Have you ever wondered how one obtains a shiny license plate holder declaring that the possessor is a SCV Man or Woman of the Year? There are substantially hearty hoops (some lit on fire) that one must toss themselves through to qualify.
A brave new breed of Santa Claritan has entered the political scene. They are loud, motivated, loud, persistent, and, well, loud. We’ve always had some people like this in the Valley - adamant PTA moms, defensive small business owners, outspoken politicos, Bruce McFarland - but in recent months, these motivated characters have multiplied in number and have been making their presence especially well known. Their well-placed, well-projected comments have done much to get this little City of ours moving in the desired (or demanded) direction.
Late last February, the Amgen Tour of California bike race brought Santa Claritans a vision they rarely get to see: people moving on streets at about 30 miles per hour. I know, I know; they were moving on vehicles powered by their own legs rather than gasoline and they were on two wheels instead of four. Still, the thing I like most about the race isn’t seeing people ride bicycles at moderate rates of speed. No, it’s watching my fellow Santa Claritans appreciate a sport and culture that most of us don’t give a second-thought the other 364 days of the year. Indeed, when else do we get to say “peloton” or cheer on people who make their living by turning pedals?
So that’s it, then. There’ll be no more searching for Bobby Fischer.
Those wishing to find him need only visit the town of Selfoss, Iceland, where his body was laid to rest on January 21. In kidney disease, the undisputed king of U.S. chess - the erstwhile and enigmatic world champion from Brooklyn - finally met an opponent against whom he couldn’t even force a draw. He tipped his king at age 64.
Cruising the World with Soroptimist and “The Love Boat’s” Captain Stubing Gavin MacLeod of “Love Boat” fame will be the celebrity host of this year’s Soroptimist International of Santa Clarita Valley’s 33rd annual fund raising auction on Saturday, March 8 at the Hyatt.
The club promises an amazing evening of fun and entertainment, not withstanding the chance to dine with the Captain at the Captain’s Table. There will also be an opportunity for VIP guests to participate in a bridge visit and photo session with the captain.
The hosted Captain’s Reception will begin at 5 p.m. for boarding guests. They will have the opportunity to tour the “ship,” visit various destinations and ports of call while participating in an opportunity drawing… then it’s bon voyage.
I often wonder how much bigger Santa Clarita can grow and still feel like, well, Santa Clarita. My grandparents moved here in the early 1960s and they say the hometown they once knew has all but disappeared. We bade good riddance to onion fields for soccer fields, close-knit neighborhoods for interaction-phobic ones, and jokes about hokey small towns for much-beloved suburban clichés.
It was a busy month for Santa Clarita: We had a new park to gloat about; a philanthropist to mock; famous people to swoon over; and community show-offs to congratulate. The run down…
Red roses and dinner in a dimly-lit, over-priced restaurant don’t work for everyone on Valentine’s Day. No, V-day plans have to be made with the Claritan you’re seeing in mind, and some are more difficult to please than others. Below, I offer tips for dealing with a few of the most challenging cases. Just call me Dr. Love and use one of these prescriptions to cure your case of lame Valentine’s dates.
Save the Date!
Saturday, March 1
COC Honors Wayne Crawford with the Silver Spur Community Service Award
The College of the Canyons Foundation Board of Directors will honor Crawford at the Globe Theatre located at Universal Studios. Crawford’s exemplary record of community service includes the Crawford Fleming Invitational Golf Tournament, raising funds for the Sheila R. Veloz Breast Imaging Center; co-chairing the Boys & Girls Club Festival of Trees; and serving as chair of Carousel Ranch’s capital campaign to raise $1.5 million.
They say that clothes make the man. And while “they” didn’t show themselves at Carousel Ranch’s festive Santa Day in December, their on-target philosophy held true - at least in the case of some fine gents who showed up on a blistery-cold morning to help local special-needs kids have a dreamy day filled with snow play, delicious treats and presents.
Winter is a season teeming with reasons to be depressed. Claritans are deprived of snow, gloomy about the passing of the winter holidays, and made anxious when New Year’s comes around to remind us that we’re growing ever older.
