2021: The Mercury News Wish Book

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

WELCOME TO WISH BOOK 2021

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Dear Readers: In challenging times, every action creates momentum that brings about progress and new hope. Join us in ringing in the 39th season of The Mercury News Wish Book.

Generosity, compassion, determination and creativity are just a few of the qualities that stand out this year. Even in a time of constant change, people continue to make a difference. This is startlingly clear in the Wish Book stories published each holiday season.

As a community newspaper and as local residents, we are eager to help improve the lives of others and make dreams come true. Every gift, whatever the size, fulfills a wish that can help transform someone’s life.

In 2020 your generosity reached new heights — more than $1.2 million — and for that, we are so grateful. The goal in 2021 is to keep the momentum going. It’s been a year of great heights and lows, but with your help we can rise up and enable more community members to thrive.

The Bay Area is a place of opportunity, innovation and energy. Our goal is to help create more possibilities for more people.

Thank you for being a part of The Mercury News family.

There are two paths to helping others: • Make a secure donation online at wishbook.mercurynews.com • Fill out the donation coupon, attach your check or credit card information, and mail it to: The Mercury News Wish Book Fund c/o MediaNewsGroup, P.O. Box 909, San Jose, CA 95106 Contributions of all sizes are welcome and are tax-deductible. However you choose to help, please know that 100% of your donation assists people in the Bay Area. One way to enhance the effect of your gift is to use your company’s matching donation program, if it has one. Your human resources department should be able to help with forms.

If more money comes in than is needed to grant a specific wish, we will use the funds to pay for other wishes.

Thank you for your generosity.

Happy Holidays!

Sharon Ryan Publisher

ON THE COVER

Natalie Chavez smiles as she’s serenaded during a music therapy session at a Life Services Alternatives home in San Jose. More on Page 11.

NHAT V. MEYER — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 3

Asian Americans for Community Involvement

“Refugees need to have a space when they arrive to process their trauma. Going to uncertainty is trauma itself.

If not addressed early, their integration is more complex.”

— Armina Husic, associate director of the Center for Survivors of Torture

SHAE HAMMOND — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

A HAVEN FOR NEW REFUGEES

By Elliott Almond >> ealmond@bayareanewsgroup.com

The call came with a sudden urgency. Armina Husic was told that if she wanted to escape she had to leave immediately.

Husic, a mother of two children, had just sat down to enjoy coffee in the living room of her Sarajevo home that morning in 1995. She wasn’t thinking about leaving her life in Bosnia and Herzegovina behind when the call came.

But the Siege of Sarajevo had reached almost four years by then. It would continue into the next year before the capital city was spared from the atrocities of a civil war that targeted the majority Muslim population.

Husic gathered her children, then 9 and 4 years old, a nephew, 8, and brother, 15, and began a life-altering journey that ultimately ended in the South Bay where she still feels painful stabs of emotion over fleeing her homeland.

Husic, 57, has spent the past quarter-century using the experience of her escape from Sarajevo to help refugees who come to California. She is associate director of the San Jose-based Center for Survivors of Torture that has assisted more than 4,000 refugees from 78 countries adjust to new lives in the Bay Area.

The center is part of the Asian Americans for Community Involvement, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to serve Santa Clara County’s marginalized and ethnic communities.

This summer’s chaotic images of desperate Afghans at Kabul’s airport seeking passage to the United States and elsewhere reinforced the need for such agencies as those uprooted try to re-establish their lives in a foreign land.

“Refugees need to have a space when they arrive to process their trauma,” Husic said. “Going to uncertainty is trauma itself. If not addressed early, their integration is more complex.”

Armina Husic, who fled Sarajevo in 1995, draws on her experience to help other refugees seeking help at the Center for Survivors of Torture in San Jose, which is part of the nonprofit Asian Americans for Community Involvement.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help Asian Americans for Community Involvement’s Center for Survivors of Torture provide clients with assistance for first month’s rent, furniture, and essential items like food and clothes, along with counseling and other services.

Goal: $25,000

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

Bay Area Trykers

KARL MONDON — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

THREE WHEELS, MANY SMILES parent organization National AMBUCS Inc. There were no chapters in Northern California then, but the number now stands at three. To date, the nonprofit organization has provided 74 tricycles to children Zoe Binschus’ legs pumped furiously as she raced her custom tricy- in the Bay Area. cle through the parking lot of Chandler Tripp School in San Jose on a “We started with a small group of therapists who were interested recent autumn afternoon. in being involved with something outside work that would help kids In that moment, the wind rushing past her smiling face, the with their leisure and mobility,” Cortise said. “As therapists, we’re 5-year-old Morgan Hill girl was unencumbered by the mild cerebral kind of selfish in that we know it’s going to help what we’re working palsy she was diagnosed with as a baby. on with the children.”

Asked just how fast she can ride “Cherry,” her red “trike,” Zoe exCortise said the tricycles help kids like Zoe improve their motor claimed: “Really fast!” skills in a way that’s “fun.”

