn’t have known is that her connection to Dr. Zeidler would end up going well beyond the operating room.

One year after her surgery, while taking a pilates class at Yoga Source in Los Gatos, Behmaram recognized the woman on a nearby mat. It was Dr. Zeidler.  “Sitting right in front of me. I was so excited and I went over to her and she got excited. We are all connected more than we know.”

Dr. Zeidler was just as surprised and enthralled to see Mahsa. “I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh Mahsa!’ And she’s wearing this cute little workout outfit and of course we took some selfies.”

But there was a third connection to breast cancer in the studio: class instructor Linda McGrath’s mother had recently survived a bout with breast cancer. 

“It affects all of us. All of us,” said McGrath. “Many of us have had scares. Lying awake sleepless awaiting results. Gotten away with it. It’s just the Russian roulette of our lives.”

Behmaram, McGrath, and Dr. Zeidler took this connection they all had, in different ways, to breast cancer as a sign. A sign, not just that so many women are touched by breast cancer, but that they should combine their resources to help other cancer patients.

On Friday, Oct. 21, the three women held a special fundraising class that brought in more than $4,000 for the non-profit Cancer Care Point. 

“We wanted to send this message to the people who are going through it right now, they’re not alone. We very much care and we are on this journey with you. We will support you any way we can.”

Bay Area Proud Sep 22, 2022

Bay Area Proud September Story Updates

Bay Area Proud Sep 10, 2022

Bay Area Proud Blood Drive Returns

“I was determined to create a community in my new neighborhood,” said Smith. “I wanted to know all my neighbors.” 

Smith said she was so determined to connect with her neighbors on the 1400 block of 12th Avenue in the city’s Inner Sunset, she would stop people she recognized from her block on the street and ask them for their email addresses.

Connecting electronically, though, was just the first step. Smith wanted the type of relationship with her neighbors that can only come from face-to-face interaction. 

Soon, people on the block were gathering on the 12th of each month for drinks and conversation on the street, and, for the past dozen years, the street is shut to traffic one Saturday in October and the residents get together for a day-long block party.

“Sometimes people will say to me, ‘Oh my neighborhood isn’t like that and we don’t know any of our neighbors,’” Smith said. “I always try to tell them, ‘It doesn’t always just happen. Sometimes you have to make it happen. You have to go and get outside your comfort zone.'”

By going outside her comfort zone to bring her neighbors together, Smith was recently recognized by the social network, Nextdoor, as one of their Nextdoor 100.

Smith believes the benefits of her community building go well beyond that of a yearly social gathering.

“It’s not the block party so much, but that’s a good vehicle to transform your neighborhood,” said Smith. “It’s the planning that brings people together and that’s how you get people to come over and talk to each other.”

There are practical benefits to all this, Smith said. “There’s always someone to take care of your cat when you go away.” There is also noticeably less litter on the 1400 block and, Smith reports, less crime. It is, in short, a nicer place to live when one takes the time to connect with those who live there, too.

“There’s something about that knowing [your neigbors] that makes it feel familiar and comfortable,” said Smith. “I think everyone should do it.”

It is also something Smith believes anyone can do, it just takes some initiative.

Every year, that is, except for the past two years. In both 2020 and 2021, the conditions due to the pandemic, Schiro believed, were not right to host a haunted house that traditionally gathers thousands of people on Halloween.

Schiro is thrilled to be back doing what he loves with a crew he loves working with.

“That’s the biggest part: the energy from the community. I think when you get people at their best together and converge on something, you can’t explain that feeling,” said Schiro. “It just is and you just enjoy it at its highest.”

From a pirate ship to a haunted hotel to this year’s Victorian mansion, no two years are alike. The lone constant has been why Schiro does it. 

“We want to build people up and I think we build people up here and make them feel better about themselves,” said Schiro, who began building the houses for his daughter’s elementary school fall festivals. 

Nine years into it, Schiro switched locations to his front yard, building a temporary home each year in front of the one he already lives in.

“This is a journey for three and a half months, building every day, every weekend,” said Schiro. 

All of the time, dedication, and blisters, become worth it for Schiro when, “A car comes by, a 75-year-old man is in it and he’s a kid again because he just can’t get over the excitement that he gets from it.”

Seeing how his endeavor has connected people, particularly in his neighborhood, is what keeps him going.

“To me, ‘What else can you ask for?’ We are not dividing right now, we are connecting,” he said.

