Climate RWC – October 2021

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P u b l i c a t i o n Profile: Mini Museums Spotlight: Neighbors Helping Neighbors Micro Climate: Hospital Chaplain Has a Story to Tell

ISSUE SEVENTY FOUR • OCTOBER • 2021

Can Animal Theme Parks Make

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR•

Many residents of this community have fond memories of Marine World/Africa USA, which from 1968 to the mid-1980s occupied the space at Redwood Shores where the Oracle towers stand today.

Those of us who worked in local news then got to know the park’s management and employees and how much they loved the animals and wanted the public to appreciate them too. So it was most intriguing to become acquainted with Woodside resident Walt Conti—who animated “Free Willy” and many other creatures for the movies—and his ideas for “saving” animal theme parts through robotic animals. Conti was a Marine World fan in those days too, and writer Dan Brown presents the story of his evolution from a Cubberley High School kid to a pioneering creator of believable animal “characters” for Hollywood. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the story—and the awesome photos, beginning on page 8.

This month we’re pleased to welcome to the magazine Heidi Van Zant, another veteran reporter from that period, who writes about some of San Mateo County’s smaller museums. They’ve had to “go dark” because of the Covid but several of them are back open for visitors; you can read Heidi’s story on page 18. Writer Nicholas Veronico checked in to see how local service clubs have been coping during the pandemic. These stalwart organizations do so much good under the radar, and anyone looking for a way to “give back” can definitely find an outlet by joining a local Rotary or Kiwanis club. That story is on page 24.

Believing that people like to read about people, we always look for individuals with interesting stories. So this month’s Micro Climate brings you the stories of a newly minted hospital chaplain (who just qualified for Medicare), and a Kiwi auto detailer who does house calls. Political Climate columnist Mark Simon writes about district elections this month, and Jim Clifford recalls a 1953 plane crash for his history column.

Finally, Climate has been honored in the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club’s annual competition for our work last year, this time with 16 awards, including the biggie—overall excellence for magazines and trade publications. I regularly hear from readers who say how much they enjoy Climate, but it’s nice to have what we do recognized by other journalists as well.

On that note, Happy Halloween and whatever goodies October brings you!

Janet McGovern, Editor

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A New Marine World?

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PROFILE

Local Mini Museums

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Neighbors Helping Neighbors

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MICRO CLIMATE Hospital Chaplain

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Cover photo courtesy Edge Innovations

The Sequoia Awards

Honoring Volunteerism

For more than 30 years, the annual Sequoia Awards has recognized Redwood City youth for their commitment and service to improve the quality of life in our community.

Thanks to the generosity of community-oriented individuals and business leaders, last year we awarded a total of $214,000 to 24 high school seniors.

Go to our website to learn more about the scholarship program and how to apply. Application deadline is October 31.

sequoiaawards.org This is all made possible by sponsors and donors at many levels.

In this feature, we’d like to acknowledge our early commitments of Platinum level sponsors: Black Mountain Properties, LLC • Danford Fisher Hannig Foundation • Nintendo • Pete & Paula Uccelli Foundation.

This ad was provided as a courtesy of

2021 · CLIMATE ·5 NeighborsOctober helping neighbors - since 1938

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CLIMATE offices are located at 570 El Camino Real, Ste. 150 #331 Redwood City, CA 94063. Printed in the U.S.A.

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Marine W

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e World 2.0?

“Free Willy” animator Walt Conti wants to reimagine marine parks

By Dan Brown

HAYWARD – The headquarters for Walt Conti and his aquatic movie creatures are tricky to find these days, which is probably for the best.

Back when Edge Innovations was located in Redwood City, not far off Main Street, random pedestrians were sometimes startled by the sight of robotic whale parts strewn across their path.

“At times we had to open the doors and test stuff on the sidewalks – blow holes and tails because we had to get it wet,’’ Conti says now.

“People were walking by and there were pieces of whales.”

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Conti and his engineers can generate dolphins, sharks and other sea creatures to launch a reimagined park with an educational mission.

Marine World could give way to a machine world.

Photo courtesy of Edge Innovations

Little did the onlookers know that this counted as a celebrity sighting: That humble orca assembly kit grew up to co-star in “Free Willy,’’ the 1993 family film about a captive whale who makes a jailbreak from an amusement park with the help of an orphan boy. (Conti’s robotic whale served as something of a stunt double for Keiko, the film’s live-action star.)

Willy’s creator, too, is now something of notable Hollywood name. Conti, a onetime star quarterback at now-defunct Cubberley High in Palo Alto, stands as one of the most distinguished animatronic masterminds in the movie business. He was hardly a one-flip wonder.

Conti has worked with the regal Leonard Nimoy (who later called him “a genius”) and the tempestuous James Cameron and wound up friendly with both.

The Woodside resident put the slither in the snake that tormented Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight and Ice Cube in “Anaconda.” He made sure the fish and the underwater vessels were impeccable in “The Perfect Storm," the 2000 film for which he shared an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects.

Even though Edge Innovations, and its staff that fluctuates between 15 and 30 employees, has since moved across the San Mateo Bridge, Conti remains loyal to all he learned on the Peninsula.

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In fact, his latest mission – perhaps the most audacious of all – aims to pay homage to one of the favorite places of his youth.

Endangered Marine Parks Conti, 62, loved going to Marine World / Africa USA, the animal theme park in Redwood Shores. It’s the kind of place that’s vanishing because of animal cruelty concerns. More than 20 European countries have already banned or limited the presence of wild animals in circuses, according to Reuters. (It’s worth noting that Keiko, the star of “Free Willy,’’ was indeed rehabilitated and released to captivity and thrived in the ocean for five years.)

These days, there’s hope that technology will offer a way to retain the best of what the marine park industry had to offer.

At Edge Innovations, where animals evolve at a pace that would make Darwin’s head spin, optimism is mounting that Conti and his engineers can generate dolphins, sharks and other sea creatures to launch a reimagined park with an educational mission.

Marine World could give way to a machine world.

“There are a lot of countries banning marine parks. Which is a shame if they go away entirely,’’ Conti said. “We think there’s a way to kind of evolve that.

“And it’s not about trying to copy what those animals were doing. It’s about trying to use that connection to entertain and open people’s eyes to those animals in the oceans.”

The realistic robots could entertain crowds by replacing the wild animals that were so stifled by captivity. They’re making so much progress that Reuters and other major media outlets began circling Edge Innovations about a year ago to get a closeup look at the animatronic dolphins with skin made from medical-grade silicone.

They are so real that some visitors are fooled, or at least willing to suspend disbelief. Doing so on a larger scale would retain benefits of what Marine World had to offer, but without the constraints that made Willy yearn to be free.

“In the best version of marine parks, that’s kind of their mission, right?” Conti said. “Fall in love with the animals and then protect them. Fall in love and you’ll care about them.”

Apricots and a Batmobile Looking back, this seems like the job Conti was born to do. His life story has been lapping toward this moment from the beginning, like ripples across the ocean that are about to hit shore.

Conti was born in Virginia in 1959 to parents who had immigrated from Ar-

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Conti has worked with the regal Leonard Nimoy (who later called him “a genius”) and the tempestuous James Cameron and wound up friendly with both. gentina. He came west with his family at age 3 because his mom, Elizabeth, and dad, Raul, were forward-thinkers, too.