The tricycle and the joy it brings were made possible by the Bay “The work they’re doing while they think they’re having fun, we’re Area Trykers. “We know there are a lot more out there who would able to utilize in therapy to help build their skills for other things like benefit from it and who would really enjoy it,” said Bay Area Trykers sitting, standing, walking and crawling,” she said. president Renee Cortise. “We’d love to put a smile on their faces.”

Zoe’s father, Michael Binschus, has seen the benefits. “It creates exIn 2016, Cortise, then a full-time physical therapist with Califorercise she wants to do rather than having to work when she goes to nia Children’s Services, helped found the Bay Area Trykers chapter of therapy,” he said.

By Jason Green >> jason.green@ bayareanewsgroup.com

Coraline Carrasco, 8, of Gilroy, is outfitted with a tricycle by her father, Eddie Carrasco, and Bay Area Trykers volunteer Katrina Ng during a Tryke-a-Thon fundraiser in San Jose.

HOWTOHELP Bay Area Trykers is seeking to raise money to buy about 10custom tricycles for children with disabilities or special needs to help them with their motor skills.

Currently, there are at least 8children on their ever-growing waiting list.

Goal: $10,000

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 5

Ecumenical Hunger Program

DAI SUGANO — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

SOOTHING WISH FOR HER SON ily — a span that one friend called “a horrendous five years.”

In 2016, Austin’s father Christopher died after a long illness that kept him out of work and needing Leonora’s care. Her father passed EAST PALO ALTO >> Leonora Martinez hears it all the time: I don’t away two years earlier, leaving her to also care for her mother strugknow how you get up every morning and face it. I don’t know how gling with signs of dementia, then a diagnosis of cancer. And Leyou continue to smile. onora’s older daughter left the family and her two young sons in LeFor all she has been through, all the waves of tragedy and pain onora’s custody to try to straighten out her life, then died unexpectthat keep crashing down upon her, she reminds herself: You have to edly in 2019. laugh or the tears will fall.

Somehow, Leonora still feels blessed.

Her life these days is consumed with caring for her 18-year-old “A lot of things have happened to this family, but I feel we’re resilson, Austin, who can’t walk and struggles to speak after a freak ient,” she said. “We’re doing the best we can with what God gave us.” bike accident. He was just 14, riding his bike to an after-school proBut it hasn’t been easy. Ever since Austin returned from the gram, when his chain popped and his body lurched and his inteshospital, Leonora has only managed to give her 6-foot-1 inch, tines punctured as he slammed into the twisted, backward handle- 250-pound son a daily sponge bath. bars. Complications from surgery left him for a time without oxygen “To feel water on his skin, to have a submerging bath, to have to the brain, crippling his movement and speech. complete wetness to your body,” Leonora said, “he hasn’t experiThat heartbreak came after a series of tragedies plagued the fam- enced that in years.”

By Julia Prodis Sulek >> jsulek@bayareanewsgroup.com

Leonora Martinez gives her son Austin, 18, a hand massage at their East Palo Alto home. Austin can barely move and has trouble speaking since a bike accident in 2017.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help Leonora Martinez — a client of the Ecumenical Hunger Program — make her home handicapped accessible and safe for her son by fixing damaged flooring and adding a bathroom large enough to accommodate his wheelchair.

Goal: $25,000

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

First Place for Youth

KARL MONDON — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

FOSTERING HIS TRANSITION “Growing up, I never thought about what I wanted to be,” said Alex, now 20. “Other kids, they already knew. But I always had to worry about where I was going to stay at, going from group home In a decade of navigating San Jose through group homes, foster to group home, even when I was little.” homes and at times, homelessness, Alex Bates focused much of his Long overdue for a break, Alex finally got one when his social attention and energy to just making it to the next day, week, and worker referred him to First Place for Youth, an Oakland-based month. nonprofit that serves young people aging out of foster supervision It’s small wonder that Alex went into survival mode — learning and seeks to give them a safety net as they transition into adultto adapt on the fly and attaining skills that helped him adjust to hood. living on his own, and complete high school amid circumstances “We’re working to get young people to a point where they can go most of his classmates could never understand. out in the world on their own,” said Sheigla Averill, the organizaBut then Alex turned 18, and the foster system that at times com- tion’s development director. prised his only semblance of structure began slipping from his Alex recognizes, and appreciates, the ground he has to make up. reach.

“I’ve had to grow up really quick. I’ve been having to pay bills, So what’s next? It’s a question pushed on thousands of young and I’m still trying to get a car,” he said. “I was homeless when they adults like Alex who are abruptly left to figure out adulthood with accepted me, and it changed my life. They’ve helped get me back few or no reliable examples to follow. on my feet, back in school. I have freedom.”

By Robert Salonga >> rsalonga@bayareanewsgroup.com

After spending nine years living in multiple foster homes, Alex Bates has finally found stability in his own apartment thanks to help from First Place for Youth, a Santa Clara County program that supports people transitioning out of the foster care system.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help fund the My First Place program in Santa Clara County, providing young people who grew up in foster care with safe, stable housing and the support they need in school, work and life.

