Hometown Hero: Erika Aklufi

Erika Aklufi

Erika Aklufi, Santa Monica police officer, attorney and triathlete, represents the American immigrant family dream come true. 

Her paternal grandfather was a Sephardic Jew from Yemen who came to Brooklyn NY in the early part of the 20^th Century and soon met and married the Czech Catholic who was to be Erika’s paternal grandmother.

Certainly each dreamed of a better life for themselves, their children and grandchildren as they braved the change from the known of their home countries to the unknown country that would become their new home. 

 Living at a time when women could neither be police officers nor competitive athletes, could they even have imagined the life their granddaughter would build?

Erika says of herself, “I love going up against the edge. I like to throw myself into new things and into the work and effort to succeed. That’s what makes me happy.

“I love, when I’m in uniform and people say hello to me and I know I’ll be there, ready for whatever is necessary to make things better for each person who needs me. I believe the Santa Monica Police Department is the premier department in Southern California. It is a mature, well-trained and well-educated group of people, small enough that we are all members of the same team and I love being part of the team.

“For my job and for sports it’s all about consistency – keeping up with police training every day; running every day; swimming every day. I run on the beach daily, I swim at the pool at Santa Monica College. I want to know the people I serve as a police officer.”

2:54:30 was Erika’s time for the 2010 LA Marathon.  On October 16, 2010 she will compete with world-class swimmers in a 12.6-mile open water endurance swim from the Manhattan Beach Pier to the Santa Monica Pier.  The “Pier to Pier” challenge will raise money for the environmental organization, Heal the Bay, and for Exceeding Expectations Foundation, a non-profit organization that works with at-risk children.

“This is my first time to swim 12.6 miles in open water. We’ll run into the ocean off the beach. Each swimmer will be accompanied by a kayaker. I’ll keep my course by sighting off buoys and keeping parallel to the beach, just past the breakers.

“Competitive swimming is like being in a deprivation tank. You can’t hear much and you can’t see much and you just get into a free form of consciousness. I focus on the race with a part of my brain for the entire time and think about how I’m feeling and when to speed and when to push and when to pull in. Part of me is isolated and part of me likes to be part of this mass of humanity that’s all moving in the same direction.”

Erika started swimming competitively at age 4 and still holds the 5-6 25 yard freestyle record for the Canyon Crest Swim Team in Riverside CA, where she grew up. Her father is an attorney and her mother the principal at the local elementary school.

Swimming helped get Erika to Yale University where she was on the Varsity Swim Team. They were the Ivy League Champions in the 94-95 season. She majored in psychology at Yale and thought it was an amazing place – all except the weather.

After graduation from Yale she decided to come back to CA to go to Law School at UC Davis King Hall. “Law school was about soaking up atmosphere and deciding whether I really wanted to be a lawyer. I was trying to figure out how to be an adult and be responsible.”

Ericka lived in a loft in the fashion district in downtown LA when she practiced law. “I was part of the hip crowd, but not a hipster.” As a lawyer she worked on municipal, labor and employment, environmental and toxic tort cases. She also served as a pro bono mediator for a Los Angeles County Superior Court Panel.

“I liked the practice of law. I liked the challenge. I liked being able to help people. But it wasn’t right for me and for my goals. I wanted to spend more time helping people directly and without money being so much part of the issue.  So I decided to go through the training and education to become a police officer. 

At the end of my day, at the end of my career, at the end of my life, I want to be able to say I didn’t waste a single day of my Life. I really feel that being a police office is a way to do that. Every call I go on I want to make sure that everyone is in a better place because I’ve been there.”

Erika, in speaking of the history of her family said, “We celebrate everything – Christmas and Hanukah, Easter and Passover, the 4^th of July and Thanksgiving. I’m so lucky to have my family and to have parents who, even when they didn’t understand what I wanted to do, supported me because they saw it made me happy.

Talking about how she sets her goals, Erika said, “I believe I shouldn’t take more than is fair from the world and that I should do my work with an open heart and in a way to make myself happy and to make a difference in the world.”