His father, an aeronautical science, began work at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View and later earned a Ph.D. at Stanford. His mother operated a Spanish translation business.

Conti liked his new Bay Area life, but fittingly he fell for the local nature far before he fell for the gadgets.

“This was really before Silicon Valley, right?” he recalled. “It wasn’t what it is now. It was an idyllic kind of place to grow up for all the good reasons. The whole technology thing really wasn’t here yet. … It was a great place to grow up and ride your bikes and pick apricots from all the trees. There used to be all these fruit trees everywhere. We knew where all the trees were.”

He attended Ohlone Elementary School in south Palo Alto and displayed an early artistic bent, even if it looked as if he was just goofing around. (This, incidentally, remains true today.)

Walt was 5 when he and his dad recreated the Batmobile out of plywood.

This was hardly a hammer-and-nail amateur effort.

“He (Raul) was an air space engineer, but had done a lot of hands-on wind-tunnel type stuff,’’ he said. “Some of that was passed on.”

Conti paused here to gestures around his Edge Innovations office, where movie props fill the shelves of a neatly organized warehouse. “As you’ll see, there’s engineering and design, but there’s a lot of build and creation of stuff as opposed to just living in a computer world.”

Conti kept building even when dad wasn’t around. Model airplanes out of

balsa wood. Hand-crafted furniture. Toys that morphed into engineering marvels.

“You hear the story so many times: Playing with Legos and Erector sets,’ he said. “It’s really funny how with engineers, there’s the common thing. ‘What’d you do as a young kid?’ ‘I built Erector sets.’

“There were these cool Erector sets where you screwed everything together.

And Legos – all these things that were just free-form play, right?”

‘Go Find Physics’ While attending Cubberley High, which existed from 1956-79, Conti was far more interested in special teams than special effects. “I was all about playing football,’’ he said. “I was a quarterback there so that was the passion.”

But he was a dutiful student, too, and a teacher’s unusual approach to his subject helped set Conti on a career path that would prove a perfect match.

Art Farmer taught physics as if it were a love language.

“Instead of focusing on all the math to teach physics, he’d kind of put that aside and say, ‘Physics is all around you. Go find physics in the world,’’ Conti said. “That was really impactful for me.”

Conti was a sophomore at the time, but the lesson resonates to this day. It kept his eyes wide open for his next stop, at Stanford in the fall of ‘77, where the concept of looking at technology beyond the mathematical was at the heart of a Silicon Valley revolution.

Consider the guest speaker who stopped by one of his classes.

“I remember one of those classes, this hippie-looking Steve Jobs came to talk about this thing called an Apple computer, personal computer, right, that had a logo that was all colored,’’ Conti said. “He had

long hair, sandals. I totally remember it because it was so different.

“OK, here’s my computer science class.

What’s this guy peddling here?’ He’s basically peddling to the growing class of computer scientists. He was basically describing the Apple computer. That’s when it started, right? ’77?”

Smart Robotics Conti planned on going to MIT to earn a master’s degree but stayed put once he realized the magic that was happening in his own backyard. Stanford was at the forefront of mixing different types of engineering to produce a smart product design.

So instead of having, say, a mechanical engineer designing a machine and an electrical engineer stepping in later, Stanford taught students how to integrate those things, plus micro processing, from the start.

“It was kind of like the birth of smart robotics that is now so prevalent,’’ Conti said. “They call it ‘megatronics’ a lot, which is really mechanical electronics.

That word never existed back then. But it was absolutely ahead of its time with this idea of microprocessors controlling mechanical systems.

“I remember being exposed to these robotic arms. They were basically the first electrical-driven robot arms, really in the world, created by someone at Stanford.

Looking back, and that’s one of those moments where it hit me: ‘Oh, there’s this kind of beauty and motion that can be created from metal and microprocess.’’

Falling in with this group of vanguards had its perks. David Kelley, who later founded IDEO in Palo Alto, the largest design consulting firm in the world, became a mentor and lifelong friend.

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“From the moment Walt Conti took on the task of creating the whales for Star Trek IV, the job was done creatively, professionally and with a sure hand. … He’s a genius.”

—Leonard Nimoy While working at what was originally David Kelley Design, Conti teamed up on a toy project with an art director from Industrial Light & Magic, the legendary division of Lucasfilm.

That connection, Nilo Rodis-Jamero, was fresh off his work as an art director for “The Empire Strikes Back” in the “Star Wars” trilogy. (For which Rodis-Jamero helped create Princess Leia’s iconic gold bikini, which would later wind up in the Smithsonian.)

The Link to Hollywood Those links to the movie industry became the seminal moment for the kid from Palo Alto.

“Nilo Rodis-Jamero is the single person most responsible for me to be, ending up in Hollywood, absolutely,’’ Conti said.

“We just became friends and surf buddies on that project.”

Rodis-Jamero was working on a movie at the time called “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” with Leonard Nimoy directing. The actor best known for playing Spock was also one of the writers for the movie and wanted humpback whales to serve as a key storytelling device in movies in which the villains are evaporating the oceans and destroying the atmosphere.

Nimoy and the crew, including Rodis-Jamero, had tried using little models and other standard cinematic tricks but everything looked lousy on film.

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The Animatronic Orca Conti and his team created for "Free Willy." Photo courtesy of Edge Innovations.

“Nothing was working, and they were thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh, we’re going to have to rewrite the script. We just can’t do this,’’’ Conti recalled. “So (Rodis-Jamero) reached out to me and said, ‘Come on up and let’s see if we can figure this out.’

“It’s him who said, ‘Well, why don’t you see if you can copy the real thing and make it swim and all the lights and everything will look right.’’’

So, with ingenuity that would have saved Captain Ahab a whole lot of trouble, they simply made their own whales. Their four-foot humpbacked creature became the first free-swimming underwater models in Hollywood. (No, not the shark from “Jaws” – that was made with partial shark models, like a left side and a right side.)

“Star Trek IV” was a critical and box office success. It also became the first “Star Trek” film to be shown in the Soviet Union, screened by the World Wildlife Fund in 1987, as a way of celebrating Moscow’s recent ban on whaling.

Spock’s Blessing To Conti, there was only one review that mattered. He had grown up a big Spock fan, so working with him was thrilling enough. But imagine the elation that

came with what Nimoy once said about the experience: “From the moment Walt Conti took on the task of creating the whales for Star Trek IV, the job was done creatively, professionally and with a sure hand. … He’s a genius.”

That quote, logically enough, is posted on the Edge Innovations home page.

But there was another way in which that film left a lasting impact. Conti was heartened by the way the anti-whaling message reached a new audience.

“It made an impact in the world a bit.

There’s some of that,’’ he said. “And then ‘Free Willy’ would take it to the next level.”

In “Free Willy,’’ the real whale handled all the scenes that took place in the marine park. But anything in the open waters of the Pacific Ocean required Conti and his animatronic team to have those tails and blowholes in working order.

Not only did the robot whale need to look believable, but it essentially had to act. The movie’s success hinged on delivering emotional scenes between Willy and the boy.

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F E AT U R E • weight system didn’t drop, he was dead, because there was no coming back.”