Goal: $20,000

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 7

Homeless Garden Project

SHAE HAMMOND — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

SOWING LIFE-CHANGING SEEDS and she found new purpose after several of her friends mentioned that they had been hired at the Homeless Garden Project. Founded in 1990, the nonprofit organization runs a 3.5-acre farm near HighBrenda Deckman had lots of jobs in her life. Nurse’s aide. Manway 1 on Santa Cruz’s western edge. ager of a Subway sandwich shop. Home health care aide. LaundroThe project hires 17 homeless people a year. They work 20 hours a mat worker. week, are paid minimum wage and given a free lunch. Social workBut after a turbulent marriage that ended with her losing custody ers provide counseling and help the “trainees,” as they are called, of her 5-year-old son, she fell into a deep depression, spiraled down- obtain health care, open bank accounts, enter alcohol and drug ward and ended up homeless, living in a tent in the Pogonip Open counseling and find a place to live.

Space Preserve, a 640-acre wooded park on the northern edge of Working the land, they grow more than 80 crops. Along the way, Santa Cruz. many find new purpose, focus and recovery.

She had no car. No bike. Not even one photo of her son. Adrift, Mike Erickson, now 55, was homeless as a teen in the early 1980s. aimless and lacking self-worth, she survived on food stamps, panHe turned his life around and became a cabinet maker and woodhandled and bathed in a creek. worker in San Francisco, then an employee at the farm.

“I was probably at the lowest point of my life. I had nothing,” “People are homeless for so many different reasons,” he said.

Deckman said.

“Here they are part of a community. People experience rapid perThat was nearly four years ago. Deckman’s life turned around sonal transformations. It’s a life-changer.”

By Paul Rogers >> progers@bayareanewsgroup.com

Kaya Conrad, left, and Brenda Deckman embrace at the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz. They are trainees who work the land and grow crops on a 3.5-acre farm while they get counseling and other services to improve their lives.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help Homeless Garden Project buy farm supplies and pay trainee wages.

Goal: $12,500

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

Hope’s Corner

IT’S MORE THAN JUST A MEAL drops his tray, common sense would be to help him pick it up.

That’s what I did.”

If it wasn’t for Hope’s Corner, Garden says he’s not sure what Over the years, Hope’s Corner has become more than just a he’d be doing with his time. place where Mikey Garden could get a shower and a hot meal.

“I’m grateful to have those people on my side after all these The 52-year-old has been chronically homeless for four deyears,” he said. “They’ve helped me in a lot of ways.” cades now, moving from one foster home to the next as a young One of those ways was volunteers helping him reunite with child. He first came to Hope’s Corner seven-and-a-half years his mother after 39 years of separation. ago when a friend invited him to breakfast.

Located at the corner of Hope and Mercy streets in downBut in the last few years, Garden, who is known at Hope’s town Mountain View at Trinity United Methodist Church, Corner for his “heart of gold” has not only been a regular for board member Mike Hacker calls Hope’s Corner the “Little EnSaturday morning breakfast, but a frequent volunteer — often gine that Could” of nonprofits. helping out with mopping floors or setting up and taking down “As a small nonprofit, we’ve managed to do a lot and even extables. pand our services — even when new challenges seem to make He says it’s “good will” that has kept him coming back all success questionable — thanks to our volunteers,” Hacker said these years to help other homeless individuals like himself. of the nickname, which is based on the 1930 children’s book of “ (They) were giving me something to eat,” he said. “If a guy the same name.

By Grace Hase >> ghase@bayareanewsgroup.com

SHAE HAMMOND — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Michael “Mikey” Garden, who has been homeless most of his life, is a regular diner — as well as a volunteer — at Hope’s Corner in Mountain View.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help pay for meals and the shower/laundry program for homeless and low-income individuals who come to Hope’s Corner for assistance. In addition to snacks and food-to-go boxes, donations also would pay for COVID-related supplies, new socks, undergarments and laundry supplies.

Goal: $10,000

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 9

Housing Choices

THEIR KEY TO INDEPENDENCE The organization is tackling a massive and growing need in the Bay Area, where rent prices eclipse what many disabled people can earn working part-time in a low-wage job or Ashley Oliver was used to people telling her she’d never be through Social Security, said executive director Janette Stokley. able to take care of herself or live on her own.

Housing Choices helps clients with every step of the compliOn a recent afternoon, sitting in the cute, one-bedroom cating and daunting affordable housing search — from securapartment where she now lives by herself in Redwood City, ing a subsidized housing voucher and finding an apartment to 29-year-old Oliver described how good it feels to prove them all furnishing their new home and developing good housekeeping wrong. practices.

“To have my own place is to have my own freedom,” said OlThere are about 15,000 people with developmental and inteliver, who has epilepsy and an intellectual disability that affects lectual disabilities living in Santa Clara County, where Housing her learning and coping skills. “I worked very hard to get to the Choices is based, Stokley said. The organization also serves San place that I am.”

Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties.

That huge milestone was made possible in part by Housing “It’s part of a larger role where we’re promoting them to be Choices, a nonprofit that helps adults with intellectual and de- successful in their apartment,” she said. “If you’re moving into velopmental disabilities find affordable housing and live indeyour apartment for the first time, we want you to be a great pendently. tenant and have a pleasant place to live.”

