Garden grows more than just plants

The green thumbs start young at El Cariso's new garden, which is being inaugurated this weekend.

It’s difficult to predict just how a garden will grow. At Sylmar’s new El Cariso Mountain Garden, they’re harvesting not just tasty veggies but also stronger community bonds.

The garden, which is having its grand opening celebration on Saturday, features 39 raised beds, fruit trees, play areas and even a tricycle path. It’s the latest product of the Little Green Fingers Collaborative, a joint effort by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps and the L.A. Neighborhood Land Trust to serve local families with young children.

And those families have responded enthusiastically.

Wendy Lynch signed up for a plot in part to teach her kids—Travis, 5, and Mbali, 2—where their food comes from.

“Kids love dirt and water, so it’s a ton of fun,” Lynch says. One plot is set aside for “kids to just play and turn the dirt over. It’s filled with kid-proof plants.”

Lynch discovered the garden last fall when it was being built. Her parents spotted the construction in a seldom-used corner of the county’s El Cariso Community Regional Park during their daily walk along the park’s bike path. “They called me up and said ‘You have to get down here,’ ” Lynch recalls.

Lynch, a self-described stay-at-home mom, said she treasures her work in helping to manage the garden, of which she is the current co-treasurer.

“I miss that kind of thing, not working,” Lynch says. “This gives me a real sense of being productive.”

Getting folks like Lynch to grab the reins is essential to the long-term survival of the garden, according to Juan Salas, an organizer with the collaborative. The project is funded through 2017 by First 5 L.A., but then it will be handed over to the community to manage. The gardeners will have to raise the necessary funds to keep things growing.

Another community member, Liziel Estrada, already has helped the garden score a major grant. Estrada discovered and applied for a Grow Your Park grant from the National Recreation and Parks Association. The El Cariso garden was awarded $10,000, making it one of only 15 organizations nationwide to receive a grant. The gardeners plan to use the money to build a gazebo, add new features and continue battling what, so far, has been the biggest threat to a successful harvest—a persistent gopher and rabbit problem.

“The first three months that the gardeners were planting things, they noticed that there were no leaves,” organizer Salas says. “Gophers would pull the plant straight underground just like in the cartoons. I never knew it happened like that but it actually does.”

Additional fencing and wiring installed at the base of the garden beds seems to be helping, and the garden is now growing lush and green. Such challenges are not necessarily a bad thing because they serve as important learning experiences for the young kids who are the primary target of the initiative, says Jessica Monge, who oversees the project for First 5 L.A.

Beyond the open-air fun it offers, the program also aims to combat childhood obesity by promoting healthy eating at home. To that end, hands-on nutrition and cooking classes are part of the program. Estrada says her family has already reaped some of the benefits.

“We’ve had some carrots, we have some kale right now, we’ve had some lettuce,” Estrada says. “Seeing everything grow makes my son want to eat fruits and vegetables even more, which is great.”

But for her fellow gardener Lynch, the most unexpected benefits of the program have been the new connections she’s made.

“When you live in a house you know your immediate neighbors but you don’t meet your community,” Lynch says. “I didn’t know we had a Neighborhood Council; now I know who to go to if I want to get things done. I’ve also made a lot of new friends. With kids, sometimes it’s hard to know who you can trust. You get to see what kind of people they are when they’re working the garden.”

The Sylmar project is the fourth Little Green Fingers garden (others are in Koreatown, South L.A. and Pasadena) and the first to be located in a park.

Most of the garden’s plots already have been reserved by neighborhood families, a school and two local organizations, but those interested in digging in can email Juan Salas ([email protected]) or Monica Curiel ([email protected].) Or they can attend Saturday’s grand opening, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the western edge of El Cariso Park, 13100 Hubbard Street. There will be educational displays, arts and crafts for kids, and a free lunch prepared by one of the gardeners who is an executive chef at a local restaurant. Picnic blankets are highly recommended.

Leafy green kale is just one of the crops coming up at the El Cariso Mountain Garden.

Posted 5/15/14

 

A greener future opens up

A new park will open in 2014 where once there was just industrial space.

For decades, it has been just another big, concrete L.A. channel, a place known mainly for the unfortunate passersby who have had to be rescued there during winter rains.