And Schiro is not done yet.

“The tank is not full for my journey on this. Every year I’m enhancing it and I have fun ideas for the next year that we haven’t done yet. It’s exciting as ever,” he said.

“I thought, I want to be a person that makes it so that a young girl’s mom doesn’t die on her from a disease,” said Dr. Matityahu. “I want to cure illness. I never wavered.”

Dr. Matityahu went on to do precisely that, graduating from medical school and becoming an OB-GYN, practicing at the Kaiser Permanente Redwood City Medical Center for the past twenty years. What Dr. Matityahu didn’t expect, however, is where else that elementary school vow would take her. For the past decade, Dr. Matityahu has been running a non-profit, Beyond Fistula, helping women in Kenya rebuild their lives after a traumatic and stigmatizing experience.

It all started, Dr. Matityahu said, with a family trip that involved a month-long stay in Kenya. It was there she worked with a surgeon who specialized in repairing obstetric fistulas. Fistulas resulting from a traumatic birth can ultimately cause severe damage to a woman’s internal organs.

The fistula can lead to, among other things, loss of bladder control. As a result, many fistula sufferers are ostracized by their communities, losing educational and employment opportunities. “The women that came into the hospital that I met and I spoke with were devastated and depressed, and felt like it was their fault or they were cursed,” Dr. Matityahu said.

The surgeon Dr. Matityahu met was able to repair the fistulas, but there was so much more the women needed. She asked one of the girls, “What’s next? What do you want to do with your life?” The woman replied, “I just want to go back to school. I just want to study.” 

Dr. Matityahu learned that the woman originally dropped out of school after being bullied by classmates for leaking urine in class. In total, it cost Dr. Matithayu about $24 to provide the necessary materials like shoes and a uniform for her to return to class. Once Dr. Matityahu realized that such a small investment could make a big impact on a person’s life, she and one of her children started the non-profit that would become Beyond Fistula.

The organization helps women who have had fistulas repaired by teaching them business and farming skills as well as other ways to make money such as basket weaving. Beyond Fistula has so far helped more than 400 women rebuild their lives.

“I thought ‘If it was me that was in Kenya, and somebody came to visit and saw my life, would they do something to help me? And so I just felt like almost an internal obligation to be their voice, and figure out how to do it.”

It’s only fitting, Dussault says, because the Salvation Army has, more than once, given Dussault a new life.

Growing up in Chico, Dussault was on a path to becoming whatever it was she dreamed of. A straight-A student, she had her sights set on studying international business at Pepperdine University. That path, though, would end up taking unimaginable twists when, one night at a high school party, she tried hard drugs for the first time.

“It was like something clicked inside of my brain and instantly left me wanting more,” Dussault said.

She would drop out of school just six months later and struggled, on and off, for the next 15 years with drug addiction.

“Nobody wakes up and says, ‘I want to be homeless today. I want to be an addict. I want to go and throw my entire life away and live on the streets addicted, hopeless, and lost,'” she said. “But that’s where I found myself and I really didn’t know if hope was ever possible for me.”

Hope, however, came from an unexpected source: a fellow addict. Dussault confessed to the woman that, deep down, she wanted to change her life.

“She said, ‘If you want to change your life and you’re serious about it, then you need to go to the Salvation Army,'” Dussault said.

Not long after that, Dussault found herself walking through the doors of the Salvation Army in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. 

“The minute I walked through the doors of the Salvation Army, I was met with nothing but love,” Dussault said. “Love, acceptance. They walked alongside me until I could stand on my own two feet. They believed in me until I could believe in myself.”

Life changed dramatically again, but for the better this time. She was able to find a job in San Francisco and went back to school. The bright future, however, came undone once more after the unexpected death of her 3-month-old son.

“Within three months I was homeless, addicted, alone,” Dussault said. “I had lost my job, I lost my home, I threw away my college education.”

After spending time in prison, Dussault returned to the Salvation Army again, vowing to make her recovery permanent this time.

“I started working and getting a job and providing for my family,” she said. “It was a struggle. It was really, really hard, but every single day I showed up and I put in the work and kept working and working to rebuild my life.”

Grateful for all they had done for her, Dussault began volunteering for the Salvation Army, trying to do for others what had been done for her.

“I thought, ‘If I can make the struggle just a little bit easier for someone then I can really make a difference,'” she said.