Observed Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like 30 seconds with Bruce and Gloria Fortine. The Santa look alike and his brilliant, adorably elfin wife were making like the Clauses at the Boys & Girls Club’s Festival of Trees. Also on hand for the celebration of all things tinsel were Bob Hudson and his fashionista squeeze Margo. We wish a belated “Happy engagement!” to the pair.
It seems that even massive fires can’t keep avid golfers/philanthropists away from a good time on the course for long. Case in point: the fun-fest that was the Crawford-Fleming Breast Cancer Awareness Invitational, benefiting the Sheila R. Veloz Breast Imaging Center (that was a mouthful). The tournament, which was postponed a week due to the recent blaze, was held at Tournament Players Club Valencia. Besides an intense amount of club swingers, also present was local fashion designer Tracy McWilliams, who literally donated the shirt off her back (100 of them, to be precise) to the event; TPC’s Head Chef Daniel Otto, who’s deft wielding of all things culinary resulted in a smorgasbord of fantastic proportions; and Myra Harbour, owner of Celebrate - Planning For An Event to Remember, who helped create the “Casino for a Cause” were all worthy of high roller status.
After a weekend of fine stemware being poised in the nearly-upside down position (ooh… there’s a little more left in here…) by thousands of very loose gooses (yeah, we know it’s really “geese” but then the play on words doesn’t work, does it?) Santa Clarita has finally proven to So Cal at large that we can kick ‘em back just as well as the next town. Sure, San Fernando Valley may be celebrating Miller Time pretty much, well, always - but we now have a whole weekend a year dedicated to public imbibing. Emphasis on “imbibe.” There was a whole lot of swirling, but the “spit” part of wine tasting was lost in translation. Chock it up to our inner cheapskate nature. With wine of this exquisite of quality, it just didn’t make sense to attendees to voluntarily give up the grape. But enough talk of our communal blood-vessel-breaking practices…
Hillary Clinton said "it takes a village" to raise a child. She had a point. It’s not 1955 anymore. Kids’ after-school activities don’t usually include a stay-at-home mom in an apron and pearls pulling fresh cookies out of the oven. If a child is lucky enough to have two involved parents, chances are they’re at work for 10 hours a day. Quality time sometimes means a five-minute chat while negotiating the drive-through at McDonald’s.
The sob-fest that was the Man & Woman of the Year Award Dinner disclosed two newly-crowned and shiny-license-plate-holdered volunteer extraordinaires: Inside SCV Magazine Publisher Jeanna Crawford and longtime king among men Greg Nutter. Crawford, who credited her rise to the do-gooder calling in part to a voice coach who wooed her with gummy worms, used part of her speech to recite the lyrics from "The Greatest Love of All."
There is something about a beautiful, well-kept garden that brings peace and serenity. Christi Larsen is one of those people who digs in the dirt and finds comfort. More than two years ago, she lost her son Cole while he was serving in Iraq. The pain doesn’t go away and the memories of her son are deep. Cole loved the outdoors, Christi said, and she thought a garden tour would be a nice way to remember Cole and help others who are in the same situation as her family.
Grand illusions, transformations, a disappearing banana, multiplying flowers, mentalism exercises, linking rings and a dancing scarf were among the magic feats performed at the first annual "Evening of Magic" benefiting the local Boys & Girls Club on Sat., March 10. More than 300 attendees helped bring in about $3,100 for the club. The show was put on by the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM) of the Santa Clarita Valley.
Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital recently paid tribute to its volunteers, recognizing them for going the extra mile to make a difference in their community by helping staff and patients at the Valencia hospital. During the special luncheon held April 18 at the Hyatt Valencia, Roger Seaver, the hospital's president/CEO, praised the Henry Mayo's approximately 270 volunteers for unselfishly giving their time for the betterment of their community.
Break out the bell-bottoms, dust off the love beads and put some flowers in your hair. We’re not going to San Francisco, but we are headed for the Soroptimists’ "Flashback to the Sixties" fundraising auction. The 32nd installment of the annual event promises to be groovy, says Cynthia Eichler, who serves as auction chair for the Santa Clarita Valley Chapter of Soroptimists International. "We try to keep it fun and light-hearted so our donors can come and have a good time while helping us raise money," she says.