But the hardworking Pacoima Wash has been getting a makeover lately, and this week, the Board of Supervisors approved the finishing touches for a 4.75-acre park that will give yet another neighborhood along the tributaries and banks of the Los Angeles River a welcome sliver of green.

“I think it’s going to be good,” said Bertha Macias, a stay-at-home mom in San Fernando on Tuesday as her 4 year old, Benjamin, ran back and forth between the fence and the walkway of her tiny front yard a block from the soon-to-be-opened Pacoima Wash Eighth Street Park.

A mother of three, Macias said her dense neighborhood has far too little open space for the number of children who live there. “I think it will be good for the kids to go to in the afternoons after school,” she said in Spanish. “They’ll watch less television if they can go to a park.”

Due to open in early 2014, the park, which runs between Eighth Street and Foothill Boulevard in the City of San Fernando, marks yet another bit of progress, both for its community and for the long-term movement to re-green the Los Angeles River and its various branches in L.A.. 

Constructed in the 1940s as a 10-mile-long flood control channel, the Pacoima Wash is a tributary of the Tujunga Wash, which in turn is a tributary of the Los Angeles River. When it rains, its industry-lined banks typically fill with trash and polluted runoff.

A filtering system beneath this placita will help clean storm runoff before it reaches the wash.

Historically, it has been viewed as a purely utilitarian conduit for inland water, and it has been fenced off from the dense, park-starved communities that abut it, dividing them like a freeway. But in 2005, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority acquired several parcels of land along the channel. And in 2008, with the help of a Los Angeles County Department of Public Health grant, a coalition led by the grassroots environmental nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful launched an initiative to reimagine the wash as a place that might not only do a better job of filtering storm water, but also double as an urban greenbelt.

“These communities are, in a lot of ways, park-poor and in need of nature and green space,” said Ana Petrlic, deputy chief of urban projects and watershed planning for MRCA.  “And bringing nature to the city is a primary goal of MRCA.”

Indeed, according to Pacoima Beautiful, the community of Pacoima alone has only about a quarter of the park space it should have under the City of Los Angeles’ general plan standards. Meanwhile, one in four residents suffers from heart disease and 29% of the young people are obese. 

The MRCA acreage has been combined with land owned by the Los Angeles County Flood Control District to create the first of what MRCA envisions as a series of parks along the wash. Nearly complete, the Pacoima Wash Eighth Street Park, designed by the Los Angeles environmental design firm Blue Green, will feature a small loop trail, a pair of quaint bridges, an arbor for shade and some picnic tables and benches.

“There are great views of the mountains and the Angeles National Forest,” said Petrlic, “and native plants for habitat for the local wildlife.” Built into the park’s design is a system to detain and treat storm water runoff, which will enter the site underneath two small circular plazas—one at Eighth Street, the other at Bromont Avenue—that are equipped with underground filters to catch trash. From there, the water will flow into a newly constructed creek bed that runs parallel to the wash, where it will be further cleansed of pollutants.

“And,” Petrlic said, “that’s all before the water actually reaches the wash.”

This week, the Los Angeles County Supervisors voted to take the greening effort up a notch. They approved a $100,000 grant from Third District park funds to add about 150 new trees to make the now spare-looking space a bit more inviting.

“This is a good thing,” said Manuel Franco of Pacoima, an MRCA worker, as he checked sprinkler heads Tuesday along the greenbelt. “Good for this area. Good for families.”

An arbor, surrounded by trees, shades a grassy spot.

Posted 9/12/13

In this soccer saga, everybody wins

James McCarthy stands on the future site of two soccer fields that were planned with the community.

His field of dreams had turned into a battlefield.

In March of 2012, residents of northeast San Fernando Valley gathered to oppose plans for two new soccer fields at El Cariso Community Regional Park. It was a sudden and unexpected development during the final stretch of an $11.4 million park-wide renovation project. But James McCarthy didn’t panic. He’d been down this path before as a facilities planner for the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation.

“When you’re younger, it’s a surprise,” McCarthy said. “When you’ve done this for 25 years, you just hope it doesn’t happen on your project.”