By Marisa Kendall >> mkendall@bayareanewsgroup.com

ANDA CHU — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Housing Choices helped Ashley Oliver, who has epilepsy and an intellectual disability, move in to her own apartment in Redwood City. “To have my own place is to have my own freedom,” she says.

HOWTOHELP Housing Choices is seeking donations to help pay for basic housekeeping supplies — dishes, pots and pans, bedsheets and anything else their clients may need as they begin living independently on their own.

Goal: $5,000

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley

“The program provided a great community, a community that looked like me, other Latinas that were professional.”

— Tina Oliva, about the Engaged Latina Leadership Activist program

MENTORS FOR YOUNG LATINAS

By Sal Pizarro >> spizarro@bayareanewsgroup.com

The Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley entered Tina Oliva’s life at just the right time.

A recent graduate of UC San Diego in 2019, Oliva learned about its Engaged Latina Leadership Activist, or ELLA, program and soon realized it gave her a sense of belonging that she had been missing since college.

“It was something I didn’t even know I was looking for,” said Oliva, 25. “The program provided a great community, a community that looked like me, other Latinas that were professional. I had never been part of something. I never had role models that were Latina.”

The Engaged Latina Leadership Activist program got its start in 2007 with Rachel Camacho, a higher education advocate who was then a board member of the Latina Coalition.

She saw younger Latinas in the organization looking for opportunities to grow their leadership potential and helped build the program the following year, starting small but building up to a program that has served more than 170 Bay Area women from the ages of 19 to 29.

Gabriela Chavez-Lopez was part of that first ELLA cohort in 2008 and was hired earlier this year as the first executive director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley, which has existed as a volunteer program since its start in 1999.

Like Oliva’s experience, the ELLA program opened doors for her and put a Latina lens on many issues, which she realized was not the case during her time as a Santa Clara University student.

Perhaps more important, it made her part of a network that continues to support her even today. “I have mentors that to this day still call me and are fierce advocates for me,” she said.

“These are relationships that I have developed over 15 years.”

SHAE HAMMOND — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

For San Jose resident Tina Oliva, who was the first in her family to graduate from a 4-year university, programs within the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley gave her strong Latina role models.

HOWTOHELP Donations will be used to support scholarships for the Engaged Latina Leadership Activists (ELLA) program — which is part of the Latino Coalition of Silicon Valley. For each $1,000 raised, a young adult ELLA candidate will be able to participate in the leadership training for free.

Goal: $25,000

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 11

Life Services Alternatives

NHAT V. MEYER — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

MUSIC SETS THE RIGHT TONE often see growth that maybe was stifled by the environment they were in before they came here. Our philosophy is this should be a home for life.”

Inside the living room of a San Jose home with the quiet group The Campbell-based nonprofit operates 15 houses in the county, who eagerly await his weekly visits, Christian LaPaglia strums on his funded mostly by the state and federal governments, housing 70 disacoustic guitar as he strolls among two women and a trio of men in abled people with varying levels of assistance needs. Five of these wheelchairs, playfully acknowledging each and every one of them. dwellings house people who require frequent nursing and receive “Hello to TJ,” he sings to one man, “it’s good to see you. He then other supportive services, like those offered at the San Jose house gets down on one knee to serenade another resident. “Hello to Nata- where LaPaglia provides a special kind of care: music therapy. lie, good to see you,” he sings, and Natalie laughs.

“It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life, besides Most of the severely developmentally disabled people living in Life marrying my wife and adopting our daughter,” says LaPaglia, 55, of Services Alternatives’ homes scattered among Santa Clara County San Mateo, who is certified as a music therapist by the profession’s neighborhoods cannot speak or walk. national board, and holds a music degree from San Francisco State “It’s kind of amazing to see how people respond to a loving and University. caring environment,” says LSA executive director Dana Hooper.

“We’re looking for some voluntary responses to the music,” he “Most of these individuals are nonverbal but they communicate a lot says, “some gentle movement, tracking with the eyes, vocalizations, — with their smiles, with their expressions, with blinks of eyes. We and hopefully also relaxation.”

By Ethan Baron >> ebaron@bayareanewsgroup.com

Certified music therapist Christian LaPalgia, right, sings to Natalie Chavez as he leads one of his weekly music therapy sessions at a Life Services Alternatives home in San Jose.

HOWTOHELP Donations will support the music therapy program at Life Services Alternatives’ five homes for residents with special health care needs.

Goal: $10,000

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

Live Oak Adult Day Services

A RESPITE FOR CAREGIVERS

By Louis Hansen >> lhansen@bayareanewsgroup.com

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Live Oak Adult Day Services provided an oasis for seniors with dementia and their exhausted caregivers.

For a few hours a week, seniors went to one of four facilities in Santa Clara County for games, meals, music, art therapy, gentle exercise and conversation.

The thriving nonprofit served about 125 clients, including a former nuclear physicist, dentist, church organist, an Air Force pilot and many veterans and immigrants who fled Europe after World War II. But the pandemic shuttered Live Oak through the darkest days of the crisis. Caregivers and their loved ones had few places to turn.

