Hometown Hero: The Gift of the Hero

SUSAN CLOKE
Columnist
Santa Monica Mirror

A sunny, summer day, a good day for a grandmother to push her one year old grandchild in a stroller along Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica.  Then the unthinkable occurred. It was shortly after 3:30 in the afternoon of July 11.  A man tried to take the baby from the stroller.  The baby was strapped into the stroller and the man could not get the baby out.  He then began to try to choke the baby and to tear the baby’s clothing. The grandmother defended her grandchild.  The man attacked the grandmother and punched her in the face, all the while continuing to try to get the baby.

Then the obvious, the thinkable happened.  A man who was also walking along Wilshire Boulevard came to the rescue of the grandmother and the grandbaby.  A Good Samaritan who heeded the biblical command “to show mercy.” He was able to keep the attacking man away from the baby but not without being attacked and injured himself.

I say the obvious, the thinkable, because he did what was right, he came to their aid. So how could it be that there was only one person who came to the aid of the grandmother and the baby?  They were, after all, on Wilshire Boulevard near Centinela Avenue in Santa Monica.  It was the middle of the afternoon on a nice day.  Where were the people in the nearby stores or the other people passing by on the sidewalk?  What about the many people driving by in their cars?  Thank goodness for the man who came to their rescue.  But how could it be that only one person stepped forward?  The grandmother and the baby needed help.  Their protector needed help.

There were four 911 calls, and maybe more, to the Santa Monica Police Department  (SMPD).  The police arrived at 3:41 p.m., within three minutes of the first 911 call, a longer than usual SMPD response time due to the beginning of rush hour traffic.  

The attacking man, now officially the suspect, physically attacked the first officer on the scene.  They struggled, other officers arrived, and the suspect was arrested.  He was taken to the Santa Monica Jail where he was booked for attempted murder, kidnapping, child cruelty, and assault, as well as other charges.  Bail was set at $500,000.

The police did their job and did it well.  The anonymous protector, our very own anonymous hero, did the right thing and did it without wanting recognition or reward. I am grateful for the presence of the rescuer, for his mercy, for his willingness to act and to protect the grandmother and the baby.

Not every one of us is strong enough, or well enough, or able to take on an attacker such as this suspect.  And safety is always the first concern.  But there are actions we can all take.  First, we can and should call 911 and let the attacker know we have called. If needed in order to be safe, stand on the other side of the street and yell out that you have called 911. Second, be a witness.  Watch and remember so that you can give information when asked.  If possible, be part of a group of people all calling 911 and all letting the attacker know you are all calling and all watching.

The SMPD reports, “Many suspects who engage in assaultive behavior, will stop if they know they are being watched by many who are also in the process of reporting such activity.” Again, the SMPD emphasizes, “Safety for everyone is the main concern.”

Societies have myths and heroes going back as far as history can record.  New myths and new heroes are continuously created.  Many of the adults who witnessed this assault grew up with stories of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Yoda. Many are now reading Harry Potter and know Dumbledore and Sirius Black.  Many know Superman, Batman, and Spiderman.  We need and love these myths.  We admire, even idolize heroes.

We can’t all physically fight the forces of evil.  But we don’t need to be able to physically fight to do the right thing. Heroes come in all forms.  They share qualities of empathy and mercy that move them to take action.  It is their actions that define them.

Martin Luther King Jr., a real American hero, said “Morality is like a muscle, if you don’t exercise it, if you don’t do the right thing every time you get a chance, it will atrophy and, when you need it, it won’t be there for you to use.”

I am thankful the grandmother, the baby, and the man who came to their aid are recovering well. I hope that we, as a community will always be able to rely on each other when help is needed.  I believe it is a wonderful gift to be in the right place at the right time to be able to help another person.   It is a gift to all the people involved and to the entire community.

What Say You? Thinking About Hate

May 4, 2011.  Santa Monica High School.   A brown practice dummy suspended by a rope in the wrestling team’s locker room, an African-American student chained to a locker, racial slurs being used, all are allegations currently under investigation by the Santa Monica Police Department.  Depending on the outcome of the investigation the involved students could be charged with battery and with violation of the Hate Crimes law, a serious charge with potentially severe consequences.

