IRC Member Craft Talk: Randy Woods

IRC member Randy Woods shared his personal and work story with the members this week, he's come to his current profession via a circuitous route.



Randy is a Security Industry Solutions expert, his company Night Hawk Security Solutions inserts covert cameras, CCTV, and handles Loss Prevention Training and Interviewing for companies. He's been in the security field for over 25 years. And Randy says "his goal is to get a confession from someone." He demonstrated his techniques with his Polygraph invention, a hilarious looking contraption that seemed to work, from his demonstration! Randy's secret self --everyone has one -- is as a Gadgeteer--he's always played with gadgets and made some machines.



He's firmly planted in OC now, but moved back and forth from the Pacific Northwest to the Southwest and back a few times. Randy grew up in Salem, OR. His first job growing up was working at the corner grocery store selling candy to kids. Later he went to work for several different restaurants...at Bob's $.19 Hamburgers, and before long he was managing their 13 stores. In Hemet, CA where he managed the Railroader Restaurant. He went to a broadcasting workshop and for a brief stint worked on-air at KIIS-FM 102.7, and later as a disc jockey at the Newport Beach Marriott.

Say hi to Randy when you visit the club, he's a great guy!

Christopher Cabral

This morning a young man by the name of Christopher Cabral attended our meeting. He came to tell us he needs help preparing for employment. Christopher’s disabilities do not in any way hinder his motivation to work and become a taxpaying member of society. Rotary is helping Christopher fulfill his dream.

Christopher recently entered the Irvine Unified School District’s Career Link program and is learning career preparation skills in his classroom. He comes from a close-knit family of nine children, five boys and four girls, and he lives in Irvine. He has a congenital disorder, which has affected four out of the five boys in the family, one who died over a year ago. Christopher is confined to a wheelchair and has very little communication skills. He currently uses a device called the DynaVox, which he is able to manipulate with a type of joy stick he uses with his finger. This is what he used today at our meeting to tell us, "I want to work.”

Linda O’Neil, director of Career links, and Paul Harvey, a volunteer in the program, gave a compelling presentation for a devise to help Christopher better communicate with others. They would like to purchase an iPad 2, and also a software program called Proloquo2Go. This device has been successful for those with Autism, or any person with a disability that involves communication disorders. This program will help Christopher with a more rapid method of enabling him to engage in basic greeting conversation.

When Career Links is able to provide Christopher with a new communication device, they will help him find employment in the community. An ideal job would be for Christopher to work at an Apple Store as a demonstrator for his Apple iPad 2 with Proloquo2Go. Christopher and his assistant would be a sales team to demonstrate the value of these two technologies and what it can do to help others with disabilities.

The estimated cost for the devise is $2,361. This morning our club presented Career Links with a check in the amount of $1,500, they still have a ways to go to purchase the device and pay for the required training for Christopher.

The Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre Director Donna Inglima

Donna Inglima, The Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre Director, discussed the important work the Playhouse's youth education and theatre program provides, a program supported by IRC. The club recently supported the production of a world premiere, the first for the theatre, of Looking For Home, Stories From The Orphan Trains.

Beginning in 1853-1930's, Charles Lauren Brace, the founder of the Children's Aid Society of New York, executed a program to move more than 250,000 kids off the streets of New York City and into homes. Homeless and abandoned children were taken off the streets, clothes and fed, and then moved by train to homes in the midwest. The show is a tale of adults and youth, the memory is a play set in 1922. The music, lyrics and books were created by Mary Murffitt, playwright. She also was adopted, and interviewed an orphan train survivor, where she developed the play's concept. The train made different stops along a route, the kids were presented like slaves on stage. Some went to a wonderful family, others not so lucky.

The show explores abuse, love and the many issues in adoption with a cost of 38, 22 children ages 9-17. It's a deep story of laughter, sorrow and hope. The show appeared for two weeks, and had three weeks in production. It premiered in November during National Adoption Month. The club's contribution of $1500 helped to support Boys & Girls Club kids to come to the show.

Doing Amazing Work in our Communities-State of the Irvine Rotary Club

12.7.11 Irvine Rotary Club Meeting notes

Photo: Richard Milo was awarded his Paul Harris +7 Pin.

Mody Gorsky presented President elect nominee Don Kennedy, who will take his presidency after Lucy Walther’s term. There were no additional nominees, Mark Brubaker moved to close nominations, and Don Kennedy was ratified by the members..

Community Service Report/Avenues of Service:

The Irvine Rotary Club is giving a lot back to our communities and working a lot.

Lucy Walther led the summary of our community service accomplishments:
1. Richard Milo reported on the success of our partnership with causes for diabetes and cancer.