“It was very challenging,” said Junelle Blandford, program

director at Live Oak’s Willow Glenn center. “Complete isolation. It was both physically and mentally challenging.”

Live Oak adjusted to the new world of Zoom, and brought video programs and therapies into the homes of their clients, whose average age is 87.

But their reach diminished — just 25 of their elderly clients had internet access and capable technology to follow along.

As the pandemic threat has receded, Live Oak has tried to rebuild its services and staff.

Live Oak was founded in 1983 to provide services for seniors with dementia and support family members. The agency would like to continue its online program for seniors and families still concerned about COVID safety.

Though the minimum age is 60, executive director Ann Peterson said, “we’ll take anybody as long as they can benefit from our programs.”

NHAT V. MEYER — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Seniors, including Kay Houts, 92, participate in a chair exercise course led by fitness instructor Tania Swain at Live Oak Adult Day Services in San Jose.

HOWTOHELP Donations will go toward Live Oak Adult Day Services’ general operating expenses, including for staffing, food and supplies.

Goal: $20,000

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 13

Portuguese Organization for Social Services and Opportunities

RAY CHAVEZ — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

LIFELINE TO THE HOMEBOUND

By Summer Lin >> slin@bayareanewsgroup.com

For the past two decades, Connie Nunes-Faria has battled cancer on and off, forcing her to endure intense treatments that leave her hands so swollen with fluid that it’s often difficult to cook for herself and her elderly mother.

So she’s even more grateful for the five days a week a driver from the Portuguese Organization for Social Services and Opportunities drops off a hot meal for Nunes-Faria, 59, and her 86-yearold mom, Ilda Nunes, who has Alzheimer’s.

“The food is a blessing because that’s one meal I don’t have to worry about,” said Nunes-Faria, who suffers from lymphedema that causes a build-up of lymph fluid in her hands. “It helps my mom to have some cultural food and the way I am, it’s very hard for me to cook. I break a lot of dishes or glassware and sometimes I’ll break an egg yolk by accident.”

Her mom started going to the center more than two decades ago.

“It’s very important because my mother really likes and misses the Portuguese food,” she said. “They do a cod fish with garbanzo beans that my mother loves and that’s something that I could not do.”

Located in the Little Portugal Neighborhood of San Jose, the center’s senior nutrition and human meal program delivers 130 to 140 meals a day to seniors who can no longer leave their homes due to illness or physically travel to the center, according to Executive Director Bela Ferreira of the nonprofit, also known as POSSO. “Low-income Portuguese, Vietnamese and Spanish immigrants stayed in this area because housing is cheaper and they work bluecollar jobs so their Social Security is extremely minimal,” Ferreira said. “Some of them are making anywhere $700 to $900 a month and to be able to live in this area is quite difficult and it’s extremely critical that we provide them these meals.”

Connie Nunes-Faria, left, and her mother, Ilda Nunes, share a light moment at her San Jose home. They are grateful for meals delivered from the senior nutrition program of the Portuguese Organization for Social Services and Opportunities.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help Portuguese Organization for Social Services and Opportunities (POSSO) deliver hot meals for homebound seniors who are too frail to visit the center. POSSO seeks to provide 30seniors with five hot meals per week for 10weeks.

Goal: $24,000.

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

Making Silicon Valley a better place for all

Help make their wishes come true.

Donate online at:

wishbook.mercurynews.com

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 15

Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center

RAY CHAVEZ — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

OPENING AVENUES TO SUCCESS sance Entrepreneurship Center, whom she now refers to as her “guardian angels.” And eventually, when public health orders allowed it, she opened her store again for in-person shopping When Teresa Hernandez walks down the aisles of her Mexiand began using the internet for the first time to create more can party supply shop, she doesn’t just see shelves packed with interest in her business. products like piñatas, traditional Mexican candies and ceramic For the past 30 years, the Renaissance Entrepreneurship figurines. She sees what years of determination and grit can Center has worked to provide small business owners and enget you — even in the face of a tumultuous global pandemic. trepreneurs in underserved and under-resourced communities Hernandez’s shop in East San Jose, Fiesta Mexxikana, closed across the Bay Area with the tools they need to build healthy, in March 2020 when Bay Area health officials issued the nasustainable businesses not only to help improve their own fition’s first stay-at-home order. And within a few months, Hernancial situation but the economic landscape of their whole nandez had amassed $20,000 in debt due to event cancellacommunity. tions that she had previously booked.

“We have always been centered around transforming lives “I cried a lot at first,” she said through a translator. “But this through entrepreneurship,” Program Director Timothy Rushas been a longtime dream for us. It took forever and ever just sell said. “We want to empower people and also create some exto open it so I was not ready to give up.” citement and vibrancy in a community that may not have been Hernandez sought the help of advisors from the Renaisthere beforehand.”

By Maggie Angst >> mangst@bayareanewsgroup.com

Teresa Hernandez, owner of Fiesta Mexxikana, calls advisors from Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center her “guardian angels.”

HOWTOHELP Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center is seeking donations to provide Start Smart training for eight additional clients interested in starting a business in the San Jose area. The training program helps clients craft a business strategy, connects them with available resources and assesses their skills and the potential viability of their business plans.

