Climate RWC – February 2021 Edition

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P u b l i c a t i o n Spotlight: The Price of Progress Profile: Finding Beauty in Struggle Changing Climate: The Ethics of a Covid Shot

ISSUE SIXTY SEVEN • MARCH • 2021

Covid's Costly Toll on

Business

Celebrating Our Community, Building Our Future

The San Carlos Education Foundation is a non-profit fundraising organization that helps the San Carlos School District provide a wellrounded, innovative public education for all students. SCEF understands that strong schools mean a vibrant, more connected community and a brighter future for us all.

Support strong public schools at www.scefkids.org

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR•

It’s been a year this month since the Covid pandemic descended on us, and the first restrictions were imposed in order to “flatten the curve” and keep a little-understood but frightening disease from overwhelming local hospitals. Since then the pandemic and the limitations on our lifestyle have hung on, like a storm that stalls out and stays, at a cost we’ve all experienced — from parents having to educate their kids at home to families unable to gather together to mourn loved ones who have died. Businesses have been dealt a very difficult hand, many of them forced to close for extended periods, lay people off and find ways to innovate. As community members who love our favorite restaurants, theaters, coffee shops, salons and other businesses, seeing them close has been a bit like a death, and we mourn their passing. The community and local government have also pitched in – buying takeout meals, shopping online or offering grants and loans – to help them survive.

This month’s feature assesses the impact of the pandemic on San Mateo County businesses, and writer Kathleen Pender brings to her first assignment for Climate a wealth of knowledge in this area. She recently left the San Francisco Chronicle after 36 years as a business columnist, editor and reporter, and we’re delighted to welcome her to the magazine.

Vaccines against the Covid have been seen as key to a return to normal life, and many people have been clamoring to get vaccinated. In this issue, writer Don Shoecraft explores the at times perplexing priority system – and the guilt some of the “lucky ones” have experienced after scoring their shots. His story is on page 24.

Life, fortunately, is more than Covid, and in this issue writer Elizabeth Sloan profiles an educator with a remarkable life story and a strong commitment to giving all kids an equal opportunity at the best education. Amika Guillaume of San Carlos is the principal at the East Palo Alto Academy, a public charter high school within the Sequoia district, and her strong social conscience motivates her drive to attain the best resources for the academy’s 360 students. The story begins on page 14.

The San Mateo County Historical Association has received boxes of photos taken decades ago by photographers working for Caltrans, the state highway department, which show properties that were being looked at for acquisition for public projects. As the Peninsula became suburbanized, better roads were needed, among them Highway 101 and Interstate 280. Writer Vlae Kershner has put together a story about the what happened when the freeways did (and sometimes didn’t) come through. We thank the history museum for letting us reprint their photos for the story, which is on page 18.

Enjoy!

Janet McGovern, Editor March 2021 ·

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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S •

FEATU RE

A Very Rough Ride

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PROFILE

Finding Beauty in Struggle

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SPOTLIG HT

The Price of Progress

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MICRO CLIMATE...........22 CHANGING CLIMATE ����24 AROUND TOWN ���������28 HISTORY......................29

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On the cover: Businesses that have succumbed to the Covid pandemic.

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CLIMATE M A G A Z I N E Publisher

S.F. Bay Media Group Editor

Janet McGovern janet@climaterwc.com Creative Director

Jim Kirkland jim@climaterwc.com Contributing Writers

Kathleen Pender Elizabeth Sloan Vlae Kershner Don Shoecraft Janet McGovern Jim Clifford Photography

Jim Kirkland Editorial Board

Janet McGovern Jim Kirkland Adam Alberti Advisory Board

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Community Fund Grant Partners 2021 CHAN ZUCKERBERG INITIATIVE

Welcoming the 2021 CZI Community Fund grant partners — 56 local organizations supporting Belle Haven, East Palo Alto, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City. · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Able Works Anamatangi Polynesian Voices Belle Haven Community Development Fund Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula Building Skills Partnership Casa Circulo Cultural Catholic Charities Chicana Latina Foundation Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse (CORA) Dream Volunteers East Palo Alto Academy Foundation East Palo Alto Kids Foundation Eastside College Preparatory School Ecumenical Hunger Program Faith In Action Bay Area Five Keys Schools and Programs Fresh Approach Fresh Lifelines for Youth

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Generations United Girls To Women Golden State Opportunity Healthy Cities Tutoring Heart and Soul HIP Housing International Institute of the Bay Area JobTrain Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County Live in Peace Manzanita Works Multicultural Institute New Creation Home Ministries Nuestra Casa de East Palo Alto One East Palo Alto One Life Counseling Center Pangea Legal Services Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center Peninsula Family Service Raising A Reader