Dussault eventually came to work with the Salvation Army, rising to her current position. She seeks ways in which Bay Area businesses can collaborate with the Salvation Army, offering things like job training or donations toward the new headquarters.

“I realized all of the experiences, all of the adversity, all of the struggles that I went through had all led up to this point and shaped me into the person I am today and it’s the reason why I am so inspired and so committed to making a difference for others,” she said.

When Seyfert learned this summer that Lehr’s German Specialties in San Francisco’s Noe Valley was closing, she was mainly concerned about where she was going to find a place to buy the kind of dumplings and other German foods that reminded her of home in Hannover, Germany.

“At first for me, it was like, ‘I want the store to continue,’” Seyfert said. “I want to know where I will get my Christmas stollen [a traditional German fruitcake] from.”

The answer to that question, it turns out, is Seyfert herself. Last month, she signed a deal to take over the 50-year-old business from its original owner, Brigitte Lehr, who said failing eyesight had made it impossible for her to continue operating it.

“I feel proud that there’s a representation of my culture in San Francisco. That’s why it means so much to me and I wanted to keep it,” Seyfert said.

Seyfert first stumbled across Lehr’s not long after moving to the Bay Area seven years ago.

“Just walked by that store like, ‘Oh my God, that’s a German store.’ That felt so cool to be represented in a different city,” she said.

Seyfert soon became one of Lehr’s regular customers. Anytime she wanted a taste of home, both literally and figuratively, she could find it at the Church Street storefront.

The store clearly meant a lot to Seyfert, but what she didn’t realize until taking it over was how much it meant to so many others.

While she is sprucing up the place in preparation for its reopening with a fresh coat of paint, Seyfert leaves the front door open and a steady stream of customers, from down the street and across the Bay Area, pop their heads in.

“It just means so much to so many neighbors and people in the neighborhood,” Seyfert said. “They come from different parts of the city just to stop by and tell me how much it means to them. Honestly, it makes me really happy.”

Seyfert plans to reopen Lehr’s, with the same name but an updated look and product line, sometime in November.

Bay Area Proud Sep 20, 2022

New York Family Travels to San Francisco in the Hope Neurosurgeon Will Operate on Daughter

Bay Area Proud Sep 15, 2022

Petaluma Tattoo Artist Raises Thousands for Cause Close to His Heart: Suicide Prevention

The world of tattooing has exploded since that time and Rodin has had a front row seat for all of it.

“So many more people now are getting tattooed than before,” Rodin said. “I got tattooed so people wouldn’t talk to me as much. Now you sit on an airplane and it’s the icebreaker.”

With so many people getting so many tattoos, Rodin came to the realization a few years ago that there was potential for big money to be collected using tattooing as a fundraiser. And Rodin knew exactly where he wanted the money to go: suicide prevention.

This past weekend, more than a dozen tattoo artists came to Petaluma Tattoo, Rodin’s shop, donating their time to ink 60 tattoos, eventually raising close to $15,000. The money was donated to Buckelew, the North Bay’s largest nonprofit provider of mental health and suicide prevention services.

It is a cause important to Rodin because in 2009, in a matter of a few months, both his only brother and close friend died from suicide.

“I had a lot of mixed emotions,” Rodin said. “I was angry, I was sad, I was mad at myself.”

Rodin had difficulty talking about what happened for close to a decade. Organizing the fundraiser, though, gave Rodin an opening to discuss his experience with others.

Rodin hopes the money is helpful to others. He is sure, however, that getting involved has helped him.

“In a way, this is a very selfish act for myself,” he said. “It really helps me get past and live my life through the pain that I’ve had and I still have sometimes.”

There was a common thread, though. Lives were in danger and someone needed to do something, fast. 

Without any hesitation, Willie Maquinalez was that someone both times.

“You don’t have any time to think about being scared or not,” said Maquinalez. “You just gotta keep moving, do the, ‘What’s next?’”

The first instance was in September 2018. Maquinalez was volunteering at a Pop Warner tournament at Gilroy High School. Maquinalez knew right away something was out of place when he saw a car where there shouldn’t have been one. 

“Seeing a car drive in our direction in the practice field,” he said. “Usually cars aren’t parked back there.”

The car started to drive faster and more erratic while moving toward the football field.

After yelling for other parents to shut the gates to the field so the car couldn’t get through, Maquinalez confronted the driver, eventually jumping into the man’s car, checking to see if he had any weapons.