I was interested in what students at the school were saying and thinking.  When I asked some of the Samohi students what they thought, I got some surprising answers.  Although my sample was not large enough to be statistically significant, it was unusual in the consistency of the responses.  For example, I learned that racial ‘jokes’ happen all the time in high school.   That friends will call each other by names that, in the past, would have been considered racist, and that this will happen among students without regard to their ethnic heritage or racial identity. 

Okay.  That might be true with regard to language.  Culture changes.  Language changes to reflect the changes in the culture.  But what does this say about the actions in the locker room?

Student responses to the May 4 locker room incident seemed to divide the act into two parts - the chaining and the rope around the dummy.   Chaining students to lockers is something that has commonly been done to other wrestling team members, has been considered a prank where no one got physically hurt and has been part of wrestling team locker room culture at Samohi for a long time. 

By contrast, the rope around the dummy was understood as “horribly wrong.”  It was also characterized as “teenage immaturity” and “really bad judgment.”  It was not something that had happened before, not part of the wrestling team locker room culture.

In fact, it was a student at the school, a member of the wrestling team, who walked into the locker room, saw the dummy, saw the way the other team members were reacting, and immediately took the dummy down because he didn’t want any of his teammates’ feelings to be hurt.

The wrestling team culture, and apparently every team has its own traditions and history of pranks, has also been described as one where the team members are bonded to one another, as ‘having each other’s backs.’  It’s a demanding sport and the student wrestlers are together a lot, at practice, at tournaments and they become very close.

The wrestling team students who were involved received a suspension from school.  The wrestling team as a whole lost their locker room privileges.  They will also participate, as student teachers, in a section of the Freshman Seminar – a class designed specifically to study the hateful and violent effects of discrimination and racism and to teach tolerance and understanding to students.

So many questions must be asked and answered.  Because of the history of racial abuse in our country, allegations of racism must be taken seriously.  It will be up to the SMPD to investigate and determine the answer as to whether or not this is a hate crime. It will be up to the Sheriff’s Department to determine whether the Administration responded appropriately.

Where does all this belong in the larger culture?  What does all this say about youth/boy culture?  Is this the same thing that has been going on for years, a holdover from past concepts of masculinity? Is it bullying? Is it hazing? 

The wrestling team at Samohi is racially diverse and although, still mainly boys, girls have shown more interest and are now part of the team.  In other youth sports, when girls joined teams, their presence often changed locker room culture.  Will that pattern be repeated?

The righteous rejection of racism, the concerns of the damage and destruction caused by racism, and the fear that it is emerging at the school are all central tenets in this discussion.  The idea that the students involved will be judged, not by their actions and intent, but by the perceptions of the past, needs to be examined.  The generational change in culture needs to be understood.  There is the concern that the wrestling team, as a whole, will suffer for the actions of a few.   The school community may have to look at the possibility that they will be legally required to make decisions and take actions which are not in the best interests of the students involved, the other wrestling team members, nor of the entire student body.

It is important that these questions get asked and that, as a community, we set standards.  These are hard questions.  Questions that require careful and thoughtful examination and open discussion.

In every crisis there is also opportunity.  My hope is the school, the Board Members, the Administration, the students, the parents, and all of Santa Monica will use this as a learning opportunity to re-examine the question of racism.  Equally important to our future is that we discuss and deliberate on the events of May 4 in a principled way and that the process itself exemplifies the tolerance and empathy we hope to teach our students.

What Say You?

Hometown Heroes: Charlotte Biren and Jenna Perelman

Charlotte Biren and Jenna Perelman
BIKE IT!  STUDENTS THINKING GLOBALLY, ACTING LOCALLY

Charlotte Biren and Jenna Perelman, Santa Monica High School seniors and co- presidents of the Samohi Solar Alliance (SSA), have been thinking about the natural environment and preparing to be environmental stewards since their elementary school days.  They shine with confidence in their understanding of what needs to be done to create environmental sustainability and a commitment to get the job done right. 

 “We get huge support from the other students at Samohi,” said Biren.  Listening to Biren and Perelman, it seems the students now at Samohi have learned they need to be stewards of the environment and are preparing themselves to do just that.