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Ravenswood Family Health Network Rebuilding Together Peninsula Redwood City Friends of Literacy Redwood City PAL Retraining the Village Rosalie Rendu Center San Francisco 49ers Academy Services, Immigrant Rights & Education Network Stanford Children’s Health – Teen Van St. Anthony’s Padua Dining Room St. Francis Center StreetCode Academy The North Fair Oaks Community Alliance The Peninsula College Fund United through Education WeHOPE Youth Community Service Youth United for Community Action

Community Fund partners receive grants up to $100,000 and access to programming to build capacity and infrastructure, and seed collaboration to accelerate impact.

CZI works in service of a just Bay Area where people impacted by systemic racism and structural inequities have the assets and power to shape their communities. Learn more at www.chanzuckerberg.com/community/fund.

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Ariana and Alessia Presotto are among the few willing to open a retail store during the pandemic. Their new boutique, Madison Ave., on Theater Row opened in February

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Covid Pandemic Takes Business on a

Very Rough Ride Mixed impact of lockdowns as entrepreneurs adapt, and even get help, to survive

By Kathleen Pender

For many businesses in Redwood City and surrounding towns, getting hit with the Covid-19 crisis was like slamming into a concrete barrier at 60 miles per hour. The economy had been running at full steam, powered by the region’s seemingly unstoppable tech sector. San Mateo County’s gross domestic product grew nearly 4 percent in 2019, almost twice the national average. Its unemployment rate at the end of that year was a razor-thin 1.8 percent, half the national average. Redwood City was teeming with office workers, restaurants, nightlife and new housing.

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hat came to a screeching halt March 17 last year when seven Bay Area counties imposed the nation’s strictest lockdown orders. Most businesses that were not deemed essential and couldn’t operate remotely had to shut down, at least temporarily. Although restrictions have eased, tightened and eased again, California in late January still had the most coronavirus restrictions of any state, according to WalletHub. The county’s unemployment rate seesawed, from a high of 11.4 percent in April to 5.8 percent in December, when the county shut down outdoor dining, salons, barbershops and most private gatherings. That order was lifted in late January, although most businesses still must operate with reduced capacity and comply with safety protocols.

Some businesses have fared better than others, depending on location, sector and their ability to get government assistance, rent breaks and adapt to changing rules. “The overarching business climate is mixed. Some industries and companies are doing well, others not as much,” said Rosanne Foust, CEO of the San Mateo County Economic Development Association.

The same could be said of some companies. Sales of Redwood City-based Impossible Foods’ plant-based Impossible Burger dipped in March following strict shelter-in-place orders but a planned rollout to grocery stores accelerated.

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• Empty Offices Businesses that relied on office workers were especially hard hit. Specialty’s Cafe & Bakery, which did a brisk business catering corporate meetings, filed for bankruptcy and closed all 50 locations — including ones in San Mateo, Foster City and Redwood Shores. The company gave away its remaining frozen cookie dough from its Redwood City warehouse.

Likewise, Teresa Lindhartsen and her business partner closed Alana’s Cafe in Redwood City in July and have no plans to return. “There is just not the foot traffic there used to be. Everyone is working from home. During the daytime, there is nobody out,” she said. They still operate Alana’s Cafe and Sixto’s Cantina on Burlingame Avenue in Burlingame, but neither eatery is as busy as they were pre-pandemic.

“My business partner and I are working harder than ever, Lindhartsen said. “One of us is here all the time, making sure everybody has a job, trying to be conscientious with hours, so we don’t overstaff. If it’s slow, people are sent home,” she added. That didn’t happen before the pandemic because “we were busy all time.”

Widening Gap The pandemic has widened the wealth gap, among people and businesses. In San Mateo County, “we have a segment of society that can go out and spend at their favorite places,” County Manager Mike Callagy said. But a lot of small businesses “are teetering on the brink. They are not able to sustain long periods of time without revenues. They employ so many critical workers in this county. This vaccine is a miracle, let’s hope it results in a miracle for these small businesses.”

Stephanie Kolkka has seen both sides of this coin. Kolkka Furniture, a high-end metal furnishings business she runs with her family in Redwood City, “is really

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F E AT U R E • a risk opening during a pandemic, “but we both decided there is never going to be a perfect time to do this.”

Stephanie Kolkka

“Our clientele is wealthy. They are staying home, bored as hell” and willing to upgrade their surroundings. busy,” she said. “Our clientele is wealthy.