The suspect took off with Maquinalez in the car, driving toward arriving police officers. One officer shot at the car, unaware that Maquinalez was inside. After the driver bailed out of the car while it was still moving, Maquinalez brought it to a stop before it hit anyone.

There was no part of Maquinalez that questioned whether he should intervene. Maquinalez, who volunteers for the local Boy Scout and Cub Scout troops, was awarded the organization’s Honor Medal With Crossed Palms for is actions that day.

“How would I live with myself if something did happen and I did nothing? That doesn’t sit well with me,” he said.

Bay Area Proud Sep 6, 2022

Spreading Beauty: SF Couple Inspiring Movement to Plant Native Wildflowers

Bay Area Proud Aug 25, 2022

Effort to Clean Up SF, Started By Dad Picking Up Trash With His Daughters, Spreads Across City

It was a philosophy that came in handy less than a year later at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. In July 2019, a gunman entered the fairgrounds and started firing.

While volunteering on the communications team, Maquinalez heard an alarming call come across his radio: “Shots fired.”

Once again, without any hesitation, Maquinalez lept into action. As festivalgoers ran away from the gunfire, he directed busses to load them and take them toward safety.

“I see people running out of the festival to the north side,” he said. “So I went into one of the busses, opened up the door, told the bus driver, ‘Get these people out of here. There’s shots fired in the festival. Load them up and get them out.'”

For Maquinalez, reacting to both scenarios comes from the same place inside. 

“It’s a matter of stepping up and helping out,” he said. “I didn’t really think about risking my life. It was something that needed to be done.”

The engaged couple is leading a movement to beautify their city as well as boost the local ecosystem by spreading wildflower seeds over any and all patches of bare earth they encounter.

“Spending five minutes throwing seeds on the ground can literally transform a place,” Phoenix said.

Phoenix and Shalaco’s social media posts on TikTok and Instagram chronicling their seed-sowing adventures (often in bee suits, riding electric skateboards) have garnered them hundreds of thousands of online followers.

“Individually, we were doing the things we love to do with plants, then we came to do them together and we’re like, ‘Let’s share this with the internet.’ Then the internet lost their minds,” Shalaco said.

The couple met a dozen years ago and said they instantly bonded over their interest in plants and nature. Phoenix owns a landscaping business. You can find plants in every room of their large Mission District victorian home as well as filling every square foot of their backyard. Phoenix and Shalaco share all sorts of horticultural knowledge in their social media posts, but it is the seed spreading that has brought them the most attention.

Shalaco takes credit for discovering that a parmesan cheese shaker, filled with wildflower seeds and rice hulls (to space out the seeds) worked perfectly for their needs. They enjoy seed spreading on almost any walk they do, but they have also found that once they put the shaker in the hands of others, a convert is instantly made.

“All of the sudden they can’t stop. They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is so much fun.’ And they’re just like shaking everywhere. It’s infectious for me. It’s infectious for anyone we cruise around with. You put a shaker in their hand and they go nuts for it,” Shalaco said.

There are numerous spots in and around their neighborhood that Phoenix and Shalaco can point to where wildflowers bloom thanks to their efforts. The benefits to the environment are plenty, the pair say. The native plants are not only pretty to look at, but they are good for the soil, aid in water conservation, and attract bugs and insects that are beneficial to the rest of the local ecosystem.

“I think it’s fantastic. We are both super in love with the city. We’ve lived here for so long and it feels really good to give back.” Phoenix said. “A lot of people are like, ‘Oh I just thought those were just growing there. I thought it was magic.'” 

What happened next, though, was far from typical and forever changed the course of Karnazes’ life.

“At about 11 o’clock at night, they said to me, ‘Let’s order another round,'” Karnazes said. “I said, ‘No, instead of celebrating with another round of tequila, I’m going to celebrate by running 30 miles.'”

Now, at that time, Karnazes was not the world-class ultramarathoner he would become – far from it. Although he had competed in high school, Karnazes hadn’t gone for a meaningful run in 15 years. What he was, however, was unhappy with his life. A career in marketing had left him stressed and unfulfilled.

Unsure if he were running toward something or away from it, Karnazes stripped down to his silk boxer shorts and began running south. About 10 miles in, when Karnazes guesses the tequila wore off, he started to wonder if he had made a big mistake.

