I unleashed my inner Alex Trebek on Thursday night as I played game show host for the inaugural San Jose Q&A, a trivia competition that raised more than $230,000 to support the burn unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.
“This money we raised will affect and save many lives, and we did it with a smile,” said Michael Van Every, the president of Republic Urban Properties, who suffered severe burns as a child and received life-saving treatment at VMC.
He came up with the idea of having a “fun” fundraiser that wasn’t the usual banquet dinner or auction and hit up some history-minded people to come up with questions about San Jose and Santa Clara County that would challenge the three contestants — Valley Health Foundation CEO Michael Elliott, Janikke Klem of Heritage Bank of Commerce and Mark Ritchie of Ritchie Commercial.
They actually did a great job coming up with answers. But the audience of nearly 200 people definitely let the contestants know about it when they answered incorrectly, as did the evening’s “celebrity judge,” former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery, who made the call on close answers and injected some personality into the evening.
Klem was already in first place when she was the only one to correctly answer the final question — What was San Jose’s first sister city? Answer: Okayama, Japan in 1957 — and took home bragging rights, along with a snazzy championship belt and a basket of wine.
But, as Van Every pointed out, the big winner was the burn unit at Valley Medical Center, which will be able to use those funds to help out more patients.
CLINIC HITS THE ROAD: Recognizing that not everyone has the ability to easily get to necessary medical care, a quartet of organizations teamed up on a good solution: A mobile medical clinic that will make regular visits to areas to provide uninsured adults with free healthcare, including chronic condition management and referrals for specialized care.
The groups behind the effort are Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, which will operate the Rotary Mobile Medical Clinic; RotaCare Bay Area, which is providing the volunteer medical professionals to staff it; the Order of Malta; and the San Jose Rotary Club.
They cut the ribbon on the state-of-the-art vehicle, which includes two exam rooms, on Thursday at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in East San Jose with a crowd that included Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County CEO Greg Kepferle, RotaCare Bay Area CEO JP Kaur Sahi; Mike Blach and Vic Giacalone, who are on the board of Order of Malta, Western Association USA; and Vince Sunzeri, who headed up the project team for the Rotary Club of San Jose.
BIG SLICE OF COMPASSION: We all know about Oktoberfest, but did you know that it’s also Socktoberfest this month? At least that’s the case at Tony & Alba’s Pizza on Stevens Creek Boulevard, where owners Diana and Al Vallorz are pledging to donate a pair of warm socks to farmworkers in the Salinas Valley for every small, large or extra large pizza ordered for the rest of the month. They’ll also be accepting donations, too.
“Economically, it is tough for customers and restaurants now, but Diana and I know it is tougher for the farmworkers,” Al Vallorz said.
FALL BACK IN SARATOGA: Blacksmiths were an essential element in the Santa Clara Valley back in the 1800s — repairing farm tools, shoeing horses and fashioning cooking and household items. Now, the Saratoga History Museum is giving the public a chance to see how they worked their craft Oct. 20 at “Striking the Iron.”
The free event, from 1 to 4 p.m. at 20450 Saratoga-Los Gatos Road, will include a demonstration on the patio and a visit to McWilliams House pioneer cottage, where a costumed docent will provide tours of the house. There’ll also be tools used by blacksmiths on display.
ENTER STAGE RIGHT: Actor Alicia M.P. Nelson achieved what was literally a lifelong dream to perform on the Hammer Theatre Center stage on Wednesday when she presented a pair of monologues as part of her presentation as a recipient of the Leigh Weimers Emerging Artist Awards.
Nelson was four days old in 1995 when she attended the groundbreaking of the blue box that became home for the San Jose Rep, where her mother, Red Ladder Theater Co. Director Karen Altree Piemme worked. Sadly, the Rep went under in 2014, dashing Nelson’s hopes of performing on that stage until last week, when she was honored along with painter Yen Yi Chung and musicians Bennett Roth-Newell and Petra Persolja.
Meanwhile, Steve Dini has returned to San Jose from Texas to lead a revolution of his own. The former radio and TV broadcaster is back at Pioneer High School, where he taught drama for several years, to direct “Les Miserables” for the school’s Glue Factory Players. That’s the group of adult performers at Pioneer who put on a musical every fall to raise money for the school’s drama program. The show runs Oct. 23-26 at Pioneer High’s Steve Dini Stage — which means this is one show in which the actors will definitely be walking all over their director.
VOTING DAZE: If you find yourself scratching your head over the 10 statewide measures on the November ballot, the South Bay Democratic Coalition is sponsoring an online event at 7 p.m. Oct. 21 to help sort them out. Angelica Perez and Betsy Bush — two students in Professor Mary-Beth Moylan’s Initiative Seminar at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge Law School — will offer an objective analysis of the 10 propositions. If you’re interested, email Richard Stoken at rkstoken@sbcglobal.net, and he’ll get you linked up.