As co-presidents of SSA, Biren and Perelman were lead organizers in this year’s Bike It Day.  SSA started Bike It Day four years ago to give students a way to help reduce Santa Monica’s carbon footprint.  On Bike It Day students of the Santa Monica School District bike, walk, skateboard or take the bus to school.

The first Bike It Day had fewer than 100 participants, all at the high school.  On June 1, 2011, Bike It Day this year, 3,300 students, from Santa Monica High School, Lincoln Middle School, John Adams Middle School, Santa Monica Alternative School, Edison, Franklin, Grant, McKinley, Muir, Pt. Dume, Rogers, Roosevelt and Juan Cabrillo, participated, and 700 of those students biked to school.

“When kids participate in Bike it Day they realize it’s easy and many kids start biking regularly,” said Perelman.  “Now more than 120 students bike to Samohi and we need more bike racks for daily use.”

“The event has proved to be extremely beneficial to our community, bringing together all the schools, parents, students, administration, and local businesses in an effort to combat global warming, one bike at a time,” said Richard McKinnon, a parent of a Samohi student, an avid cyclist, and Chair of Bike It Day.

“Bike It! Day has really become a citywide event, with the city helping out by putting up road arrangements and signs, and providing staff to control traffic. The Santa Monica Police Department will be out — both on cars on bikes — to keep students safe,” said McKinnon.

The Samohi Solar Alliance started in 2004 with the idea that putting solar panels on Drake pool would be good for the environment and save almost $30,000 per year for the School District.  The student members of SSA got to work, got help from parents and PTAs and community members, raised money and brought solar heat to Drake pool.  SSA’s next big project was Bike It Day.

Both Biren and Perelman went all the way through the Santa Monica School system.  Both give credit to their elementary school and junior high school teachers who took them to the beach.  By the time they got to Junior High they were taking school trips to Catalina and Yosemite to learn about ecosystems.  They measured trash on the beach, counted bird populations, and learned to gather the facts and make decisions based on science.

Thinking about her future Biren said, “I’ve studied ballet since I was 5 and I love dance.  I play the viola in the Samohi orchestra and I teach viola and I’ve tutored at the SM Library since I was in 6^th grade.  I want to continue with these activities all my life.  But I am also in love with the natural sciences.  I am a science-oriented person.  This summer I will be a volunteer intern at UCLA in a molecular biology and chemistry lab.

“I follow the work of scientists such as Shai Agassi who is using science and business power to achieve greatness in future alternative energy.  I went to hear Robert Kennedy Jr. speak about mining in the southern part of the U.S. and what that has done to the environment, the economy and people’s lives.  It makes me even more determined to use science to do good things.”

Perelman, who wears vintage clothes because “it’s better for the environment and I love them,” said, “I started biking to school in the 8^th grade on the days I didn’t have to lug my alto sax with me.  Now I bike almost every day.  Perelman volunteers with the Jewish Big Sisters and has a ‘little sister’ she mentors.  This summer she will be a counselor in training at the Jameson Ranch Camp for part of the summer and an intern in a photography studio for the other part.  She plans on a gap year between high school and college and hopes to travel to Machu Picchu before going to college where she will study environmental law.  

“I think a lot about going into politics,” said Perelman.  “I love talking to people and I love public speaking, but then again, I’m 16 and I don’t know what’s going to happen, so things could change.”

Now in a place of honor in their respective homes are  Environmental Youth Awards, which they received for their leadership in SSA.  The awards are for “outstanding achievement in environmental stewardship” and are signed, “Barak Obama, The White House, Washington D.C.”

I worry about water quality, air quality, our carbon footprint, global warming, sustainable cities, sustainable agriculture.  I worry that world governments are chasing the arguments of the last century instead of protecting our collective future.  I worry that many countries are depriving themselves of the possible contributions to society of half their populations by denying women the right to participate fully in public life. 

But after meeting Charlotte and Jenna, I worry less.

What Say You?

What Say You? St. Johns Development Agreement

photo credit:  Stephanie Salvatore

Susan Cloke
Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

That dirt pile - the one on Santa Monica Boulevard, in front of St. Johns Hospital, got closer to disappearing this week as both the City Council and the Planning Commission considered amendments to the Yahoo Center and St. Johns Development Agreements. 