The original plan required the removal of more than 70 eucalyptus trees, which drew the ire of homeowners, the local Chamber of Commerce and other members of the community. They were also concerned about parking, especially on weekends. The critics joined forces, organizing a meeting at Los Angeles Mission College last March. Emotions ran high, and the mood of the meeting quickly turned to anger. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s office intervened, creating a community advisory group to meet regularly with county representatives to discuss alternatives.

Those sessions weren’t always a walk in the park. But four months later, last July, plans were finally approved by the group to relocate the soccer fields so only two trees would need to be removed.

“There was a lot of heated discussion at that first meeting and subsequent meetings,” said Irene Galvan, a 37-year Sylmar resident and one of the advisory group members who supported the original plan. “County staff listened and made modifications,” she said. “I think people were okay with it after that.”

Opponents of the initial plan, including Benjamin C. Williams, president of the Sylmar Homeowners Association, said they were converted during the inclusive process. He called the final product “perfect.”

“We are in harmony with the plans,” he said, “because we were a part of making them.”

This weekend, a long awaited groundbreaking ceremony for the fields will take place, representing the final gem in the remaking of El Cariso Park. Already completed are a renovation of the park’s swimming pool and a brand new 15,000-square-foot community center and gymnasium. A universal-access park modeled after Shane’s Inspiration in Griffith Park is expected to be completed sometime next spring, giving kids of all ability levels something to shout about.

As far as soccer goes, children from the community are getting a state-of-the-art upgrade from the makeshift dirt field where they now kick the ball around. One field, regulation-sized, will have an artificial playing surface, shaded bleachers and a concession stand. Beside it, a smaller, natural grass field will be built for pick-up games and youth leagues.

There’ll also be plenty of organized activity, said Sandra Chapman, who is responsible for programming at El Cariso Park. She plans to create two official leagues—one for youth and one for adults—along with a youth soccer clinic. Community groups and teams will also be able to reserve the fields, which also can be used for football games. It all adds up to a lot more work for Chapman, who’s hoping for a little help from her friends.

“The community is very connected to us, so where we need volunteers, we got ‘em,” Chapman said.

The fields should be ready for use by late next summer, said Sam Shadab, project manager for the county Department of Public Works. Shadab managed the other park improvements, too, and he said he has no doubt the public will fully embrace the fields when they’re built.

“I have been hearing a lot of praise about the gymnasium—people say it’s the best in the county,” said Shadab. “We are going to continue that tradition of success through this project.”

For McCarthy, who’s been overseeing all this, the fields represent the completion of more than a decade of work. “It’s a great relief,” he said. “Everything is new now. There is just a greater play opportunity across the board.”

Posted 8/15/13

It’s a safe new world for Valley youth

Dropping in for some foosball are, from left, Edward Murillo, Karina Perez, Anthony Barros and Mario Vasquez.

Edward Murillo knows what it’s like to need a refuge.

As a gay teenager growing up in South Lake Tahoe, he says, he was kicked out of the house a dozen times. “The first time, I slept out in the woods,” he recalls.

Now 20, and living with an aunt and uncle in Sun Valley, he’s a student at Pierce College and a leader of its Gay-Straight Alliance club.

And this week, he was definitely out of the woods, sitting in a bright and freshly painted new drop-in center for at-risk, foster, homeless and LGBT young people aged 14 to 21. The center, which formally opens Friday, is the first of its kind in the San Fernando Valley.

“I feel like if there was a center like this in Lake Tahoe, it would have been amazing. It would have made me feel a lot better,” Murillo says.

Charles Robbins, vice president of communications and development for The Village Family Services, which has created the center on the site of a former orthopedic surgeon’s office in North Hollywood, says it will serve a growing population with urgent and specific needs.

“We are going to be a heavily-used site,” he predicts, noting a “migration” of homeless youth to the Valley as crackdowns intensify in Hollywood. “Lots of these kids are coming into North Hollywood.”

He says that many of the young people end up “couch-surfing with friends,” while others frequent local libraries, public transit stations and parks.

Some offerings at the new center are geared to addressing the needs of homeless kids—showers, a washer-dryer, a few basic clothing supplies. Others, like an outdoor patio, foosball table, free Wi-Fi and “cyber lounge” with computers, along with a steady supply of healthy breakfasts and snacks, seem likely to be hits with all the young patrons, regardless of their housing status.

