Give Back!

Equestrian Activism

I spent over a decade working to preserve the equestrian lifestyle in the City of Los Angeles.

After living, studying and working many years in Boston, I moved to Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles of all places made one of my biggest and most impossible of my dreams come true. In the City of Los Angeles of all places, I have owned a horse or two since shortly after I arrived here in 1988.

Horse people spend alot of time with their horses and not enough time paying attention to safeguarding the priviledge of horse keeping. And so do their kids which you will never see up to mischief on street corners! As a result of my love of horses, I spent almost a decade working for a small equestrian advocacy group, the Valley Horse Owners Association. Many other groups and people were affiliated and so we coordinated our efforts, and we, together, had huge impact safeguarding horse keeping in Los Angeles. Many groups including VHOA also worked over five years to obtain a historic overlay which will help to preserve horse keeping in one of LA's oldest neighborhoods now almost 100 years old. VHOA recently, with board direction, like a phoenix, has arisen to become something else. I am satisfied that all my efforts laid the foundation for this work to continue. Advocacy groups help City Hall gain support for certain causes and allow voices to be heard that might not otherwise be heard. I believe that non-profits today play an ever increasingly vital role of education and thus balance the vested interests and of politics. Many awards were given to VHOA that I received on behalf of VHOA as the president, the result of my vision, hard work and leadership.

 

 

Give Back!

I was raised to contribute, help, and to volunteer. When not even a teen ager, my mother took me with her while she performed her volunteer work in the local hospital as a Candy Striper. I also became a Candy Striper. Later, after I had accompanied my mother on her rounds and once I felt confident enough to go on my own rounds, I did. I do not know if Candy Stripers still exist. We wore a white vest or blouse that was white with red pin stripes and so the moniker "Candy Striper". Candy Stipers helped nurses perform simple bedside tasks such as serving meals or helping patients reach for personal items they wanted like knitting, needle work, or books and magazines or turn on radios or TVs and swtch the channels. Later my mother took me to a nearby convalescent home to help the medical staff there with similar tasks. In the convalescent homes we were not Candy Stripers, we were just volunteers helping the medical staff with simple tasks and helping the elderly with simple personal tasks they wanted help with. That convalescent home experience helped me termendously in life -way more than the years of hours per week put in to satisfy my mother's volunteer cravings. Little did I know! That experience has enabled me to tend to friends dying of cancer and I totally wowed my mother-in-law the little time I tended to her at the end of her life. And when my own moher became terminally ill, I could also tend to her in the same manner that she taught me by taking me with her to work at the hospital and with the elderly that she used to drag me to! When I was in high school, another opportunity arose. I worked for four years once or twice a week in an after school program for the mentally retarded. I learned they are people too! While living and studying in France I sought out the French Red Cross to work with them as a volunteer in their program for the mentally retarded. That was next to the Versailles Palace in France. I rode my moped/mobilette miles and miles to go there. Those were such beautiful rides through the French countryside and down old cobblestone streets in old Versailles. I have amazing memories of those rides which are some of my best souvenirs of living in France.