The amendments, citing the shared parking and traffic reduction concepts presented in the LUCE (Land Use and Circulation Elements), would allow St. Johns to use a valet system to park 1053 cars at the Yahoo Center in lieu of building an underground parking garage at St. Johns. 

In a way that is key to Santa Monica’s future, the vote was less about the specifics of the amendments and more about the vision for the future of Santa Monica as expressed in the LUCE. 

Traffic, congestion, parking are villains in Santa Monica.  How to reduce car trips and congestion, how to make it easier, and even more fun, to get around the City is a continuous theme in the LUCE.  A theme that was demanded in the many public meetings and hearings devoted to shaping and defining the LUCE.

Developers and residents are often on opposite sides of the parking question.  Developers, especially developers with large projects and a large number of employees, need parking.  Residents don’t want car congestion on local streets and they do want to be able to park on the city streets in their neighborhoods.

So what happens when the developer is a beloved community hospital?  When the hospital, represented at the hearings by many doctors and nurses and hospital staff, maintain they have a better idea, one that will reduce traffic, provide adequate parking, and allow the hospital to spend the millions of dollars on taking care of patients that it would otherwise have to spend on building a garage.

What happens when the neighboring residents care about the hospital but are worried about being able to navigate and park on their own streets? 

What happens when the decision makers, the Council and the Planning Commission, are at the very beginning of translating the vision of the LUCE into the implementation of the LUCE in specific terms on specific projects?

We saw the beginning of this translation into implementation on June 14.  The City Council agenda listed the “first reading of an ordinance amending the Colorado Place Development Agreement (DA) to amend the parking demand formulae for the Yahoo Center and permit leasing of existing, underutilized parking spaces to off-site parties.”  It was the first of the two amendments necessary for the concept of shared parking to move forward.

The proposed ordinance requires maintaining sufficient parking for on-site tenants and for the establishment of a Transportation Demand Management Program (TDM) to reduce both vehicle trips and the demand for parking.  Two actions clearly called out in the LUCE.

The Yahoo Center was encouraged by the City to file for the DA amendment because it was seen as a way to implement the LUCE goals of shared parking and Transportation Demand Management. Yahoo Center had more than a thousand surplus spaces.  It’s easy walking from Yahoo Center to St. Johns.  Requirements for a childcare center, a public park and a community room, which were in the original DA, will be ongoing.

The Council, approved the first reading of the ordinance on a 5-2 vote (Council Members McKeown and Shriver voted no.)

One day later, on June 15, the Planning Commission heard the proposed amendment to the St. Johns Development Agreement (DA) and forwarded it to Council with a 5-1 positive recommendation. (Commissioner Kennedy voted no.)

The St. Johns DA Amendment will allow the hospital, in lieu of constructing on site parking under the Entry Plaza on Santa Monica Boulevard, to build a modified Entry Plaza and to provide parking that is “functionally equivalent” to the previously approved subterranean garage for St. Johns visitors, patients, and physicians and staff.  Nurses will continue to use the parking garages they currently use.

Under the terms of the amended DA St. Johns would provide valet parking at the hospital’s main entrance on Santa Monica Boulevard.  Valets would park the cars at an off site-parking garage.  St. Johns would also be responsible for the creation of a TDM program, specific signal and street improvements and monetary contributions to the Memorial Park Expo Station

The Planning Commission added recommendations for pricing, for trees, for modifying the valet route, and for a hospital ombudsman the neighbors could rely on if they had problems in the future.

Both DA Amendments need to be approved by Council if either one is to work.  The LUCE expresses the vision for the City’s future.  It also, hopefully, expresses the vision of the people of the City.  Now it’s up the City Council and the Planning Commission, as our City decision makers, to translate these ideas into enforceable specifics if we are to have both the ideas of the LUCE and a city that is easier and safer to get around whether in a car or walking or on a bike. 

St. Johns has a good idea.  Yahoo is a good partner.  It is up to the City decision makers to attach conditions that will protect the neighborhoods.  I think it can be done. And I will be happy when the dirt pile replaced with a tree lined entry plaza.

What Say You?

Hometown Hero: Ernest Marquez

Hometown Hero: Ernest Marquez
Photo by Sharon Kilbride

Ernest Marquez, the historian of the Marquez family, was born in 1924 at Mary Martin Hospital in Santa Monica.  He grew up in the family home in Santa Monica Canyon on land that was part of the original Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, land that had been in his family for generations.