Beyond the amenities, planned activities include art, fitness, vocational and life-skills classes, counseling, peer and support groups and referrals to an array of services including housing and substance abuse recovery.

The center is being started with funding from 3rd District Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, with much of the annual operating expenses expected to come from private donors. It is on the first floor of the Valley Community Clinic, 6801 Coldwater Canyon Avenue in North Hollywood. That location, right downstairs from the facility’s Teen Clinic, offers a powerful combination of vital services under one roof.

“The Teen Clinic’s services are free, which is amazing,” says Karina Perez, 18, the president of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Pierce College and a friend of Murillo, who is the group’s public affairs officer. Onsite mental health counseling will also be available at the new drop-in center. “If you’re having anxiety or feeling depressed, they can help,” she points out.

The center features bright canvases by young artists.

Perez lives in North Hollywood, but others are expected to come from come across the sprawling Valley to find fellowship and support at the drop-in center.

“We come all the way down from Lancaster to support something like this,” says Mario Vasquez, 18. “Even youth from our area can come down and feel safe and respected in an environment where everyone is working together.”

Vasquez, Perez and Anthony  Barros, 17, are all youth advocates with Project Q, which provides supportive services for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) young people at The Village Family Services. When the organization started developing plans for the drop-in center, the students played a role in shaping its identity, including helping to paint some of the colorful canvases that now adorn the walls.

“When we first got news that we got funding for the drop-in center, I was overwhelmingly excited,” Barros says. “Finally, a safe space where LGBTQ and straight allied people can come together in the San Fernando Valley. I’m really looking at this as a place where we can all feel comfortable and supported, a place where we can continue our leadership and develop ourselves as people and citizens.”

Posted 4/18/13

Bringing down the (White) House

A rousing performance in the East Room is the latest honor for the Mariachi Master Apprentice Program.

Every performer loves a standing ovation. And for a troupe of young mariachis from the northeast San Fernando Valley, the only thing better than bringing a White House audience to its feet was having Michelle Obama in the front row as Applauder-in-Chief.

Put your hands together for the city of San Fernando’s Mariachi Master Apprentice Program, fresh from an engagement at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where the group received a prestigious National Arts and Humanities Youth Program award worth $10,000, and enough incredible moments to last a lifetime—from first trip in an airplane to first visit to the Lincoln Memorial to first photo-op with the First Lady.

“It was surreal,” said 16-year-old Anthony Fino, who plays trumpet in the organization’s Mariachi Tesoro performance ensemble, which wowed ‘em in Washington, D.C. over the Thanksgiving break.

“As an educator, you can’t simply prepare for that kind of emotional hurricane, the feeling of standing in the White House,” said Sergio Alonso, one of the group’s musical instructors. “Gosh, how can you even envision playing in an atmosphere like that?” (A recent gig at Disneyland was also pretty cool. Next stop: the Board of Supervisors, where they’re being honored on January 15.)

The national award recognizes after-school “arts and humanities programs that celebrate the creativity of America’s young people, particularly those from underserved communities.”

The San Fernando group, started on a shoestring twelve years ago, certainly fits the bill. It brings together local kids with professional musicians, including those who’ve played with the legendary Nati Cano, a co-founder of the organization with Virginia Diediker, the city of San Fernando’s cultural arts supervisor.

The rigorous program doesn’t just introduce students to the cultural and musical richness of the mariachi tradition; it also gives them a leg up on future academic and professional success.

“We are helping these young musicians learn life skills, through the discipline that music provides,” Diediker said.

Its participants have a stellar graduation record, in an area where only 58% of students finish high school. Some, like 17-year-old Ernesto Lazaro, hope to use their mariachi talents as a springboard to studying music at a famed conservatory like Juilliard. Others head in another kind of professional direction, like Stefanie Espinoza, a UCLA freshman who aims to become a surgeon.

Espinoza, 19, who plays violin and sings with the ensemble, is still feeling a motivational buzz from the group’s White House debut.

When she stepped forward to solo on “¡Viva Mexico, Viva America!” as part of the medley the group performed in the East Room on November 19, Espinoza smiled and looked directly at the First Lady.