They are staying home, bored as hell” and willing to upgrade their surroundings.

But Kolkka’s Redwood City boutique, Brick Monkey Squared, suffered when Century Theaters across the street went dark. She closed it in December. Her landlord was willing to let her out of her lease, which ends in September, but she decided to sublet the space to Ariana and Alessia Presotto, who opened a new boutique in February.

Alessia worked at Brick Monkey Squared in high school. Now 21, she is majoring in design at the University of Southern California. Ariana, 22, has a degree in business and is using savings from her first job as a tech recruiter in San Francisco to open the store. It’s named Madison Avenue after the street in Redwood City where they grew up. They will sell clothes and small home items, with an emphasis on local brands.

“We have gotten a lot of support from family, but I can hear the worry in their voices,” Ariana said. The sisters know it’s

Green Shoots Madison Avenue may be one of the “green shoots” of economic growth that signal recovery during a downturn.

There are others. Craig and Dawn Saxton, who owned Specialty’s before selling it to the Mexican firm FEMSA Comerico, bought its trade name and other assets out of bankruptcy and plan to reopen a Specialty’s outlet in Mountain View and perhaps elsewhere.

A huge increase in new business applications is another encouraging sign.

Applications nationwide plummeted in March and April last year, but then began rising and surged in the second half of 2020, ending the full year with a 24 percent increase over 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s “New Business Formation” statistics. January’s total was 73 percent ahead of January 2020.

In California, new business applications were 19 percent higher in 2020, and up 53.5 percent in January.

The Census Bureau gets this seasonally adjusted data from applications for Employer Identification Numbers.

Companies that hire employees must get this number from the Internal Revenue Service. Sole proprietors without employees usually don’t have to, although many do for other reasons. The Census Bureau estimates that only about a third of business owners that get an EIN hire employees.

New businesses applications typically rise during a downturn, but last year’s increase was much bigger than during the last recession. Unlike then, today the stock market and home prices are soaring and credit is much more available. “The top end of the economy, people are doing fine, there are economic opportunities,”

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said John Haltiwanger, an economist at the University of Maryland.

“By far the biggest surge in 2020 applications was online retailers,” he added.

Applications for professional, scientific and technical services also swelled, as did trucking and warehousing — which also can be involved in online activity. “The pandemic has changed the structure of the way we do business. A big question is, how much of this is going to stick.”

Tracking Closures Redwood City received 403 new business applications between April 1 and February 6, of which 217 were for homebased businesses. During roughly the same period, 140 businesses notified the city they were closing. Tracking business closures, however, is difficult because “the city may not immediately be notified if a business closed,” said Assistant City Manager Alex Khojikian.

Yelp has been tracking the number of businesses on its site that have closed since Covid-19 struck and reports that “bigger states and metros with higher rents and more stringent local (restrictions) for small businesses … have felt a greater toll.”

The five-county San Francisco Bay Area, which includes San Mateo, had the secondhighest closure rate of any metro area, after Honolulu. Roughly 1 out of 100 Bay Area businesses had permanently closed between March 1 and August 31, Yelp said.

Sectors with the lowest closures rates nationwide were professional services such as lawyers, architects and accountants; auto repair and towing shops, health care providers; and home-service providers such as contractors, plumbers, roofers and landscapers. The hardest-hit sectors included restaurants and bars, apparel retailers and the beauty and fitness industries.

San Mateo County estimates that about 230 of its roughly 3,700 food facilities

Patty Anagnostou

“I think it will get back to normal. I think people like to be around people and not work from home unless they have the luxury of being on some exotic island with a laptop.” closed during the pandemic. A sampling of local closures include Maverick Jack’s in San Carlos; The Old Spaghetti Factory, Oyster Boy, The Courthouse 21 and Sweet Bubble Waffle Co. in Redwood City; and Esposto’s Delicatessen, Vault 164 and Viognier in San Mateo. Susie Cakes temporarily shuttered its San Carlos and Menlo Park outlets, but plans to reopen them by early April.

Restaurant Roller Coaster Restaurants “have been gutted, it has been so tragic to watch,” said Amy Buckmaster, president and CEO of Chamber San Mateo. “We’ve held hands, wiped tears, we have worked with them consistently on the recovery. It’s the upand-down roller coaster.”

Patty Anagnostou, owner of Café La Tartine in downtown Redwood City, shut

down in March and started doing takeout in May. The county allowed outdoor dining in June, and limited indoor seating in October. But indoor dining ended in November and outdoor dining was halted from mid-December through late January.

She estimates revenues are down 80 to 90 percent. Her family owns the building, but she still pays rent, at a reduced rate.