Goal: $8,000

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

Sacred Heart Nativity School

DAI SUGANO — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

BUILDING A SUPPORT SYSTEM

By Maggie Angst >> mangst@bayareanewsgroup.com

Somedays, Samantha Torres dreams about becoming a video game designer. Other days, she wants to open up her own bakery or maybe even design her own clothing brand.

No matter what the seventh-grader decides, Samantha’s parents, Mireya and Juan, are eager to see her dreams come true.

And for them, that starts with making sure she gets a sound education — despite the family’s economic status.

Samantha is one of about 80 low-income middle school students who attend Sacred Heart Nativity School in the heart of San Jose’s Washington-Guadalupe neighborhood.

Students who attend the private Catholic school come from families earning an average annual income of $30,000, and when they enter in the sixth grade, many are at least one or

two grade levels behind in English and math.

More than 90% of the students are Latinos, with most of them coming from immigrant families living within the surrounding neighborhood.

The school, which has been open for more than two decades, has long relied on a rigorous academic program that includes long school days and Saturday classes to ensure that students head off to high school on track academically with the skills and foundation to lead a successful life, both in school and socially.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, however, the unique issues that the students of Sacred Heart Nativity were facing outside of the classroom became even more apparent and school officials realized that they had to take more action.

“It was almost like an onion,” said Principal Lorraine Shepherd. “You just start peeling it and then more and more needs come to the surface.”

Sacred Heart Nativity School counselor Maria Buckallew, left, shares a laugh with student Samantha Torres, 12, before a parent-teacher-student conference in San Jose.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help bolster Sacred Heart Nativity School’s Support Services Team. The team was created during the pandemic to assist families with their unique needs, including providing materials to strengthen parent partnership and literacy programs, books and technology tools.

Goal: $10,000

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 17

Silicon Valley Independent Living Center

DAI SUGANO — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

YEARNING FOR A NORMAL LIFE spend most of the past year in a skilled nursing facility, receiving dialysis treatment a grueling four times a week and relying on others for tasks like eating, bathing and going to the bathNearly two decades after she left the Philippines for San Jose, room. life finally started getting easier for Nerissa Ramirez.

It was during that time that she met Tita Das, a case manager She had worked her way up the assembly line at a Fremont with the Silicon Valley Independent Living Center, a nonprofit electronics company and bought her first car. At night, she spent organization that offers people with disabilities in Santa Clara time with friends or attended local Jehovah’s Witnesses meetCounty a range of free services, such as advocacy, peer counselings. ing and help transitioning from the hospital to independent livBut then she was diagnosed with lupus — a chronic autoiming. mune disease in which the body attacks its own organs and tis“I could see that she was very sick,” Das said, “but she has that sues — along with kidney disease. motivation, that yearning.”

“All of a sudden, I’m fighting with my body,” recalled Ramirez, Das began mulling over a key question: “What can we get out 52. “It was so hard.” of her way so her journey can be completed in at least one way?”

In the years since that 2012 diagnosis, that fight has slashed Ramirez, meanwhile, is hopeful.

Ramirez’s independence down to a fraction of what it once was.

“Even though I’m in this kind of situation, I really, really want After years of working and living alone, her illness forced her to to live a normal life like everybody,” Ramirez said.

By Fiona Kelliher >> fkelliher@bayareanewsgroup.com

Nerissa Ramirez, who suffers with lupus, wipes away tears while sharing the story of her struggles.

“Even though I’m in this kind of situation, I really, really want to live a normal life like everybody,” she says.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help Nerissa Ramirez — a client of Silicon Valley Independent Living Center — buy a motorized bariatric wheelchair, a power recliner chair, a used vehicle with hand controls as well as a one-way ticket from the Philippines to San Jose.

Goal: $23,700

18 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 111

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

Sleeping Bags for the Homeless of Silicon Valley

ONE-STOP SHOP FOR HOMELESS

By Kate Lucky >> klucky@bayareanewsgroup.com

On a recent Saturday in the back of a county parking lot in San Jose, volunteers in blue T-shirts and jackets clicked the legs of folding tables and laid them with supplies.

First, groceries: Fruit cups, canned vegetables, Chef Boyardee lasagna, Pop-Tarts and bottles of water and milk.

Next, hygiene products: Paper towels, wipes, deodorant and masks. A tarp held clothing. The smell of lunch — hot Costco pizza — filled the air.

Every other Saturday morning, the small, all-volunteer organization Sleeping Bags for the Homeless of Silicon Valley meets in this lot to distribute provisions to homeless residents who live nearby.

In the afternoons, they move to another spot in South San Jose. On Sundays, they set up in Milpitas.

Clients who can’t make it to these distribution sites can arrange to have supplies delivered directly to them.

As its name suggests, the group also gives away sleeping bags, plus bikes, tents, fire extinguishers and portable phone chargers in addition to food and personal care products.

The nonprofit primarily serves the residents of four encampments in San Jose and a dozen or so smaller encampments in Milpitas — meeting their needs “from head to toes,” as founder and CEO Jinky Peralta puts it.