“In the Canyon cows roamed free and so did kids.  As a boy I spent my time at the beach, swimming and playing in the creek and climbing the bluffs,” remembers Marquez.

Miss Verna Weber was the only teacher at the one room Canyon School where Marquez was one of the 30 children in the school.  “We all loved Miss Weber. There were four children in my graduating class.
I was friends with everyone in the school,” said Marquez.

As a child he helped his cousin, Angelina Olivera, take care of the Marquez Family Cemetery on San Lorenzo.  He listened to the family stories from his aunts and uncles, who were a generation closer to the old history - history that went back to the time of the American Revolution.

In 1769, Junipero Serra, led an expedition to California, claiming Alta California for the King of Spain.  Francisco Reyes, the great, great, great grandfather of Ernest Marquez, had worked on ships used by Junipero Serra and was known by the Spaniards.  In 1771, he was recruited to come to Alta California as a Spanish solider.  He was 24.

After 15 years of being a Spanish soldier he applied for a Spanish land grant.  As all land belonged to the King, a Spanish land grant gave permission to use the land, but it didn’t convey ownership.  Francisco Reyes was given the land grant for Rancho Encino.

His grandson, Ysidro Reyes joined with Francisco Marquez, to apply for a land grant for Rancho Boca de Santa Monica.  It was 1839, Mexico had won the War for Independence and Alta California now belonged to Mexico.

To apply for a Land Grant one had to be a Mexican citizen, Catholic, and speak Spanish.  The application had to include a diseno (a hand drawn boundary map) and a letter to the Pueblo Council requesting the land, promising to build a house within one year and certifying ownership of a herd of 150 cattle.  The Pueblo Council reviewed the application and, if they approved it, forwarded it to the Governor of Alta California. 

The boundary map of Rancho Boca de Santa Monica started above Topanga Canyon, on the beach.  Two horsemen, each holding a tall pole, connected with long buckskin ropes of 100 varas (a vara = approximately one yard) marked the perimeter.

The first horseman jammed his pole into the sand and then the second horseman rode as far down the beach as the rope would permit and jammed his pole into the sand.  They repeated this action in relay fashion and continued until the entire 6656-acre area was mapped.

The Mexican government awarded Reyes and Marquez Rancho Boca de Santa Monica.  When they died and left the land to their families, the Rancho was United States land.  

Reyes’ widow, Maria Micaela de Guadalupe, sold her interest in the Rancho to Robert Baker.  In the 1870’s Baker filed to have the property partitioned among the owners.  The partition wasn’t final until 1881 and, during the process, Baker transferred his interest in the Rancho to his wife, Arcadia Bandini.

The Marquez Family Cemetery is one of two pieces of land, from the Rancho, still owned by the family.  In all, 32 people are buried in the cemetery, 10 family members from a New Year’s Eve tragedy, other family members and family friends.  Pascual Marquez died in 1916 and was the last person to be buried in the cemetery. 

Pascual left his land to his children, and it was sold.  As the cemetery portion couldn’t be used it was deeded back to Pedro Marquez.  He accepted the cemetery but not the lot that gave access to the cemetery. That lot was then deeded to a neighbor who offered to take care of it.

When Ernest Marquez retired, in the 1990’s, he could finally focus on what he calls his “real job, the family history.”  He began to work on protecting the family cemetery.  The old agreements, which had not been properly recorded, were ancient history. He had both a title and an easement problem to solve. 

The first step was to gain the right of an easement to the Marquez Family Cemetery, which was won through a court order.  Title was still in the name of Ernest Marquez’s uncle, Pedro Marquez, who had died thirty years previously.  The Judge directed Ernest Marquez to get quitclaim deeds from his cousins, which he did.

The next step was to reopen the Estate of Pedro and Aurora Marquez.  In 2010, with help from the Marquez and Reyes families, and especially with the help of his lawyer daughter, Monica, Ernest Marquez became the owner of the family cemetery.