“She looked at me and I looked at her. She looked so great,” said Espinoza, who’s majoring in physiological science. Equally thrilling: being praised by the First Lady for choosing to study science.

In honoring this year’s 12 award-winning groups for pushing students toward excellence, often against long odds, Obama also threw down a challenge to the young artists:

“Your job now is to pass it on—to find someone in your life that you’re going to mentor, that you’re going to pull up. And whether it’s in the arts or whether it’s academically, your job is to find the next you.”

That resonated with Fabian Narez, 17, who pays it forward by coaching younger students, members of the organization’s “Tesoritos” program, on the violin.

For Narez and many of the other musicians, mariachi is a way to connect with their heritage—and their parents’ and grandparents’ music, even if many of their peers are more into rap or hip-hop.

“The school’s 98% Hispanic. It’s part of our roots,” Narez said. And even if he ends up with a business degree and achieves his dream of becoming a CEO, he said, he intends to keep the mariachi tradition alive.

“I would love to keep performing till the day I die,” he said. “It’s one of my many dreams.”

There’s also a certain “big musician on campus” status that erupts when you return to your high school with a White House gig under your belt.

“Some of them were pretty jealous, to tell you the truth,” said San Fernando High School student Alejandro Ascencio, 15, who performs in the group along with his two brothers. “Everybody knows about it and would like to be in it.”

The young performers had the audience, including First Lady Michelle Obama, on their feet.

Watch their performance in this White House video.

Posted 1/9/13

From the ashes, monumental memories

Rich Leak, in front with sunglasses, in the year of the Loop Fire. Five fellow "Hotshots" in this picture died.

Last week, a memorial was relocated in the San Fernando Valley, a bit of granite that was moved for improvements at El Cariso Community Regional Park. The marker is modest, standing in sharp contrast to the tragedy it commemorates: Forty-six years ago this month, 31 young men were dispatched to a wildfire near Sylmar, and only 19 of them survived. 

Rich Leak was 19 that summer, the gung-ho son of a Camp Pendleton fire captain. “All my life,” he recalls “I had wanted to be a fireman.” After attending a summer firefighting program at the U.S. Marine base, he had joined an elite ground crew of “hotshots” based near Lake Elsinore, so called because they were dispatched to the hottest parts of forest blazes. By 1966, his second year with the El Cariso Hotshots, he was a crew foreman, traveling the West to cut fire lines and clear brush around raging wildfires and “loving the excitement and the adrenalin rush.”

Hotshot Rich Leak

Rich Leak, 65, at the weekend ceremony.

The Nov. 1, 1966, call came on a hot day at the end of a long fire season: A faulty power line had sparked a brushfire near Pacoima Dam. Whipped by Santa Ana winds, the blaze had charred some 2,000 acres around Loop Canyon. But it appeared to be dying by the time Leak and his fellow hotshots got what they regarded as an easy assignment—to scrape a fire line along a ravine near the smoldering fire. 

“There wasn’t a lot of brush, and the fire was starting to lay down, so the line we were cutting didn’t have to be that big,” Leak remembers. The young men worked without gloves, their hands thick and calloused, their shirtsleeves rolled up. Their orange fire shirts had been washed so many times that they had long since lost their fire retardant coating. No one carried a radio or stood lookout. No one bothered to haul in a portable fire shelter.

And no one understood the dangers of the terrain, Leak says. Now firefighters know that a steep crease in a slope can act as a draft for combustible gasses. But on that day, no one knew that the 31 guys in orange hardhats were entering a death trap. They were nearly done with their work when, at 3:35 p.m., the wind abruptly shifted. A spot fire ignited on the hillside below them. As Leak looked up, the air around him suddenly went wavy.

Down the line an order came: Get out—now! But within seconds, a mighty rush of super-hot gas swept up the 2,200-foot ravine and exploded.

“It was like when you pour lighter fluid on a charcoal barbeque and put a match to it,” Leak remembers. “There was this big wooooof! And then all I could see was just a wall of orange flame. I had to look straight up to see blue sky.”