Peralta has “always had a heart” for serving others. She was inspired by her grandparents’ charitable work in the Philippines, where she was born and raised before moving to Sunnyvale as a teen. She’s lived in Milpitas since 1992, and founded Sleeping Bags for the Homeless of Silicon Valley in 2017.

“If it weren’t for Jinky I probably wouldn’t have survived this long,” said Nicci Bailey, one of the nonprofit’s clients.

SHAE HAMMOND — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Nicci Bailey admires a dress she received from Sleeping Bags for the Homeless of Silicon Valley during a distribution in San Jose.

The nonprofit regularly offers supplies and food to help residents of area homeless encampments.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help Sleeping Bags for the Homeless of Silicon Valley provide homeless clients with items such as tents, sleeping bags, fire extinguishers, phone chargers and bicycles.

Goal: $10,000

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 19

St. Francis Center of Redwood City

PUTTING FAMILIES FIRST

By Emily DeRuy >> ederuy@bayareanewsgroup.com

Before the pandemic hit, Natalia Gutierrez thought beating breast cancer would be her most difficult battle.

She was diagnosed in 2018 in her mid-30s, and cancer ravaged Gutierrez’s body, leaving her depressed and exhausted and unable to have more children. But then the coronavirus arrived, tearing through her extended family last year just as her long-term relationship with the father of her daughter, Camila, unraveled.

As it did for so many others, her 2020 involved a COVID hospitalization that left the immunocompromised 39-year-old in intensive care fighting for her life. But while the arrival of 2021 and vaccines signaled renewed hope and stability for many, the new year brought more financial and emotional upheaval for Gutierrez.

Suddenly, she was a single mom struggling to pay rent for the

apartment she shares with her daughter, along with bills for utilities, the car and food.

“I’m trying to do my best,” Gutierrez said. But the challenges have felt herculean.

She recently landed a part-time job at Safeway filling online orders and is scrambling to find more work, sometimes helping a friend with a cleaning business and working as an Instacart shopper. But, in Redwood City, just steps from Atherton, one of the most expensive addresses in the country, it hasn’t been nearly enough to get by.

So the St. Francis Center, a nonprofit established more than three decades ago in the North Fair Oaks neighborhood where Gutierrez lives, has stepped in to help.

For Gutierrez and her daughter, who attends Holy Family School and attends the after-school program, the St. Francis Center has been a refuge.

“I feel so good here,” she said.

NHAT V. MEYER — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Natalia Gutierrez, right, with her daughter Camila, 10, in their Redwood City apartment. A single mother, Gutierrez turned to St. Francis Center for help after a series of physical, emotional and financial setbacks.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help Natalia Gutierrez — a client at St. Francis Center — pay for rent, medical bills and basic necessities.

Goal: $10,000

20 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 111

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

West Valley Community Services

GROCERY STORE ON THE GO “During the pandemic, we saw increases in requests that we had never seen in past years,” said Sujatha Venkatraman, the associate executive director.

Diane Jacobs goes shopping every other Tuesday.

Jacobs first reached out to the agency for help with her mountShe heads to the parking lot at the Moreland School District ing PG&E bill. Then she learned about the food options. offices in San Jose and gets in line near the bright aqua Park-It The agency helps 2,500 individuals with food assistance annuMarket, a mobile grocery staffed by West Valley Community Ser- ally and would like to expand its Park-It Market to the Anderson vices, where she can stock up on meat, fish, produce, eggs and Elementary School community, where families struggle with both bread — and never have to stop to pay at a checkout stand. housing and food insecurity and 70% of the student body is eligiThis has been her routine for a couple of years now, since soon ble to participate in the free and reduced lunch program. after her husband died of a heart attack one Christmas Eve. For many in the Santa Clara Valley, the pandemic was the “They make you feel so welcome, like you’re going to the store,” great equalizer, resulting in layoffs or shorter hours for white-colJacobs said. “It really helps make ends meet. Most of my money lar and blue-collar employees alike. goes to rent and bills.”

“I lost my job, and then I got cancer,” said a Campbell woman She and her son, Gregory, are among the 3,500 residents aspicking up groceries who didn’t want to give her name. “I’m trysisted annually by West Valley, a 49-year-old nonprofit whose ser- ing to get back in the workforce. This is helping fill that gap right vices have never been more in demand than they are now. now.”

By Linda Zavoral >> lzavoral@bayareanewsgroup.com

ANDA CHU — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Maria Frias, left, of San Jose, receives groceries from Sujatha Venkatraman who is associate executive director of West Valley Community Services. The nonprofit organization has been providing safety net services to individuals and families in need for more than 49years.

HOWTOHELP Donations will support the expansion of the Park-It Market mobile food pantry program at Anderson Elementary School in San Jose.

Goal: $25,000

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 21

Youth Science Institute

KARL MONDON — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

A SCHOOL WITHOUT WALLS

By Lisa M. Krieger >> lkrieger@bayareanewsgroup.com

Online videos don’t describe the feel of a feather, the perfume of wet soil, the wonder of binoculars or the chill of an incoming storm.

