life
CITY
HEIGHTS
AZALEA PARK•FAIRMOUNT VILLAGE•HOLLYWOOD PARK•SWAN CANYON•CHEROKEE POINT•RIDGEVIEW•CHOLLAS CREEK
JANUARY 2013 • FREE •
LA VIDA
Volume 2 • Issue 8
CORRIDOR•FAIRMOUNT PARK•COLINA PARK•CASTLE•FOX CANYON•ISLENAIR•BAYRIDGE•TERALTA EAST•TERALTA WEST
City Heights residents gathered at Cherokee Point Elementary School for a recent rally for a new skatepark. Residentes de City Heights se congregaron en la Primaria Cherokee Point durante una reunión reciente para solicitar un nuevo parque para patinetas.
Skate
se
e d e u p
City Heights skate park Esfuerzos por construir un parque effort gaining traction de patinetas están ganando terreno By Adam Ward Mid-City CAN
Peter Whitley has a unique insight into skatepark advocacy. Whitley is the programs director at The Tony Hawk Foundation, a San Diego County-based nonprofit that has made more than 500 grants to help build skateparks since its inception 10 years ago. According to Whitley, the Foundation has helped open 420 parks, and he personally will have logged more than a 1,000 requests for skatepark consultation by the end of 2012. But despite all that experience, Whitley said he has never seen anything like the Mid-City CAN skate-
park rally Dec. 6 at Cherokee Point Elementary School. The rally was the culmination of the Mid-City CAN Youth Council campaign to add a skatepark to City Heights, an area that is 100 acres short of park space according to San Diego’s guidelines. “Nobody shows up for a meeting on a recreational issue like that,” Whitley said, referring to the crowd of about 300 people at the event where “the seats were full to the back.” “It doesn’t happen for a stadium,” he said. “It doesn’t happen for
[SKATE, P2 ]
Por Adam Ward Mid-City CAN
Peter Whitley cuenta con una visión única de lo que significa un parque para patinetas. Whitley es el director de programas de la Fundación Tony Hawk, organización sin fines de lucro radicada en el Condado de San Diego que ha otorgado más de 500 subvenciones para ayudar a construir parques para patinetas desde su creación hace 10 años. De acuerdo a Whitley, la Fundación ha ayudado a construir 420 parques y él personalmente habrá procesado más de 1,000 solicitudes para parques de patinetas al finali-
zar el 2012. A pesar de su experiencia, Whitley dijo que nunca había visto algo como el rally organizado por Mid-City Can el 6 de diciembre en la Primaria Cherokee Point. El rally se celebró para culminar una campaña del Concejo Juvenil de Mid-City CAN para construir un parque para patinetas en City Heights, un área que cuenta con 100 acres menos de áreas recreativas de lo necesario, de acuerdo a las normas de San Diego. “Nadie asiste a las reuniones por asuntos recreativos”, dijo
[PATINAR, P2 ]
“N
obody shows up for a meeting on a recreational issue like that ... You are breaking new ground and setting precedents that the city isn’t accustomed to.” PETER WHITLEY Program Director The Tony Hawk Foundation
A dose of literacy during your doctor visit By David Ogul City Heights Life
Forgive some parents if they mistake the health and wellness centers at a handful of City Heights schools for a library. Under a program launched by the nonprofit literacy program Reach Out And Read, medical clinics at Rosa Parks and Central elementary schools, along with the clinic at Monroe Clark Middle School, are giving new books to parents and guardians of pre-schoolers as young as 6-months-old so they can regularly read to
them at home. 50 states, with almost 1,500 “Pediatricians are just as sites distributing 1.6 million concerned about a child’s books per year. Those numbrain development as they bers have since increased to are any other part of a more than 5,000 sites and child’s physical de6.5 million books velopment,” said per year. Spanish Tara Milbrand, Here is how translation program direcit works. Every on page 9 tor for Reach time a young Out and Read child comes in Para traddución San Diego. for a physical, vea página 9 According to the doctor or its website, Reach nurse practitioner Out and Read was on duty will talk to founded in 1989 with its the child’s guardian about first program at Boston City the importance of reading, Hospital (now Boston Medi- give reading tips as needed cal Center). By 2001, the to the parent and provide a program was operating in all books such as Dora the Ex-
plorer or the Hungry Caterpillar. For especially young children, picture books on colors and letters are preferred. Dr. Aaron Zaheer of MidCity Community Clinics said the impact goes beyond development of a child’s brain. “As primary care doctors dealing with people in a low-income, high-poverty area, we’re trying to move the needle on poor literacy levels. People who are more literate and better educated do better in life. They have
[ LITERACY, P8]
Dr. Aaron Zaheer and patient read a children’s book in Spanish. Photo: Reach Out and Read