“Then, I looked up and I saw the stars and it was as if God spoke to me,” Karnazes said. “I felt like for the first time in my life I was meant to be right where I was at that time in the universe.”

Karnazes stopped running after 30 miles in Half Moon Bay where he called his wife – collect, from a pay phone – to pick him up. He quit his job the following day and dedicated himself to very long-distance running.

Karnazes says the result of the decision he made that night has been an amazing life. He not only became one of the world’s best ultramarathoners, he played a pivotal role in launching what was an obscure sport into the public spotlight.

“I’ve lived a remarkable life,” Karnazes said. “I’ve been on all seven continents twice, I’ve run a marathon to the South Pole and I’ve run across the Sahara Desert. The things that I’ve done and the experiences that I’ve had are phenomenal.”

This all explains why, for his 60th birthday, Karnazes and a group of friends returned to the very same spot 30 years to the day since that fateful run to retrace his journey.

“It’s an emotional moment for me,” Karnazes said after downing a single shot of tequila and preparing to take off.

The crew wound their way through the night from San Francisco down the coast to Half Moon Bay, arriving shortly after 8 in the morning. His wife was waiting for him this time.

Karnazes was celebrating his running career, sure, but there was something else he was grateful for. After writing his memoir, Ultramarathon Man, in 2006, Karnazes began receiving cards, letters and emails from people all over the world who had read his book. Thousands of people reached out to let him know that his words had changed their lives. They either started running, rediscovered running, or simply were inspired to tackle what they once thought “impossible” in their lives.

“I thought, ‘Now I have a purpose,'” Karnazes said. “I’m not just pounding my chest. Running is very self-absorbing and it can be very selfish. I thought, ‘Here’s a greater calling for my running.’ What other gift can you give to someone than the gift of inspiration?”

Those two observations ended up launching Yuen on one, very big mission: to clean up his city.

Vince is the founder of Refuse Refuse, a campaign meant to inspire and engage the residents of San Francisco to take an active role in cleaning up their city. To date, Refuse Refuse has organized 600 litter cleanups all over the city, gathering more than 150,000 gallons of trash.

It all started, though, very small. As in, Yuen’s two small children.

“They got tired of being in the backyard gardening and bike riding,” said Yuen. “Rollerblading got played out, and I’m like, ‘What else can we do?’”

On their daily walks, Yuen had noticed how much trash there was, so he purchased a few trash-pickers and he and his daughters added that activity to their walks.

Then, one day, a neighbor Yuen had never met called out to them, asking if he could join them.

“So we just exchanged numbers and then next week he was out with me picking up trash alongside myself and my two kids,” Yuen said. “I was like, ‘Oh, OK there’s something here.'”

Yuen has grown that “something” into Refuse Refuse.

At first, Yuen said he laser-focused on quantifying the amount of trash that was being collected but as time went on, he realized that something more important was happening: Yuen was becoming more connected with his community, his neighbors and his city. It was that reward, more than any clean street, that Yuen wants to share with others.

“We say we love San Francisco, we live here, we benefit from all the great things, but it’s got to be more than I pay my taxes,” he said.

Bay Area Proud Aug 18, 2022

Kindness Over Competition: 11-Year-Old Catcher Comforts Opposing Player, Fearful After Getting Hit by Pitch

Bay Area Proud Aug 16, 2022

Unable to Save Life Of Ugandan Boy, Oakland Nurse Promises to Save Lives of Many More

To Dominic, the tears and fears were completely understandable.

During the batter’s previous at-bat, facing the Diablos’ strongest pitcher, the boy had taken a fastball to the head.

“It hit his helmet but also hit him in the face,” said Keith Raynor, the Diablos’ coach. “It drew some blood. It was really scary because anytime someone is throwing that hard and a kid gets hit in the face, I mean, I think everybody was just in shock.”

The game was delayed for 15 minutes while the player was cared for but, surprisingly, he stayed in the game.

It was during his next at-bat, however, against the same pitcher, that the player seemed to be re-thinking that decision.

“I notice that he’s crying and he’s on the outside of the box and he just doesn’t look like he wants to be there right now,” Dominic said.

It was at that moment that Dominic chose kindness over competition.

He called time out to stop the game, walked over to the player and hugged him. Dominic then whispered in the player’s ear why he should have nothing to fear.

“I just tell him I would call all the pitches outside so that he wouldn’t have a chance of getting hurt again,” Dominic said.