City Manager Ken Pulscamp took the title of Newsmaker of the Year (and not far off, Assistant City Manager Ken Striplin wiped away a tear of joy). Scott Wilk, the Susan Lucci of the Newsmakers, finally went home with a prize, too; he won for Behind the Scenes. And who’s that sexy man who traded his normally plaid attire for a bona fide suit? Yes siree, that’s one of Inside SCV Magazine’s own publishers, Wayne Crawford (he also owns a little company called Santa Clarita Concrete), who won the award for Community Service.
When Santa Clarita resident Colleen Shaffer learned in 2002 that her breast cancer had spread, she also learned she’d live six months unless her body responded to treatment. But Shaffer is a fighter. She is a cancer survivor. She will probably be on chemotherapy for the rest of her life, but today that life knows no predictable time limits. Statistics do not define her, and you won’t find her measuring life based on somebody else’s actuary table. If you’re looking for Colleen Shaffer, you will find her doing what she has done since her battle with breast cancer began in 1999.
What can $10 buy you these days? Perhaps lunch, or coffee for a couple of days, or maybe a few gallons of gas. It seems like an almost insignificant amount of money when measured against everyday living expenses. But $10 goes a long way at the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center, which offers a wide array of services designed to help more than 30,000 local seniors maintain their independence, dignity and quality of life. So, it's not surprising why the center's annual campaign currently under way is named $10 Bucks to a Better Future.
There are just some things you grow to count on in the movin’ and shakin’ world of Santa Clarita. Dessert in the Hyatt ballroom will always taste like cheesecake, even if it’s called Peach Flan Fondue. Cheri and Don Fleming will always be the first to leave an event so that Don can get his beauty sleep. And Shelley Hann’s hair will always be longer than Bob Hudson’s bar tab. Except that Hann turned our world of truisms upside down on New Year’s Eve at Tournament Players Club when she arrived without her signature uber-long strands.
If you have reason to visit the Providence Holy Cross Health Center in Valencia anytime soon, you're going to catch an interesting sight inside the center's main lobby. You're going to see 16 pieces of very special art, created by very special people for a very special cause. The art pieces represent the best of a wealth of pieces created by nearly 150 children from Santa Clarita's Sulpher Springs School District as part of the newly-formed Art of Healing program.
Yeah, there were plenty of photogenic people who attended the Boys & Girls Club’s Festival of Trees this year, but the award for "best dressed" didn’t go to any of them; it went to the stars of the fest: the trees. Still, since this column is called "Movers & Shakers," we figured that the tree closest to our theme was the Loose Goose/RSVP wine tree. See, after you partake in its grapey goodness, you’ll be a’movin’ and a’shakin’. Ha! Ha?
The holidays are a wonderful to time give and finding the perfect present for your loved one is a good feeling. While in the holiday mood, it is a good time to look at the many nonprofits in the community. Volunteers are always the number-one-requested item on a nonprofit's wish list, but if time restraints are a problem for you, there are other things you can do to help these hard-working organizations. Toy drives and canned food donations are a common sight during the holiday season and residents of Santa Clarita are a giving group. The SCV Food Pantry, for example, receives 40 percent of their goods for the entire year during the months of November and December, according to Executive Director Belinda Crawford. "We have many individuals in this community who are grateful for what they have and they also realize there are those in the community who are in need," Crawford said. "You think we are an affluent community, but there are pockets of poverty."
It seems that the politicos are out in full force. Case in point: the Boy Scouts’ Leaders of Character dinner sponsored by Total Financial Solutions. SCV council peeps like Bob Kellar and Cameron Smyth were there with "Last Boy Scout" Wayne Crawford (He has his own tractor!) and honoree Kevin "I’ve worked for the Dodgers and The Master’s College and now I own a fancy car dealership with a hall of famer!" Malone (somewhere, an over-achiever feels shame).
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