Spoiler alert: Everything went exactly as planned.

As Cameron later said, “Conti and his team accomplished the impossible."

This wasn’t the shark from “Jaws” who would lurch from the water for a few frantic moments of terror. Willy was a character with, ahem, some depth.

An Emoting Whale “It’s not just the machine, right?” Conti said of building a character for a movie.

“So what does it look like? How does it move? What is its behavior? How does it connect? How does it perform?

“There’s an art there. And it’s a really good question because it is the thing that we consider our competency. There’s lots of (other) people doing robotics. And there’s obviously a lot of great artists and sculptors. But blending that in a way that creates something that people relate to – engage and relate to emotionally – is really an art.”

As the filming went on, Conti began to draw reassurance from the way the actors – the human ones – treated the robotic Willy as something beyond a hunk of metal. The staff had worked hard at giving the whale enough distinctive movements that it had an essence beyond its moving parts.

It worked so well that the cast members wound up forging a bond with faux blubber.

“The great light bulb moment on the sets was that we’d do a scene and then they’d call ‘Cut!’ And the actors would still continue to talk to the whales,’’ Conti recalled. “And we’d play along. ‘OK, that’s funny once.’ But literally these jaded actors, instead of going to their trailers would sit there and converse.

“It was past a joke level. It was actually this idea that it transcended what was going on. There was some sense of magic that was happening. … It’s what we call ‘emotional engineering.’ It’s really not engineering something for a … you know, to an engineering spec. It’s designing something that you want someone to engage with and connect with."

Conti helped design and build James Cameron's manned submarine, capable of making a 35,756-foot descent. Photo courtesy of Edge Innovations.

Going Deep Some of Conti’s triumphs aren’t special effects. But they’re still special. In 2012, he helped “Titanic” director James Cameron make the first-ever solo dive to the Challenger Deep, the deepest point in the ocean, near Guam.

Conti was part of Cameron’s handpicked team which built a manned submarine capable of making the 35,756-foot descent that had only been made once before, by a two-man U.S. Navy team in 1960.

Edge Innovations was responsible for the lower pod section of the submersible.

“Cameron is basically an oceanographer, an explorer,’’ Conti said.

The movie director’s goal was to build an innovative vessel that would not only allow him to make the trip, but to bring along plenty of high-tech cameras and 3D systems to, in Cameron’s words, “light up the world and bring back footage.”

On Jan. 25, 2012, Cameron took roughly 7-mile plunge and vanished into the sea for about 12 hours.

“So there’s two things that could kill him,’’ Conti said. “One is, he’s in a sphere and if that sphere imploded, he would die instantly. The other thing was if this

The Next Chapter It’s easy to sense a theme in Conti’s life. Nothing is impossible.

It’s been the same whether Edge Innovations was headquartered in Palo Alto / Redwood City (1991-94), Mountain View (1995-2000), the Alameda Naval Base (200115) or Hayward (2016-present.)

“We’ve never said ‘no,’’’ he said.

“You try to steer it to a place that can be successful.”

That makes it tough to dismiss the idea of resurrecting an aquatic theme park with robotic dolphins. In a sense, it’s already happening. At Edge Innovations, people can see, interact and even swim with robotic dolphins – and it’s so lifelike that people get fooled into thinking it’s the real thing.

This is good news for the 3,000 or so dolphins currently in captivity.

It informs his work now that Conti spent so many formative days at Marine World. He went with his family there. He took dates there. And eventually, he returned there to study the movements of the silver creatures he was making for the silver screen.

“That’s what we’re tapping into with trying to help reinvent the marine parks,’’ Conti said. “It’s not to replicate exactly what the dolphins and orcas are doing, backflips and all that. It’s really to use that connection to open people’s eyes to the world’s oceans.”

Somewhere out there, an old schoolteacher is smiling. Conti went out and found the physics in the world. It is all around him, from the sidewalks of Redwood City to the greatest depths of the ocean. C October 2021 ·

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AROUND TOWN•

Picnic en Blanc Pops Up on Courthouse Square The sixth annual Picnic en Blanc took place Sept. 10 under a tent on Courthouse Square, a location which, honoring the event’s tradition, was kept secret until 24 hours before. Attendees came to the event attired in white, and got to spend the evening eating, drinking, dancing and socializing. Picnic en Blanc is organized by the Redwood City Parks & Arts Foundation, which this year raised funds for Shade Structures in Parks. “We refer to this as our chic pop-up and dance party,” said Pamela Estes, the foundation’s president.

Radio Station KGEI Remembered A building located along the Redwood Shores waterfront which housed an international radio broadcasting station during World War II has a plaque detailing its history thanks to the efforts of the Gaspar de Portolá chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The historical marker was unveiled and dedicated during an Aug. 28 ceremony in front of the 7,000 square-foot concrete structure, which is now owned by Silicon Valley Clean Water. The KGEI short-wave radio station was established by the General Electric Co. in 1939 and was originally located on Treasure Island. It was moved to the building in Redwood Shores in 1941 and during the war, KGEI was the only American broadcasting station that could be regularly heard in Asia. Climate history columnist Jim Clifford had written about KGEI’s role during the war, which inspired the local DAR chapter to sponsor and raise funds for a plaque.

14 · CLIMATE · October 2021

Members of the DAR from around the state gathered on the steps of the KGEI building after the plaque was unveiled.

Climate history columnist Jim Clifford stands with Maggie Coleman, DAR Regent (right); and committee chair Dee Eva.

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Hannig Cup Sets Sail for Charity On Sept. 17 Ted Hannig celebrated his birthday the way he likes best—funding charities. Lots of of them. For the 16th year Hannig and the Sequoia Yacht Club raced and raised more than $270,000 which was distributed to 26 charities. After the race the happy sailors gathered at Westpoint Harbor to celebrate. The crowd was entertained by the Woodside High School jazz band and a Beatles cover band.

Center: Ted Hannig Left: Patty Corcoran captains her ship in the race.

Top: Captain of the "Revelry" Larry Mayne raised the most money.

Below: Petra and Rick Gilmore of the "Jolly Aires" were winners of the fastest boat.

Generations United Opens New Doors Generations United, a nonprofit which for over a decade has provided educational services in Redwood City, has opened a new Academic Enrichment Center to serve North Fair Oaks families. The location at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Bay Road is next to Mi Hacienda Taqueria, whose owner is subletting the space to GU. The nonprofit would have had to operate from a nearby school campus, according to Executive Director Angie Ibarra Miller, who is grateful to restaurant owner Adam Torres for making the vacant space available at an affordable rent. After-school programs will be offered in renovated classrooms. Street Code Academy donated 30 computers and new desktop tables because its own space was shut down because of the Covid. Miller’s husband, Keith, will manage classes in small business formation and development for interested adults. They can learn English, how to do their books, and how to promote themselves on social media. The center will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. “It’s a full family opportunity,” Ibarra Miller said. The new space, she added, is only available for a year because the property has been sold.

“Our big dream is that this is a stepping stone to a bigger location where we can provide more services.”

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District Elections Bring Big Changes to Local Government

By Mark Simon San Mateo County, long a bastion of an unchanging governmental environment, has plunged into the most radical change to occur since the formation of the county 165 years ago.