La Senora Research Institute, a non-profit foundation, joined with the families to raise money to purchase the easement lot between the cemetery and what is now San Lorenzo.  Help also came from UCLA archeologists who used high tech equipment to locate burial sites, from the City of Los Angeles and Councilman Rosendahl with support for a landmark designation, from pro bono attorneys, from neighbors and friends.  Working with the Foundation, the family will plant a traditional, sustainable garden on the easement lot and the garden will become the new entrance to the cemetery. 

Ernest Marquez hopes “the cemetery and garden will be a reminder to the land grant families and to the people of Santa Monica of the history and legacy of Rancho Boca de Santa Monica.”

What Say You?

Santa Monica Pier Paddleboard Race and Ocean Festival

Santa Monica Paddleboard Club Members. 1941
Photo courtesy of Stephanie McLean/Classic California

 

“Waterman” was the descriptive name given to the early greats of surfing such as Tom Blake and Pete Peterson, Santa Monica’s most famous Watermen, who shaped the culture of Santa Monica and of beach communities around the world.

The Santa Monica Pier Paddleboard Race and Ocean Festival, June 11, continues the Waterman tradition with an all day celebration of life at the beach featuring: paddleboard, outrigger and dory races; live music; and a ‘museum for a day’ showcasing the Waterman history and the history of lifeguarding, surfing, paddleboarding and skateboarding. The event benefits Heal the Bay.

Paddleboard races were a regular event at the Santa Monica Pier in the 1940s. Two paddleboard clubs, the Santa Monica Paddleboard Club and the all women’s Manoa Paddleboard Club, both housed at the pier, were Santa Monica favorites. The clubs had large memberships. Champion paddleboarders, including Dorothy and Maryann Hawkins and Esther Lopez Maier, drew many fans.

Paddleboards were first used in Santa Monica in the 1920s when Blake, one of the earliest of the Santa Monica Lifeguards, introduced the paddleboard as a way to rescue distressed swimmers.

Blake began surfing in California in the1920s.  He worked as a lifeguard, a swimming instructor, and a movie stunt double. He was also an important surfboard innovator. He shaped boards from the ancient, Hawaiian olo design to see if he could build a faster board to use in the annual and popular surfboard paddling races held in southern California each summer. To lighten the weight of the surfboard, Blake took his 16-foot olo replica board and drilled it full of holes to lighten and dry it out, resulting in the first hollow surfboard.

In 1928, armed with his olo replica, Blake won the first Pacific Coast Surfing Championship. Reports of the day said 10,000 people gathered to celebrate the holiday and watch the races. Blake used his hollow surfboard in the race from the California mainland to Catalina Island over a 26-mile course across open water. Blake made the trek in 5 hours and 53 minutes. 

One of his most enduring contributions, the surfboard skeg – or fin – which he introduced in 1935, went on to be an integral part of surfboard design. 

Pete Peterson, who grew up in Santa Monica Canyon, soon joined Blake in the surfing world. Peterson became recognized in the 1930s as the Mainland’s best surfer, winning the Pacific Coast Surfing Championship four times out of 10 (1932, 1936, 1938, and 1941). 

More than a contest surfer, however, Peterson was a Waterman in the truest sense of the word. In 1939 Peterson took his paddleboard over the massive open ocean bumps from Anacapa Island to Santa Monica Pier, a distance of more than 30 miles.

He was also an innovator of ocean vehicles and lifeguard rescue equipment. Some of his lifesaving creations include soft rescue tubes, all-fiberglass hollow boards, and foam/plywood/balsa sandwich surfboards.

Blake and Peterson exemplify the Waterman tradition now being honored by Santa Monicans working together to bring paddleboard racing back to Santa Monica and the Pier. The race and festival are organized by a long and well-known list of Santa Monica community activists, business owners, lifeguards, and members of the Harbor Patrol.  

Race and festival committee members are event director Joel Brand, race director Todd Roberts, Russ Barnard, Jay Butki, Andi Curl, Jon Van Duinwyk, Eric Faber, Scott Ferguson, Ross Furukawa, Jared Kingsbury, Lori Nafshun, Tom Seth, Tim Sanford, and Mike Vaughan. Waterman's History Committee members are co-chair Jim Harris, co-chair Nick Steers, Harold Dunnigan, Jeff Ho, Craig Lockwood, Stephanie McLean, and Cary Weiss. 