Leak held his breath so his lungs wouldn’t sear in the 2,500-degree heat, falling to his knees as the shock wave hit him.  “Guys were yelling and screaming and praying and calling for their mothers,” he remembers. “I was talking to my Savior, that’s for sure.”

The Loop Fire would change safety protocols for fighting fires in narrow canyons, encouraging lookouts and radios and the development of much-improved fire gear, but not before it claimed the lives of 12 hotshots, most in their late teens and early 20s. Ten more were critically burned and scarred for life by the disaster. The fireball lasted no longer than 60 seconds, but in that time Leak suffered full-circumference burns from his elbows to his wrists, and lost four of his fingers.

The new El Cariso Park monument.

After the smoke cleared, he recalls, “I was in shock, running around from one guy to the next, trying to put out the fire with my bare hands. At one point, I looked down at my arms and saw skin hanging down. All I thought was, ‘Wow, I guess I got burned pretty good.’”

It took three years and more than 30 surgeries for doctors to repair Leak’s wounds, using skin grafts from his stomach to repair his damaged hands. He has had to relearn how to type and eat with utensils. He struggles to pick up coins and he has to use both hands to screw a hose onto a faucet. He has no fingerprints.

“For a long time, I was very self-conscious,” he remembers. He went back to school at Palomar College near his hometown of Vista, earning an associate degree in business, thinking he might become a CPA. Then he heard the Vista Fire Department was hiring dispatchers.  “It’s hard to describe unless you’re a firefighter,” he says. “It never goes away for me.”

He spent 30 years with the Vista Fire Department, working his way up to fire investigator before retiring to Hesperia 12 years ago. He married a friend’s neighbor and helped raise her two children. “To her, it was what was in my heart that mattered,” he says. “She told me she didn’t even notice I was burned at first.” 

Then in 1996, the U.S. Forest Service sent him a notification: A memorial commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Loop Fire was going to be installed in El Cariso Park.  Not all the survivors could make it, but some did. Sadly, they recalled the fallen.

“I still remember ‘em,” Leak says. “Raymond Chee, my crew boss, a Navajo I think from New Mexico—very quiet guy, used a brush hook. He was the best hook I’ve ever seen. The White brothers, Michael and Stephen, 22 and 18. They were from San Diego. Their dad was a captain in the Navy. It was devastating for their family.

“John Figlo, he was 18, kind of a quiet guy. Strong. James Moreland. He was in his twenties. Frederick Danner, a tall guy and a really good worker. He died in the hospital. Kenneth Barnhill, nice guy. I knew his brother. Carl Shilcutt, he was 26, one of the older guys on the crew.” He continues down the list: Daniel Moore, Joel Hill, William Waller. John Verdugo, a 19-year-old kid whose body was the first one he saw when he opened his eyes.  

Leak kept in touch with the other survivors. He and another ex-hotshot, Ed Cosgrove, began giving talks together to fire academy classes. There were reunions—that’s how he found out that the 1996 marker was in serious need of repair. A drunk driver had hit it and cracked the granite. Skateboarders had worn down the lettering; taggers had marred it with graffiti.

So Leak spearheaded a move for a new one, only to learn that it was going to be moved anyway to make way for park improvements. Last week, a new marker was re-dedicated near a park office building. “It’s near a walkway,” he says. “Granite, just like the original.”

“There are times when I think, ‘What if I’d perished?’” says Leak, now 65. “But you can’t let things haunt you. You have to get over your injuries and go for it. I’m thankful to be here, living my life.”

The 1966 fire consumed some 2,000 acres near Loop Canyon.

Posted 11/7/12

Spotlight’s on new El Cariso center

The new gymnasium and community center are ready for action, starting Saturday.

El Cariso Park’s new community center’s got game—15,000 square feet of it, including a state-of-the-art gymnasium, gleaming stainless steel kitchen, eco-friendly landscaping, and a main lobby adorned with three shimmering olive leaf sculptures suspended from above.

The $11.5 million project also includes a computer-equipped classroom and a multipurpose room. The gymnasium has two electronic scoreboards and can be divided so more than one game can take place at a time.

The new center significantly expands the recreational profile of the county regional park, which attracts 410,026 users each year and offers programs for young people, seniors and others that draw 8,326 annually.