• The Juvenile Diabetes walk in Newport Beach recently held in November had a large contingent of Rotarians, 21 walkers from the club who added $2,000, one third of the event net revenue, for Juvenile Diabetes.
• In addition, the club provided $1,000 to support the spring Komen Walk for the Cure.
• Children’s Book Drive-Richard encouraged members to stop at garage sales and purchase books for children that we can donate during the Orange County Fair Book Drive. It’s a district wide project. Last year we donated more than 30,000 books for kids. Simply spend no more than $10 to buy books and the club will reimburse you.

2. Ed Hardenburg indicates we will have a walk this year at the Dana Point Harbor in April which includes a donation to Cystic Fibrosis.

3. Cisca Stillhorn reported:

• Our support of South County Outreach is complete for the year, we provided a total of $1,000 to SCO. Our contact has changed so we will be engaging them to come to a future meeting to re-establish with them.
• We provided a work day for the Irvine Animal Shelter with 13 Rotarians helping with the facility build out.
• In addition, we will be doing a project to support Irvine Adult Day Health. We made a donation of $1,000 and will work on conducting a work day on their behalf.

4. Rick Topping reported on:

• Injured Marines Simper If Fund which supports injured marines
• Wounded Warrior Fund
• Holes for Heroes
• ALS Society

5. Leslie Mogul reported the $1500 support of The Laguna Playhouse’s Youth Theatre world premier of Looking for Home, a Story from the Orphan Trains, was made possible with the support of IRC. Children from Orangewood and Orange County foster care were able to attend performances free of charge.

6. Ray Benedictus reported that Community Service from our club members does a lot to make things happen in the community. He added we provided support this past year for the American Heart Association.

7. Mody Gorsky reported we continue our successful partnership with the City of Irvine with our Irvine Public Safety Partnership Awards. Lucy and Mody have had four meetings with the city and they are thrilled to continue the program.

8. Austin reported on our international projects:

• Mexico (Ensenada area) Clinics-April 2012 we will conduct our 100th Mexico Clinic. We conducted four dental and two medical clinics during the year. These are fabulous opportunities for our club to team with our local Mexico Rotary partners, who identify the location, to provide needed medical and dental care. He would like more club members to participate. We stay in nice hotels, meet great people. He’ll be scouting some more locations in Mexico, including orphanages in Corazon, to continue this avenue of service. The Ensenada clinic cost $4000 for two clinics, and we provided $30,000 worth of service.
• Haiti Adult Clinics-we’re determined to continue the project when the country provides us the opportunity.
• India Clinic-were committed to doing a clinic in India, Austin will talk with Harry on this.
• Bolivia Prosthetic project is being executed with 8 other rotary clubs. It is under review at the International Rotary Foundation. Our goal is to produce 135 prosthetic legs, the program trains people to manufacture the prosthetics, and give to local disabled.
• Stove project is still being executed in Guatemala. The goal is to produce 1500 stoves, we are mid-way through production.
• Romania Orphanage-we are in the process of determining is this is feasible.

Local and International Irvine Rotary Club projects are funded by our three major fundraising efforts including:

• Bowlathon-this year raised $5,000
• Cash Bash
• Holes for Heroes-2012 will be our first year for this annual fundraiser. The San Diego Downtown Rotary Club created the successful model, in this their 10th year they raised $109,000 from the golf tournament. 75% of the proceeds are donated to International and the rest goes into their club foundation. Sign up now to be a donor or sponsor of this spring event. Wounded warriors are invited to play in each foursome.

New Member Projects: Jay Spencer suggested each new member adopt a fundraising project to participate in. Each week new members and red badgers man the Check in Desk so they can quickly get to know our members. It starts with a sincere smile and handshake, this effort is winning us a new member each week.

Finance Report: Tom Mahony reported our charitable goal for 2012 is $35,000. We currently have $70,000 in the bank. Our club does not charge dues. We are changing the name of our foundation to Irvine Rotary Foundation to match the new club name. Here’s how our club operates and where revenues are derived:

• Rotary International Foundation-provides matching grants back to the district and club.
• Club Operations –Dale Ford and his weekly fining pays for club expenses.
• Irvine Rotary Foundation-is our charitable arm from where we donate money back to local and international projects.

Ed Hardenburg reported we have an accumulated cash balance in excess of $5700 which will be used to supplement sending the club president to International Rotary Conference: Lucy to Thailand in 2012, Don Kennedy to Lisbon in 2013.

Mark Brubaker added any extra money we raise is donated to new charitable opportunities to help individuals or organizations during the year.