In a breathtakingly brief period of time, 11 of the county’s 20 cities have changed or are in the process of changing how they elect their representatives, moving from at-large, where every council member is elected citywide, to by-district, where voters in a specific district elect only their representative. Add in the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, which switched to district elections in 2012, and the growing number of school districts making the transition, and it is safe to say a revolution is taking place in local government.

The consequences of this sweeping change to district elections are only beginning to reveal themselves, but it is safe to say there will be unexpected results and it is likely the political landscape is changed forever. It is boom times for the law of unintended consequences.

“There is no going back,” said Jim Hartnett, a former Redwood City mayor and multi-term member of the Redwood City Council. “Whether people like it or not, it’s not going back.”

This change was forced on nearly every jurisdiction. Attorneys throughout the state have been sending letters to cities and school districts that elect representatives citywide or district wide, asserting that they are in violation of the California Voting Rights Act. The threshold for proving their case is fairly low. Historic voting trends merely have to show that minority candidates for any office—city council, U.S. senator, lieutenant governor—rou-

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Mark Simon

tinely were unable to elect persons from the same ethnic minority, essentially disenfranchising minority voters. Courts have interpreted the CVRA broadly; challenging the law has been expensive and unsuccessful.

Most Cities Comply More than 100 cities have received a CVRA letter, and the vast majority have opted not to fight. Every city in the county that has received a letter has chosen to comply with the demand to shift to district elections.

“It’s a legal fact of life,” said Hartnett.

“There’s no sense in fighting over it.”

Four cities divided their communities into districts in time for last year’s election—South San Francisco, Redwood City, Half Moon Bay, and Pacifica. Menlo Park was the first city penguin off the ice floe, moving to districts for the 2018 election.

A sixth city, Woodside, oddly enough,

has had councilmembers elected citywide from districts. The town initiated its own effort to switch to election by district.

Five cities are in various stages of switching to district elections. Millbrae received a CVRA letter on March 8, but has yet to start drawing districts. Burlingame received a demand letter in January 2020, and is deep in a process it has dubbed “5 Districts—One Burlingame.” San Mateo received a demand letter in May and also is in the process. Belmont only recently received a demand letter and has barely begun its discussions. San Bruno decided to start the process without waiting to get the inevitable letter.

All are legally compelled to implement district elections by the November 2022 elections.

Nine cities have no districts and, so far, have not received a letter. Five are among the county’s smallest cities—Brisbane, Atherton, Colma, Portola Valley and Hillsborough—and it appears they are unlikely targets for the ever-eager attorneys.

Two of the cities would appear to be likely targets—Foster City and San Carlos.

Two Exceptions And two cities of substantial size—Daly City and East Palo Alto—may be immune to the civil rights accusations. Both cities are majority-minority communities—more nonwhites than whites. In East Palo Alto, the whole city council, reflective of its community, is composed of entirely of Latino or black members. In Daly City, four of its five councilmembers are minorities (a term that seems increasingly outdated). Three councilmembers are from the city’s Filipino community, which makes up more than one-third of Daly City’s population.

• Three cities—Burlingame, San Mateo and Redwood City—have toyed with using the change to consider an at-large mayor.

But they have moved on for a variety of reasons—the other district-based councilmembers fear being overshadowed by a citywide mayor; the process of drawing district lines, either for the first time or the second (the county, Redwood City, Menlo Park, South City) is just too much to take on; and it might invite further legal challenges.

The immediate impact of district elections at the city level has been to elect councilmembers who had limited chances of winning a citywide election. Instead, well-established incumbents have been defeated, often in districts small enough for a challenger to knock on every door of every would-be voter. And not to understate this, but because of districts more minorities are being elected than ever—in some instances, breaking up longstanding all-white council lineups.

In Redwood City, political unknown Lisette Espinoza-Garnica, a self-described nonbinary Latinx, who advocated abolition of the police department, parlayed a grassroots campaign and union connections into a win over incumbent Janet Borgens. In Menlo Park, two-term incumbents Kirsten Keith and Peter Ohtaki were defeated by Cecilia Taylor and Drew Combs.

Taylor was the first black woman elected to the council and the first from the city’s majority-minority Belle Haven neighborhood in more than three decades. In South San Francisco, district elections had an impact that rippled through the political status quo—then-21-year-old gay Asian American James Coleman, campaigning while attending Harvard remotely, defeated longtime incumbent Rich Garbarino, a widely liked and well-connected figure countywide.

P O L I T I C A L C L I M AT E •

“If South City and Redwood City had not moved to district elections, we almost certainly would have seen the re-election of Rich Garbarino and Janet Borgens,” said a consultant.

“A Perfect Storm” And if 2020 had not been 2020—marked by a pandemic, a deeply divisive and energized presidential election and the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. “It was a perfect storm for someone to come in and win,” said one veteran political advisor.

In some instances, the district elections allow newcomers to bypass the traditional path to office, including service on a city board or commission, high-profile participation in community events and nonprofits and building a base among a city’s customary political establishment.

This also means a wave of newcomers who do not feel the need to “wait their turn” in running for office, but also face a steep learning curve on such basic topics as how a city works, the budgeting process, issues of citywide importance (land use, in particular) that extend beyond a specific district and the most fundamental city council reality: winning the votes of a majority of council colleagues.

“The downside is that it means electing somebody who has almost no experience at any level —government, nonprofit. The wheels of government run slowly enough when you have people with experience,” said one veteran local government political and public affairs advisor.

District elections also mean a greater expectation that a councilmember will intervene on such nuts-and-bolts matters as a pothole or garbage pickup.

Leveling the Playing Field This also could strain city budgets and staff, who now must consider how to serve councilmembers who may want to hold office hours or produce a city-sponsored district newsletter. It has prompted at least one local public affairs consultant to suggest that current city councils need to do a better job of recruiting a diversity of people to boards and commissions, the minor leagues of government service. Cities ought to consider public financing of campaigns to ensure a level playing field for all candidates, the consultant said, and better compensation for councilmembers as district elections are likely to increase the amount of time an officeholder will spend on what is supposed to be a part-time job.

“When you shrink the territory, it reduces a candidate’s cost and increases the value of sweat equity. You increase the competitiveness of the non-establishment type candidate. You need to increase the leveling of the playing field,” said the consultant. “It’s not enough to just make it easier for the incumbent or the angry person to decide to run for office. The city or school district now has to work twice as hard to make sure people are prepared and have the experience they need to effectively govern.”

All of which brings us back to the law of unintended consequences. Or, as district elections sweep through the county, entirely unknown consequences.

The impact of district elections? “It’s too early to tell, ” Hartnett said. “It has to work its way through some election cycles.”

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•

PROFILE •

San Mateo County’s

Mini Museums preserve and educate about local history

By Heidi Van Zant

Dotting downtowns across the Peninsula, little testaments to bygone times, stand some dozen small but mighty community museums and history rooms. With an earnest but dwindling cadre of volunteers as their backbone, these gems are found in many towns from Colma, Pacifica and South San Francisco to Burlingame, Belmont, Menlo Park and Half Moon Bay. Overshadowed, perhaps, by the San Mateo County History Museum in downtown Redwood City and other bigger cultural attractions, these mini museums are hiding in plain sight, each filling a unique niche. They operate mostly on shoestring budgets of donations and membership fees yet are so eager for company that admission is still free.