That is exactly what happened, and, four outside pitches later, the boy walked safely to first base.

From the stands, Elise Diliberto, Dominic’s mother, couldn’t make out exactly what was happening, so she asked him about it during the ride home. The fact he did something so empathetic didn’t surprise Elise in the least.

“He’s always really good about bringing other people up,” Elise said. “Or, if he notices a teammate is getting down on himself, he tries to tell him, ‘You know it’s OK. We will get him next time.’”

Coach Raynor could not have been happier about Dominic’s decision. It may have helped the other team a little (although the Diablos won the game), but it certainly helped one player a lot.

“It’s cool,” Raynor said. “I was so proud of him. His parents have done a good job, you know. That was a good moment.”

“I’m looking at this fingernails and I’m looking at his face and I’m like, ‘Wow, that boy looks like he has a heart defect,’” Kayla said.

It was a hunch that not only proved to be correct but would also launch Kayla, now a nurse at Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center, on an emotional, life-changing journey that has the potential to help many Ugandan children with similar ailments.

Patrick was the name of the boy she saw in the Ugandan hospital. Kayla asked the local doctors for an echocardiogram to test her hypothesis but was told access to an echocardiogram was limited and expensive by Ugandan standards. Kayla offered to pay the $30 for the scan.

The echo proved Kayla’s theory correct: Patrick had Tetralogy of Fallot, a rare condition that is the result of a combination of four heart defects that are present at birth. Kayla had never seen a child as old as Patrick with the condition. In the United States, Tetralogy of Fallot is usually corrected with surgery within a child’s first six months of life.

What was even worse news for Kayla was learning that there was no option locally for repairing Patrick’s heart.

“Man, I was devastated,” Kayla said. “I couldn’t sleep after that. I would see Patrick every day after that and just think like, ‘There’s no way I could just let this kid die without at least trying to do something for him.’”

It turns out Kayla had formed a strong emotional attachment to Patrick.

“I have never in my life had a relationship like I had with Patrick,” Kayla said. “When I say we were thick as thieves, we were inseparable. I was sleeping in an on-call room in the hospital. He would just come in my room and sleep next to me.”

For the next 11 months, Kayla was on a nonstop mission to find a way to get Patrick the surgery that would save his life. She reached out to hundreds of hospitals in the United States looking for one that would donate the surgery, finally finding one in Kentucky. Then, there were months of bureaucratic hurdles to obtaining a passport and visa for Patrick. At one point, the pair were about to board a flight when they were stopped. 

“They accused me of trying to traffic him out of the country, so then we had to go to court and get more paperwork done,” Kayla said.

Kayla and Patrick arrived in Kentucky only to learn that his condition had deteriorated to the point he would not survive the surgery to repair his heart. Three days later, Patrick died in Kayla’s arms. It was then she made a promise to him.

“One, I was going to take care of his family, and two, I was going to make sure his life had meaning and people were going to know how much he changed my life and that he was going to continue to change lives,” Kayla said.

Paty’s Project is how Kayla is delivering on that promise. It’s a nonprofit through which Kayla raises money to pay for life-saving surgeries for Ugandan children with heart defects, like Patrick. Kayla has found a hospital in India that will do the surgeries, costing roughly $10,000, including transportation and housing.

So far, Kayla has arranged three surgeries for Ugandan children with two more identified as the next recipients.

The first of the children Kayla was able to help turned out to be Patrick’s younger sister, Gift.

“She had surgery, she did amazing and she is now almost five years old doing swimmingly in Uganda,” Kayla said. “It just brings me incredible joy to know these kids now have one less thing, one less obstacle in their life and can go to school for the first time and can run around without getting winded and really have a fair shot of living.”

It was then she noticed someone else who was there every day: kids with disabilities unable to participate in the competition.

“The siblings of the players that had special needs were playing in the rocks or wriggling in the stands, bored. They wanted to play and they didn’t have a team to play on,” said Morrone.

So, in 2010 Morrone created a team for them to play on. She created a Challenger Division team for the CPLL, made up of children with physical and intellectual disabilities. Since its first year, the team has grown in size (from five to 28) and is just about to reach a once-unthinkable milestone.

The CPLL Challenger team is going to Williamsport, Pennsylvania to play in the Little League World Series. They will be facing a Challenger Division team from Ohio in a one-inning exhibition match before the championship game. The Little League World Series began in 1947, but it’s now the sixth time that it will feature a Challenger Division Game.  

