ROTARY RACE RESULTS: The Los Gatos Rotary's Great Race pulled in $42,000 this year, a thoroughly respectable sum for a one-day event, reports Rotary president Ron Lykins. It's not the record: that may have been $46,000 for another year, but it's also not $20,000, a total the event sometimes draws.
The results depend on the number of sponsorships acquired and how generous those sponsors prove. The Great Race is the main fundraiser for the 130 Rotarians. One-third of the money goes to scholarships, primarily to students from LGHS and Leigh High. Need and merit are the deciding factors for winners.
Other beneficiaries of the Great Race are local schools (Rotary funds will supply lab equipment for the new science wing at LGHS), EMQ Children & Family Services, Scouts, Live Oak Center, St. Luke's homeless and Second Harvest.
Other beneficiaries are farther afield. The local Rotary partners with Chiapas, Mexico, to educate Indian women about reproduction. And it contributes to Rotoplast, the national project that sends doctors to Third World countries to correct cleft palates and other birth deformities.
More international programs that benefit from the Great Race are Polio Plus, designed to eliminate polio from the world, and the Wheelchair Foundation.
Every Rotarian is expected to be involved in Great Race action. Duties include planning and registrations, routing buses, securing permits, designing T-shirts, rounding up sponsors, serving as race-day volunteers and running the Fun and Fitness Fair.
Teresa Scagliotti has been race chairwoman for several years and will be next year, and Dick Ryan is the co-chair. Paul Clark is president-elect.
HEART-FELT WORK: Two Los Gatos artists—Jylian Gustlin and Lori Kay—are part of the Hearts in San Francisco sculpture project that is designed to raise funds for the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, as well as enhance the environment. Each heart sculpture is 5 feet tall and is designed for a specific location.
Kay's work will be installed in the Van Ness corridor, and it's a golden heart, draped in Greco-Roman-looking materials, which she has painted on. The drapery covering is shown partially undraped and unzipped. Thus, the top of the golden heart can show through. Kay has won grants from foundations and residencies from various art councils, and her most recent residency was at the San Francisco dump, and it was most productive, capped with a one-woman show of her work.
Since Kay is a sculptor who works in mixed media, the SF dump was a treasure trove for her. Titled the Scavenger Residency Competition, the award offered her a large warehouse in which to create her heavy pieces. She's been casting bronze for 22 years, studied at UCSanta Cruz and in Geneva and Basel, Switzerland.
The heart sculptures will be in place by the end of June and will eventually be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Gustlin's work is influenced by the tech revolution, so her heart sculpture will probably contain computer hardware or echoes of same.
These two artists literally left their hearts in San Francisco.
FOR CHILDREN: Intero Real Estate Services handed out two checks recently to child-centered, nonreligious nonprofits. A check for $20,000 went to Future Families, an agency that helps both families with foster children and those seeking to adopt children.
Another check, this one for $5,000, went to Assistance League to buy school uniforms for needy children. Intero has a foundation, and all employees of the company contribute to it regularly. There are 15 Intero offices in the Bay Area. A committee with representatives from each one decides on the foundation recipient.
Thus, those who contribute help decide where the money goes, says Brian Crane, manager of the LG office. Last year the foundation raised $80,000.
BERRY OVERLOOKED: In the history of the site of the Los Gatos Jewish Community Center on Oka Road, one use of the site was overlooked. For 18 years a school—the Ralph O. Berry Elementary School—was there. Gratia Trevez, a fourth-grade teacher at Berry for 16 years, pointed out this oversight.
Its existence as a community school should be acknowledged, Trevez commented. After the school closed, it served as a medfly center. Then the district sold it to fulfill its present use. Los Gatan Bill Buckman was principal of Berry School for many years.
OLDER AMERICANS: Honored during Older Americans Month last week were Martha Freisen and Lilliane Comastra, both 90, of The 55 Plus program, and Florence Frye, 91, and Janet Riley, 84, from the Live Oak Senior Nutrition program.
UNICYCLIST: Who's the unicyclist around town? She was spotted wheeling past Old Town recently, tooling along in a very accomplished fashion.
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By Mary Ann Cook