While many of these community museums are still temporarily closed because of Covid restrictions, a handful including those profiled here have reopened or can be visited by prior arrangement.

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The flight suit worn by locally raised astronaut Rex Walheim at the San Carlos Museum.

•

PROFILE •

Coastside History Museum

Mary Ruddy

Coastside History Museum The 18 volunteers of the Coastside History Museum in the former Half Moon Bay jail recently reopened the jailhouse doors to the public after a long shutdown due to the pandemic. “We just have a love of history and the many lessons it teaches us for the future, especially for the schoolchildren,” museum manager Mary Ruddy said.

The tiny building a block from bustling Main Street draws mostly students on field trips and tourists curious to know what’s inside that edifice stamped “JAIL.” On a recent Saturday, the first visitors of the day had come to Half Moon Bay for the nearby shops and restaurants, not the museum. “We saw it from across the street and decided to come in. I like old buildings,” said Anacelia Castro of Union City, whose quizzical look softened as she entered the homey museum.

The jail was built in 1919 and used to hold San Mateo County prisoners until the 1960s. The little building came to life as a micro-museum in 2018 when the city leased it to the Half Moon Bay History

"We just have a love of history and the many lessons it teaches us for the future, especially for the schoolchildren."

Association. Today it is the oldest public building in town. “People come from all over the world, all walks of life, but less so since Covid,” volunteer Elly Colwell of Half Moon Bay said.

The jail cells are the main draw but there also are exhibits about Ohlone settlers and basket-weavers, maritime and railroad milestones, and the area’s rich agricultural roots. A bigger “green” museum in a 100-year-old barn can be seen taking shape behind the current facility, and is scheduled for completion within the next year.

505 Johnston St., Half Moon Bay, halfmoonbayhistory.org, open Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 2 p.m. Free.

Millbrae Train Museum All aboard the newly remodeled Millbrae Train Museum, a step back in time for train-lovers of all ages. Housed in a 114-year-old Southern Pacific train depot, this sepia-toned time capsule still has its original waiting room of butterscotch-colored bead board, hard wooden seats and even a big railroad bell.

“We get train enthusiasts from all over the world, some of whom come from SFO on their layovers,” said museum founder and lifelong Millbrae resident Vern Bruce.

“And we get lots of parents and grandparents with kids.”

Visitors are treated to a museum chock-a-block with local memorabilia including signal lanterns, models of trains that ran locally, telegraph equipment, scores of historic train photos and the original station clock. And, yes, there’s even a musty and magical 1941 Pullman sleeping car outside the depot to climb aboard.

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•

PROFILE •

Milbrae Train Museum

"We get train enthusiasts from all over the world, some of whom come from SFO on their lay The depot was Millbrae’s landmark train station from 1907 until 2003 when the Millbrae Transit Center opened up just down the tracks. The structure is one of seven Caltrain depots on the National Registry of Historic Places. The museum has been operating on limited hours during Covid but that’s given its 125 volunteers extra time to prepare for the grand reopening in coming months.

The museum, run under the direction of the Millbrae Historical Society, has been in operation since 2004. While other community museums may have challenges attracting volunteers who tend to be seniors and retirees, that’s not an issue with this group. On a recent weekend at the museum, volunteer Peter Sheerin was cheerfully working on connecting up an old railroad telegraph system. “We’re still just little boys playing with trains,” he said with a grin.

Millbrae Train Museum, 108 California Drive, Millbrae, www.millbraehs.org. Check the website for when visiting hours resume on Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free.

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Vern Bruce

Daly City History Museum Being a docent of the Daly City History Museum can be a lonely endeavor but volunteer Mark Weinberger doesn’t seem to mind. “I believe in this museum even though some days we have no visitors,” he said with a glance around the quiet museum located, ironically, on one of the busi-

est stretches of Mission Street at John Daly Boulevard, known as the Top-of-the-Hill.

The stately museum, opened in 2009 in the city’s former Art Deco library, has been especially hard-hit by the pandemic and has been closed since March 2020. Visitors can make individual arrangements with Weinberger to see the museum until it reopens to the public.

The museum shares the block with a smoke shop and a dry cleaners, and its stucco exterior gives little hint of the beautiful and expansive interior with warm

Mark Weinberger

“I believe in this museum even though some days we have no visitors.”

• wood floors, paneled walls, huge pendant lights and large windows.

Hundreds of vintage photos are on display, original documents from the 1880s, a 1907 hand-pulled fire wagon and a cowbell from the John Daly dairy owned by the city’s namesake. Visitors can take a self-guided tour of the rooms or watch a video of the town’s history. Before the pandemic, tours were offered for school groups and the infrequent wayward guest who found the museum by happenstance.

Those who do find the museum are rewarded with wonderful nuggets of history – a display on the iconic Cow Palace exhibit hall, photos from legendary restaurant Westlake Joe’s, a sign from the sales office of Henry Doelger who turned sand dunes into housing lots, sports memorabilia and a cardboard cut-out of the town’s most famous lad, football legend John Madden.

More macabre displays include the weapon used in 1966 to shoot Daly City Police Officer Richard Klass, 25, with his own gun. Visitors also will learn that Daly City hosted a duel in 1859 near Lake Merced that resulted in the ending of dueling in California. “I was surprised how much history Daly City has,” said longtime Daly City resident Weinberger, who recounts the story of the duel with great relish and detail.

Daly City History Museum, 6351 Mission St., dalycityhistorymuseum.org. Open by special arrangement only until further notice. Free.

Museum of San Carlos History Packed to the brim with town history from the glory days of the Circle Star Theatre to taking home the title as 1961 Babe Ruth Baseball World Champions, who knew that the Museum of San Carlos History has so much to tell?

Gayle Collins does, a lifelong resident and now president of the board which

PROFILE •

Gayle Collins

Among the most eye-catching artifacts is a blue NASA jumpsuit worn into space by astronaut and hometown hero Rex Walheim. runs the museum in downtown San Carlos. “Yes, I’m a history nerd!” proclaimed the former elementary-school teacher who trains some 40 San Carlos Villagers volunteers who serve as museum supporters and docents.

The charming little museum, a replica of the first firehouse built in 1923, has a restored 1927 Seagrave fire engine as its shiny centerpiece. Lining the walls are exhibits on the days of the Lamchin Indian settlers, the town’s Spanish heritage, native plants and trees, and life in the early 1900s with vignettes of furniture and clothing from the era.

Other displays tell of early merchants, the history of the police and fire departments, local schools, San Carlos’s growth after incorporation in 1925, and the vital role the city played in the burgeoning electronics industry that grew into Silicon Valley. Among the most eye-catching artifacts is a blue NASA jumpsuit worn

into space by astronaut and hometown hero Rex Walheim—but in the museum by a mannequin. Another special display is the large collection of Sorcha Boru ceramics made by the late artist who once had a studio in San Carlos.

Like most of the visitors who moseyed by one Saturday afternoon, Jeremiah Darais had come downtown not for a local history lesson but for fresh air and exploring.