These Santa Monica locals see the Pier as a wonderful venue for events and want to have more community events on the Pier that tie in with the experience of the ocean.

The 2011 Pier Paddleboard Race and Ocean Festival celebrates the Waterman tradition, the magic of the ocean, and people coming together to have a grand time. Register to be one of the racers in either the 2- or the 5-mile race. Cheer the racers, meet Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman, the woman who inspired the “Gidget” movies, and Esther Lopez Maier, winner of the 1947 Championship Race. Listen to the FuDogs, be an environmental steward and bring your own, reusable water bottle, and get it filled at the Pier. Continue the Waterman spirit and tradition.

What Say You?

Hometown Hero: Janet Salomonson M.D.

Janet Salomonson M.D. FACS

Santa Monica plastic surgeon Janet Salomonson will be in Guatemala this coming summer performing operations to correct the birth anomaly of cleft palate.  “We never turn away any child who is healthy enough to go through the operation.   I stay for one or sometimes two weeks in the host country and typically perform about five operations every day.  We work until the work is done,” said Dr. Salomonson.

“For reasons we still don’t know, even though the human genome has been mapped, normal structures don’t form in the lip and palate and children are born with cleft palate.  Not only is cleft palate disfiguring, it’s important to have the structures in place as early as possible so the child can learn to speak correctly.  It’s best to do the operations in stages.  We do the lip first, especially with a child under 10 months and then return to repair the palate.

“If the cleft palate is not corrected when they are very young the child can still learn to speak, but often they can’t speak clearly and can have difficulty being understood.”

Salomonson has been to Nicaragua, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and the Philippines to perform cleft palate surgeries. This is her tenth year of working with Faces of Hope and Rotaplast, two Rotary sponsored groups, which arrange trips for teams of medical professionals to work internationally donating their much-needed medical skills.

“We go with a spirit of humility and with respect for the local culture.  We work with the local people.  Their knowledge is helpful to the success of our work.  We partner, whenever possible, with local physicians and are always on the look out for local physicians who want to be trained in cleft palate surgery.

“We bring the supplies, everything from sutures to anesthesia,
our own scrubs, antibiotics, so that we are not taking from the local facility.” Doctor Salomonson noted.

The visits of the medical teams are announced on the radio, in the newspapers and on banners and flyers.  The radio seems to be the way most people learn about the program.

The organizing group goes ahead of the medical team and scouts out the situation in the host country to make sure that the basic requirements for operating and achieving good surgical outcomes can be met. They also make the arrangements for lodging and meals for the medical team members.

The daughter of Swedish immigrants to Minnesota she has the famous Midwestern straightforward manner and self –deprecating style.  Her mom was a stay at home mom and her dad worked on road construction. They wanted the American dream of education and a better life for their child.

Her parents had originally met when her mom was a ‘summer child’ on a farm.  It is a typical Swedish custom, kind of the Swedish equivalent of sending your kid to camp, for city children to go to farms in the summer.   On the farm she was given a kitten, the food was great and she had a wonderful time.  She liked the entire farm family, including the older son.  Years later, they met again and decided to marry.

Salomonson’s path to studying medicine was incremental.  She knew when she was in Maplewood High School in St. Paul, Minnesota that she was drawn to math and science.

This took her to the University Of Minnesota as an undergraduate to study Chemical Engineering.  Many of her professors worked in the field of bioengineering and medicine.  Salomonson admired their work and decided she would apply to medical school and become a medical researcher.

In Medical School, also at the University of Minnesota, she fell in love with the clinical work and decided that, as much as the research meant to her, it would mean more to work with patients.   One more incremental move took her to UCLA for a surgical residency, starting in general surgery and then specializing in plastic surgery.

Now she has the hard earned and well deserved prestigious title, Janet Salomonson, MD, FACS, Plastic Surgeon/Medical Director of the Cleft Palate Center at Saint John's Cleft Center.
At the invitation of a beloved former teacher, Salomonson went back to Minnesota to give the commencement address at her old high school.   She told the graduates, “You won’t remember for long who won the super bowl or even the Nobel Prize, but you will remember the teachers who taught you about the world and the people who were important to you.  Fame is not what is important.  What is important are the people in our lives.”