Officers for the Irvine Rotary Foundation are:
President: Woody Jones
President Elect: Ray Sanford
Vice President: Kris Khurana
Secretary: Mary Mar
Treasurer: Tom Mahony
Club President: Mark Brubaker
Club International Rotary Foundation Chair: Ray Benedictus

Support for Boy Scouts

Janet Wang and Mark Brubaker present a check for $500 to Scoutmaster Johansen to support the Boy Scouts.

New Member Jean Hobart

Cisca Stillhorn and Rick Topping welcome Jean to the club. She’s a close friend of Cisca’s, a lawyer, post polio victim who spends 50 hours a week doing volunteer work.

Meet Robyn Nelson

The Irvine Rotary Club welcomed our newest member, Robyn Nelson. She is a California original from Sacramento, and a registered nurse, currently the Dean of College of Nursing in the Health Sciences at West Coast University, where 2800 students are in the nursing programs.

Robyn's career trajectory began with a desire to be an elementary school teacher, but she changed her major and worked in critical care and later went onto teaching, before moving to Southern California she was a head of the nursing program at Toro College in Nevada, and Professor of Nursing at CSU Sacramento.

Outside of her professional career she's a songstress, pop and light opera are her favorites. Her husband Dean is a Jazz band musician.

IRC Meeting on the International Rotary Move to Eliminate Polio

Former rotary district governor Herb Tromboldt shared the latest update on the Rotary International's Polio Immunication Days around the world. It's the rotary's effort to end Polio now. It's the largest humane project in the world and it was started by rotary international, which partnered with other non-governmental organizatins around the world including Unicef and the World Health Organizatioin.

Rotarians around the world have done the heavy lifting on this project to get it off the ground. Herb shared a trip by rotarians this past Feb. 2011. A team of 36 rotarians went to the Kashapur area of India to immunize children against polio. Just 90 miles from New Delhi, the people live in deplorable conditions, open sewage, sewers running over constantly, one of the ways polio is spread. Add no refrigeration, heaps of garbage everywhere, no surprise this area has been ground zero for several hundred cases of polio in the past year. 80 immunization stations were set up with three movile units, a parade kicked off the activities, and the local Indians worked with our rotarians going into all neighborhood to share the polio vaccine, just a few drops by mouth is all it takes to protect these kids.

Just one of the wonderful international projects rotary takes on. Very rewarding work!

New IRC Member Von Christensen

Welcome to the Club Von!

The Irvine Rotary Club is on a roll, we welcomed another new member this week. Von Chistensen, an Irvine resident and an attorney who works in Newport. Von was welcomed to the club by former district governor Herb Tromboldt.

Interested in learning more about the rotary club, you are welcome to join us for a delicious buffet breakfast and fellowship each Wed. morning at 7:30 am at the Rancho Community Center in Irvine. Please check us out!

IRC Bowlathon Raises $5,317 for rotary projects

Thoughts from Diane Braasch, event coordinator for rotary Bowlathon:

As night sets in, I am enjoying the thoughts of todays Bowlathon. It is wonderful to have Rotary friends and some of you sure stepped up to help our event fly. It was not the best weekend to have this event due to the long weekend and people taking advantage of a getaway, but 90 people attended. 10 businesses paid $250 to fly a banner on the lanes for the three hours'. We were able to take advantage of the bowling centers hospitality. . Forest Lanes was so professional in taking care of our every need. The professional bowlers who turned out to bowl with us were some of the best. The PBA stars who I usually can get to bowl with us, were in Vegas bowling the World Series of Bowling but our local pros scored well. Toni Thomas brought some of her homemade Christmas decorations for the silent auction. They were beautiful. Leslie Mogul and Stella Cardoza did a beautiful basket including tickets to Laguna Playhouse, Robyn Nelson brought a basket with Christmas goodies and Marla Noel a fabulous Tequila basket. I made a bunch of baskets and was happy to see that all our baskets sold in the silent auction The most unusual gift was an Adult Pogo Stick donated by Rich Milo. and a diamond pendant from Ken Carrell of the Jewelry Box in Lake Forest. Forest Lanes donated a 2 hour party for six.. I purchased some fun gifts for everyone to win. Most everyone took home something and on the lanes were treated to lollipops in the bowling theme. For those of you who did not join us just because you wanted to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon at home.......well, you lose because it was sooo fun. The scores were varied and I know some of you wil have a few aches tomorrow...but be assured, YOU are making a difference in our charitable causes. THANK YOU TO ALL WHO ATTENDED AND SPECIAL THANKS TO THOSE OF YOU WHO GAVE ....Isn't that what Rotary is all about? This event net $5317 to our Rotary Foundation. Not bad for a fun three hours at the bowling center......

Thank you and thanks for all your help, Diane Braasch