“I happened to see the sign and I was curious. There’s a lot of interesting stuff here,” said the new San Carlos resident as he studied the Dogtown exhibit about the major role his new hometown played in training military dogs in World War II. The city was one of only five sites across the U.S. used by the Army to train military working dogs.

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Museum of San Carlos History, 533 Laurel St., San Carlos, www.sancarloshistorymuseum. org. Open Saturdays 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. except in December. Free.

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•

M I C R O C L I M AT E •

This Hospital Chaplain Has Quite a Story to Tell: Her Own On her rounds at Stanford Hospital, the Rev. Sookja Han of San Carlos considers it a “privilege” when dying patients want to share their life stories with her. “Everyone’s life story is unique,” the hospital staff chaplain says, “yet universal.” It would be hard to find a better example of that than Han’s own unlikely career path—leaving behind the venture capital world for seminary training when she could have been planning her retirement.

“I used to live a real lavish lifestyle,” Han says, dining at Michelin-star restaurants and thinking nothing of spending $10,000 on a designer handbag. “Monthly, I spent about 10 grand on myself. Buying stuff!” She hit a spiritual wall in her 40s after a cancer diagnosis that caused her to take stock of the purpose of her life, and after some long and serious soul-searching, she decided to enroll at Fuller Theological Seminary’s Menlo Park campus.

Han’s plan was to get by without a salary for the three years she’d be training for the ministry, so she downsized, selling her house in Los Altos and moving to a smaller one in San Carlos. When she arrived at theology school in 2012, she was at the wheel of a holdover from the life she’d left behind: her Jaguar. She laughs at the memory. “I told people, ‘I can’t afford to buy a small car. This is all I have.

So pardon my big car.’”

Born in Seoul, South Korea, into a family of educators, Han got a degree in geology with a goal of becoming a professor. Brought up Buddhist, she converted to Christianity at the age of 18 despite her parents’ opposition. Han went to college in Utah and married a fellow student. In 1982, her (now-ex) husband got a job in the Silicon Valley, where the couple raised their daughters, Michelle and Christine. Han, meanwhile, picked up another master’s

22 · CLIMATE · October 2021

The Rev. Sookja Han

degree—in computer engineering—and went to work for Apple, earning an MBA while she was there. She moved on from Apple to a succession of positions—with tech start-ups and then venture capital firms, including as managing director for the U.S. office of a Korean venture capital company. During her career, she traveled, mostly throughout Asia and Europe, seeing customers, developing markets and assembling millions of investor dollars.

“I traveled almost every other week overseas,” she recalls. “I was literally up in the air most of the time.” Measured in money, corporate accomplishment, academic credentials and lifestyle, this driven businesswoman was the epitome of success, though, working late into the night, she’d ask herself “What am I doing?”

The shock of getting a breast cancer diagnosis in 2004 left her reeling. “I

couldn’t really think. I couldn’t sleep. I just couldn’t anything. Nothing made sense to me. ‘Why God? Why is this happening to me’?” When her cancer turned out to be at an early, treatable stage, Han’s anger turned to gratitude. “We all talk about kind of a cliché’: We all die,” she says. “But when you become diagnosed with cancer, ‘Okay. I can die. Then what am I doing here?’” Though she felt a persistent calling to go to seminary, Han found the idea ridiculous. But as much as she protested, “God kept giving me the same message: ‘Trust me.’”

When she finally arrived for her studies at Fuller, she was one of the oldest students in her classes, where Han’s knack for learning foreign languages came in handy, as she had to learn Hebrew and Greek.

Still competitive even in seminary, the

• straight A student was encouraged to go on for a Ph.D. “I said, ‘Thank you but no thank you.’ I want to be in the real world.’”

She got her Master’s in Divinity in 2015 and then did some pastoral work at a local church, as well as some additional study until she found her niche.

Her new career as a paid chaplain was delayed, in part, by the pandemic, but Han now has about a year and a half under her belt working with patients and their families. This summer, the former high-flying corporate officer landed a fulltime job as a staff chaplain at Stanford and was also ordained at a Presbyterian church in San Mateo—at the age of 65.

It’s not her job as a chaplain to proselytize and she is available to anyone who wants to talk—among them an angry patient who gave her the finger (he eventually relented and opened up). “I used to be a fixer or a transformer,” says Han, and she’s learned to build rapport and just listen to people, sometimes still weighed down by early abuse. One heavily tattooed patient had been subjected to exorcisms as a child.

“I just looked at her as a suffering human being,” says Han. Counseling people who are facing death has taught her how important it is to tend to relationships. “Almost all of my patients have relational issues,” she says, “broken relationships, estranged from their children and their siblings” that make them unwilling to patch things up even at death’s door. Han does her best to make a “healing path” for family reconciliation and to provide prayer and comfort so patients have a peaceful death.

A few years ago, she reconnected with a man she used to work with in her venture capital days who remarked on how “glowing” she looked. Han told him about her unlikely journey into the later-in-life career she finds so fulfilling: “This is really the crown of my life.”

M I C R O C L I M AT E •

107.7 The Bone's new on-air host Joe "Joehawk" Ceccotti

Climate’s October 2019 issue included a story about making it in radio, which featured Joe Ceccotti, a local Redwood City product seeking a career in that corner of the entertainment world. Now courtesy of Cumulus Media comes word that “Joe Hawk” Ceccotti has been appointed onair host for the afternoon drive-time on 107.7 The Bone/KSAN-FM. Ceccotti can be heard on The Bone weekdays from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

He joined the weekday on-air lineup after more than eight years with The Bone, where he started as an intern in 2013 for the station’s popular morning program, The Lamont & Tonelli Show. Since then, Ceccotti has covered all on-air shifts as a parttime fill-in host for The Bone. Ceccotti began his radio career as morning host for KSJS-FM at San Jose State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in radio and television/broadcast communications. He has also made a name for himself in the local craft beer industry and hosts a new podcast for The Bone called BONE-AFide Brews, to bring light to smaller, upand-coming breweries popping up around the Bay Area.

Program Director Chasta Michaeli says “Joe has been a very important part of KSAN for the last eight years and has proved his worth time and time again with his diligent work ethic behind the scenes, as well as his great on-air performance. He is a true asset for us and I'm thrilled to be able to make him our fulltime afternoon host."

Ceccotti replies: "I'm super excited to not only host the PM drive for such a legendary station but to represent the station that has become my home for the past eight years. Becoming a Bone jock and to be associated with such names, past and present, as Lamont & Tonelli, Steven Seaweed, Nikki Black, Baby Huey and Chasta is more than I could've ever hoped for." C

October 2021 ·

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•

SPOTLIGHT•

Neighbors Helpin

Service clubs adapt to the pandemic to fulfill their mission

By Nicholas A� Veronico

In today’s Covid pandemic age with virus-related job losses, food insecurity, and shrinking economic fortunes, many people want to help but are not sure how to go about it and how do it safely� Think service clubs� Groups such as the Lions, Kiwanis and Rotary clubs have taken on an increasing importance in the community as their members have stepped up and stepped in as a lifeline to people with varying needs� San Carlos Lions Club members have managed to find plenty to do�

24 · CLIMATE · October 2021

•

SPOTLIGHT•

ping Neighbors "

W

e have about 30 ongoing projects a month just here in the San Carlos, Belmont, Redwood City area that we’re working on,” said club President Cori Carpenter. “They range from collecting used eyeglasses that are then refurbished and go to underprivileged adults and children in the United States and throughout the world, to helping with food insecurities in our town. We partner with the San Carlos Kiwanis Club and San Carlos Rotary Club to support the City of San Carlos’ Caring Cupboard program. The Lions Club donates funds to purchase food, helps pack the bags, and delivers groceries and lunches to homebound seniors as well as low-income families in San Carlos.”

