Main Street

Local volunteers help Montana fire victims

By Mary Ann Cook

MONTANA MISSION: Los Gatan Pasteur Yuen is part of the Red Cross team that helped out victims of the wildfires that raged out of control and ravaged parts of Montana. Yuen and Margaret Hoge of Willow Glen drove the Emergency Response Vehicle from Santa Clara Valley to Missoula.

There the vehicle, a reconfigured ambulance, was equipped with food and clothing, hygiene articles and prescription medicines, which were then brought to both disaster victims and firefighters. In that area 53 homes were destroyed and another 1,000 threatened.

The fires were contained sooner than expected and the Santa Clara County team was sent home after nine days, instead of the three weeks expected. Yuen has responded to other emergencies for the Red Cross, including Mississippi after Hurricane George and Fresno after the orange freeze that left hundreds of pickers without jobs.

Yuen is a retired programmer from Memorex and IBM, and has been a Red Cross volunteer since '59 in San Francisco when he chauffeured people to doctor's appointments who wouldn't otherwise be able to get there. In the last three and a half years he has clocked 1,000 hours for the Red Cross.

A believer in volunteering in his community, Yuen also works as a cataloguer for the Los Gatos Library and for Good Samaritan Hospital in a variety of jobs. Others from Los Gatos who answer disaster relief calls are Leon and Joanne Milburn.

Approximately 85 percent of Red Cross workers are volunteers. Contributions to the Red Cross can be made at 408.577.2114, or at www.redcross.org/ca/scv.

AWARD WINNER: Christopher Jones, a '95 graduate of Los Gatos High School, along with fellow Washington State University student Michele Frier, won first place and a $2,000 prize in an international student contest for mine reclamation.

Both are landscape architecture students at WSU, Spokane. Their plan proposed that the mining site be reclaimed as a vineyard operation and meeting center. The students studied the area's climate, sun and wind orientation and soil conditions.

Suggestions from other teams included a fish hatchery, a concert amphitheater, outdoor sports product testing and a light rail center. The competition is sponsored by the American Society of Landscape Architects and the National Stone Association.

Its aim is to assist quarry owners with ideas for beautification and reclamation, part of the NSA's About Face Program. The Jones/Frier project will be displayed at the ASLA Expo in St. Louis in October and at the NSA convention in San Diego in February.

Jones will enter his fifth and final year in September at WSU. He is the son of Nancy and Steve Jones.

NEW BOOK: Just out is Joy Hulme's new children's book, Through the Open Door. The book is billed as a Mormon Little House on the Prairie by publisher Harper-Collins. It's targeted for those in grades 4 to 6 and is based on the real life adventures of the late Ora Davis, who lived in Los Gatos.

The story tells the adventures and tribulations of the fictional Dora and her family on their move with nine other families from St. Louis to New Mexico to homestead in 1910. The trip took nearly two months, which journey Hulme and her husband, Mel, retraced while Joy was doing research for the book.

The Hulmes opted to go by car rather than wagon, however. "It's her experiences, combined with my feelings and research. Her life was an odyssey of ingenuity," Hulme said, including marriage through an ad to a man she had never met.

Ora (and the fictional Dora) was born with her tongue attached to the roof of her mouth so couldn't speak and thus was excluded from school. After a doctor finally realized the problem, he cut her tongue free and she was able to learn to speak.

Thus, she was finally allowed to enter school, much to her joy, "through the open door." A second book in this series has already been sold. Ora Davis' daughter, Mary Lou Irwin, lives in Saratoga.

SCHOLARSHIP: Minyang Mao, son of Yuehkuei (Laura) Mao, won a scholarship from Tenet Healthcare Foundation. Tenet Corp. owns Community Hospital of Los Gatos and awards scholarships to children of employees.

Laura is a pharmacist at the hospital. Minyang will attend Northwestern University in the fall, majoring in medicine.

WINNERS: The Vanguard Cadets of Santa Clara County won a gold medal in Division II at the recent International Drum and Bugle Corps International Championship. Kelly Johnson, drum major and Laura Murphy, baritone horn, are members.

Winning second place in the division with only a .05 point difference were the Mandarins of Sacramento. Kenny and Jennifer Leong and Andrew Wooster of LGHS are members. Andrew and Jennifer are in the color guard and Kenny plays tuba.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: Volunteers are needed in the Food Match program to collect food from markets and deliver to local sites. Volunteers help those in need while preventing food surpluses from becoming waste. To volunteer, call Lauren Mende at 408.354.6824.

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