Pier to Pier race event information, including information about shorter races and training clinics and other event details, is available at: http://www.distanceswimchallenge.com

What Say You: Bicycle City

Whew! The LUCE is finally approved. After six years of well-attended community meetings, single-minded focus by dedicated planning staff, and beaucoup bucks spent on consultants, the City Council approved Santa Monica’s Land Use and Circulation Elements (LUCE). LUCE’s two respective parts are key elements of the General Plan for Santa Monica and are the documents that will guide decisions on development and traffic management in Santa Monica for the next two decades.

Santa Monicans repeatedly spoke out at community meetings stating that traffic congestion was an overwhelming concern. The LUCE identifies bicycling as an efficient and sustainable alternative to the car and describes programs and actions that will make it easy and safe for everyone, of all ages and fitness levels, to get around town on a bike. Santa Monica is being designed to become a noted Bicycle City.

At this point you may be asking, “How can we control traffic that is mostly generated outside Santa Monica by riding bicycles?” This pessimism rears its ugly head in the LUCE, “Even if the City were to halt all new development over the next 20 years, the local automobile circulation system would continue to deteriorate at a steady pace due to continued growth outside Santa Monica’s borders.” We can’t control development or traffic outside the City, but we can make Santa Monica an even greater place to live, work and visit by thinking about the future differently.

The policies in the LUCE invite us to imagine a time when people who drive to Santa Monica, whether to go to the beach, or Palisades Park, or to events like GLOW, are directed to parking and then are greeted with safe, attractive opportunities to get around the city on bicycles. Several hundred thousand people come to Santa Monica on hot summer weekends and even if only some of them take the bicycle alternative, there will be fewer cars driving through our neighborhoods to the beach, fewer cars at the pier, and fewer cars on Ocean Avenue. Fewer cars, more bicycles, and the same number of people. We know, when offered, it works. More than 1,000 bicycles were parked by the bicycle valets at the Green Apple Festival on the beach. (See photo by Michelle Glickert)

Now imagine people who come here for their jobs being able to park in the employee parking areas and having bicycles available to them, or being able to store their own bicycles conveniently. They could bike to lunch, or to a meeting, or as their daily exercise. The City is currently looking at Davis, CA and Copenhagen, Denmark, which are two successful bicycle cities where 14 percent and 35 percent, respectively, of work trips are by bicycle.

Or think of the Expo line, scheduled to open in 2015. Expo riders, whether coming to Santa Monica for work or pleasure would find that they could pick up a bicycle at the Expo Station. From there it will be an easy ride, down (the redesigned for walking and bicycling) Colorado Boulevard to the new Civic Center Parks, to shopping, and restaurants, or to the beach and the pier. The idea is to have a public bicycle rental program with easily available and affordable bicycles and a network of drop-off and pick-up locations throughout the community.

In order to make bicycling safer and more efficient, there will be a newly designated and interconnected grid of ‘bicycle pathways’ including streets dedicated to bicycles, streets where bicycles have priority, and streets where bicycles and cars are made equal by speed limits and other new regulations.

Benefits include lessening traffic congestion, having a healthier life style, having more fun, and a valuable reduction in the current greenhouse gas emissions levels produced by car traffic in Santa Monica. Again, the LUCE, “Achieving a 30 percent reduction in overall Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) would reduce Santa Monica’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least eight percent — far more than everything else the City can do, combined.”

Naming the bicycle “the most efficient form of urban transportation,” the LUCE states, “bicycling is ideal in Santa Monica’s mild climate and gentle terrain. Many trips in Santa Monica can be made more quickly on bicycle than in transit or by car. Riding a bicycle around town protects the environment, improves public health, eases congestion, and reduces air pollution and noise pollution. Bicycles are a tried and tested, simple, cheap, and zero- emission technology.”

To read the specific policies, goals and action programs that will guide the way to reducing traffic congestion through making Santa Monica successful at replacing auto trips with Expo, buses, walking, and bicycling go to: http://www.shapethefuture2025.net and read Chapter 4, “Circulation.” Lewis Mumford, one of America’s most noted urban planners is famous for having said, “Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.” I hope he would agree that bicycling is good for both.

What Say You?