During the depths of the Covid lockdown, some Lions Club members didn’t feel secure picking up groceries and delivering them. So the group switched to a contactless delivery model for safety first.

Delivering Groceries Caring Cupboard was initiated by the city primarily to support senior citizens in the area, but the program is now serving neighbors who may be experiencing trouble for the first time as well. The small town, neighborly effort can make them feel more comfortable about receiving help, according to Carpenter’s experience.

“When Caring Cupboard offered its services to low-income families with food insecurities,” she added, “we went from 50 deliveries every other week to more than 100 per week.” The increase in requests for food assistance shows there is a great need within San Carlos and the surrounding communities.

Service club volunteers come from all walks of life and are often neighbors of the people they help. Carpenter says her club’s membership has actually grown during the Covid shutdowns because while they’re out volunteering, the LiPhoto: Shoppers consider vegetables at the Redwood City Kiwanis Market.

October 2021 ·

CLIMATE · 25

• ons talk about the projects they’re doing and end up inadvertently recruiting new people to join their ranks. Club members range in age from 23 to 92.

“People have joined the Lions Club who wanted to do something during Covid, but weren’t sure where they fit in and how to get involved,” Carpenter said.

The club has had to be nimble in the face of Covid. With the first shutdown in March 2020, the Lions needed a project volunteers could do at home. “Our members started writing Easter holiday cards to seniors that were quarantined in care facilities to let them know that we’re thinking of them and that they are not alone,” said Carpenter. “We wrote Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and holiday cards, and this is a continuing project we do.”

Lions Club volunteers also drive people to appointments and they work with local veterans’ groups. The San Carlos club works with the Blue Star Moms of San Mateo County and also partners with the Menlo Park Lions Club, which is a veterans-focused club. Lions Club members also help out at the Veterans Administration hospitals in the area, and assisting homeless veterans is one of the group’s high priorities.

A Century-Old Club The Kiwanis Club of Redwood City was founded in 1924, as part of Kiwanis International, which was founded six years earlier. Like many service organizations formed in the early 20th century, membership came primarily from the businessmen of a community. Kiwanis Clubs were formed across the nation and in addition to supporting the umbrella organization’s aims of "one child and one community at a time,” local clubs were given the latitude to decide how they would recruit members, raise funds, and which community projects to undertake.

Kiwanians held monthly lunch meetings, but even before the Covid pandemic,

26 · CLIMATE · October 2021

SPOTLIGHT•

Lions Club president Cori Carpenter

“People have joined the Lions Club who wanted to do something during Covid, but weren’t sure where they fit in and how to get involved.” it was becoming harder to get busy people to attend. With many corporations providing lunch on campus, especially in the tech sector, employees today don’t want to go offsite.

The Redwood City Kiwanis Club solves that problem by turning its signature—and well-loved community project—into a two-fer. Members provide volunteer service at the Saturday morning Redwood City Kiwanis Farmer’s Market, but also hold impromptu club meetings at the same time.

Begun in 1979, the market has a loyal following. “We are the longest operating farmers’ market on the San Francisco Peninsula,” said Club President Tim McHenry.

“And we're one of the few, if not the only farmers’ market that's operated and managed by a service organization rather than a for-profit company.”

The farmers’ market is open from May to November, every Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon, on Arguello Street between the intersections of Brewster Street and Broadway.

For-profit farmers’ market operators have to pay for staff that advertises the event, rents space to vendors, obtains city, county, and state permits or certifications, and then manages the enterprise on the day of the event. The Redwood City Kiwanis Club’s members perform all of the same tasks; however, they do it on a volunteer basis enabling the club to bank the fees it charges. The thousands of dollars generated by the farmers’ market are then put back into the community, its schools, and youth-serving organizations.

Meeting in the Morning The every-Saturday farmers’ market has taken the place of the club’s weekly meetings. Members gather before and after the market takes place, but also hold a one-hour video conference every month where the club’s business is conducted.

Recently, market shoppers have been asking for a bakery vendor and on Sept.

15, the Kiwanis Club announced that San Mateo’s Made Out of Dough Bakery will be offering fresh-baked scones, cakes and other baked goods each week through the end of the season.

Garfield Community School in Redwood City’s North Fair Oaks neighborhood is a beneficiary of the Kiwanis Club’s community outreach. Years ago, the club’s big projects were around the holidays, when members would treat kids to a Christmas shopping spree.

“We would take a couple dozen students from Garfield School to Mervyn’s, now Kohl’s, to buy school clothes and various necessities,” McHenry said. “The store would let us in an hour before they opened. The kids, escorted by their parents, would shop and we’d run up a big tab and the club would pay for it.”

The farmer’s market is the club’s sole source of income and had to close for a while because of the pandemic, thus, in 2020, income was drastically reduced. Even so, McHenry said, “we still donated $7,500

• to different charities for school scholarships, to the St. Anthony's Dining Room here in Redwood City, and to the Boys Club.

But we’re all driven to do more.”

Focus on Veterans When U.S. Army veterans Tamera and Kevin Guess saw a need to help their fellow servicemen and women, the couple, along with fellow Menlo Park resident Marta Loewen, spearheaded the formation of the Peninsula Veterans Lions Club. This was the first veterans-focused Lions Club, though about 10 other clubs have formed to aid former members of the military.

Anyone who wants to support veterans is welcome to join the Menlo Park-based club; about 20 percent of the members do not have a military background.

About a decade back, the Veterans Administration and Department of Housing and Urban Development arranged to provide subsidized housing specifically for veterans. Most of the veterans receiving these vouchers have been homeless or are transitioning from alcohol/substance abuse or PTSD programs into their own apartments. Setting up house is very expensive, and most transitioning veterans

SPOTLIGHT•

did not have the money for myriad necessities such as pots, pans, a bed and bedding.

Seeing this need, the Peninsula Veterans Lions Club developed its signature project “Veterans Move-in Baskets”—a 70-gallon tote filled with everything a veteran would need to set up a home.

An Iraq War combat veteran, Tamera Guess is club president. Some of the newly housed veterans, she said, weren’t equipped for proper nutrition and didn’t have good cleaning supplies. “So we came up with the idea to provide them with everything they need to prepare and cook a nutritious meal for two, an air mattress— because a lot of times they don’t have anything to sleep on—and that started the ball rolling. In the past nine-plus years, we’ve given out more than 600 move-in kits.”

Beyond that, the club further helps the veterans get donated furniture, as well as provides clothing and grooming advice to prepare them to reenter the job market.

“The Women’s Makeover Project takes female veterans and gets them a haircut and their nails done so they can feel good about themselves and build their confidence as they enter the working world,” Tamera Guess said. The club partners with

Ines Acosta of Habbib’s Salon in Menlo Park, “who gives us a pretty good deal for her services.”