The artwork in the lobby, by Venice sculptor Cliff Garten, was commissioned under the county’s Civic Art program. It pays tribute to the fabled olive groves of Sylmar, where the park is located.

The leaves in the sculpture are bronze, and the new building’s environmental certification is LEED Silver, all the way. The designation honors energy-efficient design and building methods.

Anticipation for the center’s opening is building in the neighborhood.

Juan Cisneros, who lives a few blocks from the park, is looking forward to enrolling his sons, Christian and Andrew, in basketball programs there, and perhaps volunteering as a coach himself.

“I already picked up some registration forms,” he said. “I was there yesterday. From the outside, it looks huge. Even my wife is excited to see the inside of the gym.”

Alina Mendizabal, a local activist and park volunteer, said the new facility represents a big step forward for the community.

“It’s brought Sylmar up another notch,” she said. “I’m really excited because it’s such a beautiful building. There are so many things we can do in there…The possibilities are endless.”

Dedication of the gymnasium and community center—a joint project of the 3rd Supervisorial District and the county departments of Parks and Recreation and Public Works—will take place at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 27. The park is located at 13100 Hubbard St., Sylmar, 91342.

If you can’t make the opening, or just can’t wait for a sneak peek, check out the gallery of images below.

Posted 10/24/12

Herd on the street in Chatsworth

It's good to munch the green, green grass of Chatsworth, according to these visitors from a nearby ranch.

Meet Dave Diestel, lawman. He wears a sheriff’s star. And on Wednesday morning, the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy responded to a call straight out of the wild, wild West.

Fifteen head of cattle—bulls, cows and calves—were treating themselves to an all-you-can-graze buffet outside a sprawling apartment complex in Chatsworth.

“They were there for the grass,” said Diestel, a 10-year sheriff’s veteran assigned to the Malibu/Lost Hills station. “They went from green belt to green belt. The canyon is just so dry.”

The animals had made their first appearance the night before. Deputies, aided by county animal control workers and an apartment-dweller with a couple of herding dogs, thought they had successfully shooed the herd back up Browns Canyon.

No such luck.

So Deputy Diestel headed back to the scene Wednesday. As the cattle chowed down on the lush green lawns of the Summerset Village apartment complex, he set off on foot to see if he could determine where they’d come from.

“I couldn’t find anything back there, just mountains,” he said.

Suddenly, though, help appeared in the form of a woman who said she was the neighbor of the rancher whose cattle had wandered off.

The woman, armed with what Diestel described as an “Indiana Jones”-style bull whip, was able to persuade the cattle to git along.

“She drove them the rest of the way,” he said. “It was funny as heck.”

The woman with the whip and the rancher who owns the herd did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Ranna Issa, who manages the apartment complex, said residents seemed more amused than frightened by the bovine brigade.

“It was comical, to say the least,” Issa said. “They didn’t come near any residents…Really, it was just the grass they were after.”

As for Deputy Diestel, he was still marveling at the turn his morning shift had taken.

“It was all before breakfast,” he said. “I’ve never had to herd cattle before. That was definitely a first for me.”

Summerset Village residents were surprised to find 15 cattle grazing on their lawn this week.

8/22/12

Fighting poverty with a winning team

MEND's "Seed to Supper" program is just one of its many volunteer-driven initiatives.

The Pacoima-based anti-poverty organization MEND says that volunteers are the “lifeblood” of their agency—and they’d love a transfusion of your time and energy.

MEND, which stands for Meet Each Need with Dignity, recently was named California’s Nonprofit of the Year by the Office of the Governor and CaliforniaVolunteers. The award honors a group that has shown “an extraordinary ability to leverage volunteers in service to their organization.”

In the case of MEND, more than 3,000 volunteers help with everything from a clothing center and emergency food bank to dental, vision and medical clinics. The organization also offers a range of training and educational programs, including after-school tutoring. Special initiatives include a “Seed to Supper” program in which young people attend Saturday sessions to learn about gardening and nutrition, culminating in a “harvest celebration supper.”

If you’d like to sign up to help MEND in any capacity, more information is here. They also need contributions of clothes, food, toiletries, educational supplies and other goods. And, of course, financial help is always welcome.

Posted 8/3/12