Being granted an opportunity is something akin to winning the lottery. Challenger Divisions from all over the world, not just the U.S. send letters in and apply for the chance to be a part of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The league is in the process of raising $80,000 to pay for a dozen players, coaches, and family members to attend.

“It’s an amazing opportunity and it’s every kid’s dream to play at the World Series, every ballplayer’s dream anyway. If I can afford 12 kids that opportunity I’m going to make it happen,” Morrone said. 

Televised to the entire world, the Little League World Series is considered by many to be the pinnacle event of youth sports. Thousands of children from all corners of the world compete to make it to this promised land. 

For some parents like Derek Maravilla, just watching his son Rilley lace up his cleats and dig into the diamond on any given Sunday is plenty to boast about but the World Series is something he will never forget.

“I never thought I would have the opportunity to watch him play baseball, but then to watch him play it on the biggest stage for Little League is going to be, I can’t even put it into words,” said Maravilla.

Maravilla couldn’t be more grateful for Morrone and the opportunities she’s been able to create for Rilley.

After their second season with the program, Maravilla wrote Morrone a letter, “saying how I never thought that I’d be able to sit in the stands and watch my kid play baseball. It’s really a great amazing program that she and her family have created and that the Cambrian Park Little League has embraced, supported, and made it what it is today.”

His life has not been the same since.

Upon Chris’ return, Kate noticed that the right side of his face appeared “slumped” and when he spoke, his words didn’t make sense.

“Oh my God, he’s having a stroke,” Kate recalled thinking.

Within a minute, she was on the phone to 911. Her quick action likely saved Chris’ life.

“I don’t think I can take credit for that,” Kate said, going on to praise EMTs, nurses and doctors for the real life-saving. “But I do believe because the blood clot was in the main artery to the dominant part of his brain every second counted.”

Kate doesn’t recall when or from whom she learned the signs of a stroke, but both she and Chris are hoping now to inspire more people to educate themselves. While still working tirelessly on rehabilitation, Chris has joined the board of the Stroke Awareness Foundation, a group with the goal of saving lives and improving the outcome for stroke victims.

His nonprofit work, however, is just a part-time job. Chris’ full-time endeavor is focusing on this recovery.

“I’m going to work as hard as I can to regain as much functionality as I possibly can,” Chris said.

Chris’ progress so far has been remarkable. Not long after his stroke, swelling of his brain forced doctors to remove part of it. Kate was warned that Chris would likely not be able to walk, talk or understand what others were saying. He has defied all those predictions so far and hopes to do even more. Chris’ long-term goals include being able to once again play guitar (he was a regular presence on the South Bay music scene) as well as golf (he’s a 13 handicap).

Chris had to resign from his position with the VMC Foundation, one he held for close to 20 years. During his tenure, he helped to raise tens of millions of dollars to improve health care in Silicon Valley. Such a powerful position may be in the past for Chris, but it doesn’t mean he can’t still help others. He plans to do that by raising awareness to the danger that stroke presents.

“The first thing I want people to know is that you really need to know the signs of a stroke so that if this happens to you or someone you love you can be there for them or for yourself, to help make sure that you get to a stroke-certified hospital as quickly as possible,” he said. “That’s why I’m here today.”

“Bottom line is, we don’t know what they want, we didn’t know what they wanted,” John Goldman said. “And look what came out of it.”

EPACENTER (pronounced “epicenter”) is what came out of it – a 25,000-square-foot center for arts education that recently opened its doors to youth in the city ages 3-25. Free programs are offered in visual arts, dance, music and a host of other disciplines.

Throughout the process of creating EPACENTER, the Goldmans looked to a team of local youth to guide them in every aspect of creating the space: the curriculum, the building design and even the name.

“I remember when they first asked us, ‘Do you want to name it EPACENTER or some other name I forgot, and we immediately said EPACENTER,’” said Staci Edwards, a member of the youth group guiding the Goldmans who now works as a project intern at EPACENTER. “To see the color and to see the youthful look on the building, I knew that it was something that belonged here.”

Nadine Rambeau is EPACENTER’s Executive Director. As someone who has spent her life working in the arts and education, Rambeau was drawn to the project when she learned how youth oriented it was.

“Actually creating something big that is going to change other people’s lives,” said Rambeau. “That is the quintessential essence of creativity and what arts education can do, it just impressed me.”