The Peninsula Veterans Lions Club is able to fund its work by having a concession stand at Stanford University.

“We went to Stanford Concessions and asked if they would give our club a concession stand,” Tamera Guess said, “and they did.” Members work at the stand during football and basketball games and earn a percentage of sales, which adds up to between $7,000 and $13,000 a year, according to Kevin Guess, who served as a military policeman when he was in the Army.

“In addition, we receive a lot of support from our district, other Lions, other groups, and we got creative and used Facebook to ask for donations,” he said.

“During the pandemic, six of our Lions asked for birthday donations for our club and they raised almost $5,000. So, we’re thinking outside the box.”

As depressing as the Covid pandemic may be, the extremely valuable, yet unsung work of service clubs is happening and growing. They are neighbors helping neighbors in times of need and times of transition. C

Want to support your neighbors?

Volunteer with a local service club.

Kiwanis Club Kiwanis Club of San Carlos • sancarloskiwanis.org Redwood City Kiwanis Club • rwckiwanisfarmersmarket.com Woodside Terrace Kiwanis Club • wtamkiwanis.org Lions Clubs Menlo Park Lions Club • menloparklions.club Redwood Shores Lions Club • e-clubhouse.org/sites/redwoodshores/index.php Redwood City Downtown Lions Club • facebook.com/LionsClubofRedwoodCity San Carlos Lions Club • sancarloslions.org Rotary Rotary District 5150 • rotary5150.org Rotary Club of Belmont and Redwood Shores • brsrotary.org Photos courtesy Peninsula Veterans Lions Club

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B U I S N E S S C L I M AT E •

An Auto Detailer Who Makes House Calls

By Jim Kirkland The days of doctors making house calls may be a thing of the past, but not so with entrepreneurially minded auto detailer Michael Hosking. Auto Pride Car Wash on Woodside Road customers might recognize Hosking as that energetic quality inspector who would wave his towel, announce finished, freshly laundered autos and chat with customers with a distinctive New Zealand accent.

More recently he's that guy seen rolling down the street pushing a uniquely decorated cart containing the tools of his mobile auto detailing trade.

The rig is so novel that Hoskins felt compelled to place a sign at the top reading, “I don’t live on the street.”

Born in Timaru, New Zealand, Hosking came to the United States in 2013 on holiday and to woo a lady with whom he had developed a long-distance relationship. The relationship didn’t last but his love for the U.S. did.

Enter Covid Hosking’s entry into self-employment was inspired by necessity. Like many businesses, Auto Pride was required to shut down for over a year because of Covid-related restrictions. Not a good situation for a habitually hard-working immigrant seeking to make his daily bread. “I had in mind to start my own detailing business, but Covid pushed the schedule up,” he says.

So, being equally creative, he struck out on his own and began detailing cars on location. Having already established something of a fan base, Hosking, with $50 in his pocket, bought the requisite cleaning supplies and reached out via the internet. Calling himself “The Kiwi from

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the Car Wash” was all the advertising he needed to get the ball rolling.

Using waterless techniques, this drought-conscious small business owner offers different levels of service: full inside/outside detailing or either separately.

The only obstacle Hosking has faced is transportation to and from job locations.

Ironically, he doesn’t own a car.

Walking the Walk Thus he is a man who embraces walking. No worries for this fit scrubber. Facing distances of one, two and up to five miles, Hosking pushes his cart to residences in Redwood City, San Carlos, and Menlo Park without blinking an eye. For customers in Emerald Hills, Portola Valley, Woodside and as far away as Half Moon Bay, he invests in an Uber ride. No distance is too great. To view his lit-up cart rolling down Woodside Road at night after a hard day of detailing is like watching Santa’s sleigh at the Hometown Holidays parade.

“The cart is a bit funky but it’s a good marketing tool and kids love it,” he says.

“In the end I have people wanting a photo with me and my cart. Plus, it gets great mileage.”

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H I S T O•R YC LbI M y A J iTmE • Clifford•

The County’s Worst Plane Crash Remembered A history marker on Kings Mountain commemorates the deadliest airplane tragedy in San Mateo County history, the crash of an Australian airliner that killed 19 people. An even more vivid reminder is that some of the wreckage is still there.

The British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines DC-6 named “Resolution” was flying from Sydney to San Francisco on Oct. 29, 1953, when – only three minutes from its destination – the plane slammed into the mountain west of Redwood City, cutting a path through an area jammed with trees and starting several fires with its shower of fuel.

“The sight was one of absolute devastation,” reported San Mateo Times’ photographer Ray Zirkel, who flew over the wreckage in a helicopter and brought back the first photos from the fog- and smokeshrouded hillside. “Nothing moved, only great chunks of twisted, unrecognizable debris lay over the mountainside. The only thing that was left resembling a plane was a buried, torn wing. Apparently more wreckage was buried in the forest which we couldn’t see.”

Wreckage Remains Some of that wreckage remains to this day just yards from a trail in El Corte de Madera Open Space Preserve, which is managed by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. A few years ago this writer hiked to the area to take some photos but was talked out of it by his hiking pal, then a mechanic for a major airline.

“Bad luck,” he said, convincing me that

30 · CLIMATE · October 2021

taking pictures to placate mere curiosity would have been a bit morbid as well as spooky. Then, that is just my moral compass at work. “Please respect this historical site by leaving any artifacts where you find them,” the district urges on its website.

The Civil Aeronautics Board determined that “the probable cause was the failure of the crew to follow proscribed procedures for an instrument approach.”

According to La Peninsula, the journal of the San Mateo County Historical Association, pilot Capt. Bruce Dickson, 34, was a veteran of more than 100 approaches to San Francisco . In a lengthy article in 1991, the journal speculated that Dickson “must have felt confident, maybe even overconfident as he hit a bank of normal coastal fog. He knew what to do,” adding “or so he thought.” Why would a trained and experienced pilot fail to follow procedures?

“No one will ever know for sure,” La Peninsula concluded.

During the initial attempted rescue and recovery efforts, much of the airplane wreckage was left in place, according to the district’s public affairs office. The wreckage became what was called an “informal history site” when the crash area was in private hands as a logging operation. Af-

ter the district acquired the land, the decision was made to formally recognize the tragedy. The trail leading to the crash site was named “Resolution Trail” and a memorial plaque was donated by the Native Sons of the Golden West. The plaque, anchored on a rock, was placed in 2009 near where Fir Trail intersects with Resolution Trail, which starts below a knoll that served as the base for rescue operations.

A Makeshift Morgue The National Guard Armory in Redwood City was pressed into service as a temporary morgue. Searchers found 17 bodies on the first day of the search and two a day later. There were no survivors.

The victims included an accomplished musician, 31-year-old pianist William Kapell, who was returning from a series of concerts in Australia. When he was only 20, the New York musician became the youngest person to win the Town Hall endowment series award. The honor was bestowed in 1942, the same year he made his first appearance as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. Two years later he signed an exclusive contract with RCA-Victor.

Kapell’s tour of Australia included 37 concerts in 14 weeks. He wasn’t happy with some of the reviews. Before he got on the plane at Sydney, he told reporters: “This is goodbye forever – I shall never return.” His final concert included Chopin’s “Funeral March.” C

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