After a pandemic filled with too much screen time and too little green time, children from inner city San Jose were thrilled by a recent outdoor adventure with the Youth Science Institute, searching for all things bright and beautiful, any creature great or small.

Isabella Banulos, 8, marveled at her first-ever deer sighting.

“They skip!” she exclaimed, as the small herd vanished down the trail. Online learning hadn’t explained that, either.

The Youth Science Institute’s new “Science Saturday” program at Alum Rock Park is reaching about 66 at-risk and low-income

children from Title 1-eligible schools, defined as having a child poverty rate of at least 40%.

“Children from low-income communities already experience an education gap,” said Erika Buck, executive director of the Youth Science Institute, based in Los Gatos. “And then, with the pandemic, children had to learn virtually from home. They weren’t given the ‘in person’ hands-on experiences that YSI can provide.”

YSI’s hands-on program not only sparks interest in science and learning, but fosters environmental stewardship, said the parents.

“It is really reinforcing the value of protecting our Earth, protecting our trees and our waterways and protecting habitats for wildlife,” said Yesenia Lombera of San Jose, a foster mother to three children, ages 2, 5 and 11. “It’s the perfect adventurous experience in nature for our city kids.”

Children learn about birdwatching at a Youth Science Institute field trip at Alum Rock Park in San Jose.

HOWTOHELP Donations will cover general expenses of the Youth Science Institute’s education services and aid them to expand its scholarship program to serve 288children, helping reduce the performance gap between advantaged and disadvantaged youth.

Goal: $25,000

22 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 111

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

Recovery Café San Jose

DAI SUGANO — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

CAFÉ NEEDS BREATHING ROOM and a little breakfast.”

But as important a place Recovery Café is for its members — which numbered about 200 before COVID-19 and has stabilized For many of the men and women who come to Recovery Café at around 135 — it has its challenges. During the COVID-19 panSan Jose, the aging, nondescript building that sits in the shadow demic, the facility had to close but its staff organized outdoor of city hall downtown has become a refuge of sorts — a welcome meetings for members and also directly delivered meals to them respite from the trauma of addictions, homelessness and mental — whether it was at apartments, homeless encampments or a sohealth challenges. ber-living environment. Classes and recovery circles were held on There, they engage in vigorous group discussions, take classes Zoom for about a year, and Recovery Café helped some members like art and mindfulness and sometimes just enjoy a cup of cofget internet-capable devices to join. Recovery Café reopened to fee with friends. limited 25% capacity in June 2021 and then fully opened a month And, for Lupe Hernandez, who is in her 80s, the little building later. on South Fifth Street holds so much more.

“A lot of people suffered a lot with mental health challenges “It provides a family environment,” said Hernandez, who during COVID,” Executive Director Kathy Cordova said. “When picked cotton in Fresno when she was young and worked in elec- they’re isolated for a year or more, that really exacerbates those tronics as an adult. “The people here are very friendly, very kind. challenges. And we’re bringing them back into that healing enviEverybody looks out for me and makes sure I get my cup of coffee ronment.”

By Sal Pizarro >> spizarro@bayareanewsgroup.com

For Lupe Hernandez, center, Recovery Café San Jose in downtown offers more than just coffee and breakfast.

“It provides a family environment,” Hernandez says.

HOWTOHELP Donations will help Recovery Café San Jose purchase six large room-size purifiers with special filters for COVID-19at a cost of $1,250. This will keep air circulating and cut down on the potential transmission of the virus.

Goal: $7,500

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

111 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 23

Giving back this holiday season is more important than ever. Your gift will help make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and groups facing challenges made more difficult by the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

7 REASONS TO DONATE Contributions are a vital part of the economy.

1 COVID-19

This once-in-acentury pandemic is heading into its third year. People are struggling to adapt and stay healthy, often after having lost loved ones. The vaccines and booster shots are helping, but our ability to endure is being tested. This is why gifts of kindness will not only make a difference, but give people hope.

2

Show your commitment to your community

Every request from Wish Book comes from people you may know, chat with or see in your neighborhood.

Your community will benefit when you give, which means a healthier environment for all.

TO DONATE

By web, please visit: wishbook.mercurynews.com

3

Inspire your friends & family

You may not know it, but you influence your peers. When you give to a charity such as Wish Book, you set an example for all to see how much you truly want to make a difference. Be a giver and a motivator.

By mail (check payable to Wish Book): The Mercury News Wish Book c/o Media News Group P.O. Box 909, San Jose, CA 95106

4

5

Desire to make a difference

The power of gratitude

Your passion to make change happen will have a huge impact on your community.

All of the Wish Book recipients are people right here in the Bay Area. One action can keep a family warm.

It’s easy to take the simplest things for granted. When you give, you realize what others may lack and are reminded of what you do have. Lift someone up, so they can pass it on.

6

It makes you feel good

7

It’s tax deductible

All of your gift to Wish Book goes When you directly to the donate you nonprofits and experience more your donation is pleasure knowcompletely tax ing that you are deductible. Just making a differ- remember to ence. The act of keep your giving sparks a receipt for tax plethora of season. positive feelings inside. Ease someone’s sense of isolation.

24 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP 111

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021

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