“The theme throughout this entire project is just pulling back and saying, ‘What is it that you’d like to see,’ allowing people to create the reality that makes the most sense for them and then doing what they say,” said Rambeau. 

Colette Dunleavy is a volunteer with Muttville, a senior dog rescue organization. Reuniting lost dogs with their owners has developed into something of a passion of hers. Just recently, Dunleavy reunited a lost chocolate labrador with its grateful owner. Her latest case, though, might better be described as a mission.

San Francisco Jun 5, 2022

Arkansas Couple Search for Dog Stolen From Van in SF

South San Francisco Jun 23, 2022

Dog Walker Arrested After Police Rescue Pets From Vehicle in South San Francisco

After returning from a tour of Alcatraz on May 24, Amanda and Rebecca Chapman were heartbroken to see the back windows of their minivan shattered and Riley, their eight-month-old Chihuahua, gone. 

The Chapmans had been on an extensive driving tour of the western United States from their home in Arkansas. They were only planning on staying one day in San Francisco

“I couldn’t even walk to the side of the car to see what happened,” Amanda said. “I pretty much just fell to the ground, felt like I couldn’t breathe, I was shaking so bad, it was so hard for me to move.”

Someone who knew of Dunleavy’s success in helping owners find their lost pets contacted her after hearing about the Chapman’s theft. Colette was immediately on the case. She wanted to not only help the owners but help her repair her city’s image.

“Having your possessions stolen is one level of nightmares when you’re on vacation, but having your family member taken is just a whole different level,” said Dunleavy. “I mean, they must have such a terrible, terrible opinion of our city and I just want to try and fix it.”

“I think we as a community owe it to them to find their dog and bring it back to them,” said Dunleavy. 

Dunleavy began by posting on social media sites like Nextdoor. She also cross-referenced sites where people post lost animals, such as Pawboost , Petco Lost and Found, and 24Petconnect with information about pets recently dropped off at shelters. She then contacted the media to cast an even wider net.

“The only way to find her is to have this collective community call to action to get her face out there in the media and hope that somebody will recognize her and bring her back to her family.”

“I just felt so bad that they didn’t have anything that they could play on. They needed some adaptive equipment,” Shirlee said.

There was little Shirlee could do during her teaching days to change the situation but in retirement, Shirlee and her husband Ron, also a retired school teacher, have been unstoppable. 

Eight years ago, the Morgan Hill couple saw a news story about an all-inclusive playground that had opened up in Salinas. It was then that Shirlee and Ron embarked on a journey to bring a similar park to Morgan Hill. Many years and many millions of dollars later, they have finally succeeded.

Earlier this month, the ribbon was cut on Magical Bridge Morgan Hill, the Bay Area’s newest all-abilities playground.

Ron says he did a lot of work, but it was Shirlee who was the driving force, calling her the “coach” of the operation.

“Shirlee did a lot of research, got a lot of information about special needs kids, special needs equipment, and mixing special needs kids with other kids and the power of play and functionality,” said Ron.

Ron, a member of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, fundraised tirelessly and through donations from the city, county, The Junior League of San Jose, and countless businesses and individuals they ultimately brought in $6.2 million to build the park.

“I went to the Rotary, I went to Kiwanis, I went to businesses up and down the street in Morgan Hill, I went out to the industrial park area,” said Ron.

The process was slow, but once funds were initially set in place, the Lociceros were able to go around various schools and get ideas for equipment from those who would actually be using it.

“We decided to set up a meeting at the schools because we wanted the children to pick the equipment,” said Ron.

“Shirlee showed us how we could do it, we put pictures and she got little stickers and the kids could put stickers on the slide they liked and the swing they liked so we went to the schools and we made presentations.”

One piece of equipment, the Magical Harp, responds to movement below it with musical tones. It’s an accessory rooted in innovation and inclusion, which is conducive to the experience that the Magical Bridge is trying to create. 

The harp is surrounded by dozens of other slides, swings, and merry-go-rounds made specifically to be used by children with any type of mobility challenge. There is also a small stage and an outdoor classroom included in the playground.

Ron and Shirlee were there on the opening day of the playground when hundreds of children and their families showed up. They also plan to visit regularly, even without their grandchildren, just to watch children with disabilities enjoy what they helped to create.

“They just want to be like the other kids, they want to play with the other kids and be part of the group and with this inclusive park they will be able to do that,” said Shirlee.