“It’s disheartening, but we’re all going through it,” Anagnostou said. “I think it will get back to normal. I think people like to be around people and not work from home unless they have the luxury of being on some exotic island with a laptop.”

Fera and Mike Hashemi own Arya Steakhouse across the street. Their sales have been chopped in half. The 130-seat restaurant once did a lot of corporate events and private parties. That’s gone, but they’re surviving thanks to their loyal clientele. About 60 percent of their business is coming through delivery apps such as Uber, Grubhub and Doordash. Fera says they’ve cut prices, and have also cut staff, from 25 to six.

Retail Woes Retailers have had a somewhat better go of it, especially those that amped up online sales, curbside pickup and delivery options. But some have thrown in the towel, including the entire Pier One chain. Bed Bath & Beyond is shutting down hundreds of locations including San Mateo.

Local retailer Diddams Party & Toy Store closed its Daly City location. “It was a marginal store that went to bleeding red,” owner Steve Diddams said. He’s cut staff from 75 to 25 and is negotiating rent reductions on his stores in San Mateo, San Carlos and Mountain View. “The landlords, I feel sorry for them, they have bills, they have mortgages,” but “I simply can’t pay the rent on half the sales.”

His business was based on social gatherings – birthdays, weddings, school March 2021 ·

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• and corporate events — that aren’t happening. Toy sales are holding up because parents will still buy their kids a birthday present, Diddams said. And his inflated-balloon business is doing swell.

“They are an inexpensive, colorful, big decoration” and you can’t buy them online.

Diddams had to close for a couple months starting in March, but was able to reopen as an “essential business” because “we sell candy, nuts, drinks and our paper plates and napkins are considered sanitary supplies.” To adapt, he brought in “pallets and pallets of face masks” and stocked up on hula hoops, Frisbees, playground balls and other outdoor toys.

Diddams expects to be in “for a rough period probably through the first quarter of next year.” That makes it hard to order inventory he’ll need in nine months. His third-biggest supplier has folded. “I’m betting on a last-man-standing kind of rule,” he said. “Those of us who make it are going to clean up and there will be a lot of healthy businesses. This downturn is flushing out the weaklings.”

Martin Sullivan, who owns Marketing Direct Insurance Services, sells mostly home and auto policies from a storefront in Redwood City. “We do a lot of Latino business. Latinos like to come into your office,” to take out policies and pay their monthly premiums, he said. Since restrictions took effect last March, his new business has dried up, and renewals have slowed. Even before the pandemic, Sullivan said many of his clients were moving out of the Bay Area because of the high cost of living, and since then, many have moved because they lost their jobs.

He has decided to expand his business in Lodi, where he lives, and move toward online rather than in-person sales.

Helping Hands Sullivan, Diddams, Arya Steakhouse, Café La Tartine and many other local businesses

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F E AT U R E •

Steve Diddams

“I’m betting on a last-man-standing kind of rule. Those of us who make it are going to clean up and there will be a lot of healthy businesses." got loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which don’t have to be paid back if used for approved expenses, including payroll, utilities and rent. But the rules are complex and constantly changing. About 2,125 businesses in California’s 14th Congressional district, which covers most of San Mateo County, were approved for PPP loans ranging from $150,000 to $10 million last year, and many others received smaller loans, according to Small Business Administration data. The SBA is taking applications for a second round of PPP loans through March 31.

A federal program approved in December, nicknamed Save Our Stages, will provide grants up to $10 million each to qualified independent performing art venues and promoters, talent agents, motion picture theaters and nonprofit museums. Redwood City’s Fox Theatre, shuttered for roughly a year, will apply, said Ernie Schmidt, its general manager.

State and local governments are also lending a hand. As of mid-January, Great Plates Delivered provided almost 1.4 million meals from 75 San Mateo County restaurants to nearly 3,800 eligible older adults, with funding from the county, state and federal governments. The county has extended this program through March.

The San Mateo Strong Fund financed a variety of Covid-relief programs. Last spring it provided grants of $10,000 each to 350 small businesses and in the fall distributed an additional $1 million in grants to 100 small businesses that missed out in the spring, Foust said. The Strong fund received donations from the county, cities (including $300,000 from Redwood City), nonprofits, companies and individuals.

A new program will provide almost $2.4 million in grants up to $10,000 each to eligible small restaurants, breweries and wineries with a storefront in San Mateo County. This program was funded with $1 million from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, $1 million from the county’s general fund and $384,000 from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the San Mateo Credit Union Community Fund.

The county also partnered with the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center to distribute $3.6 million in grants ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 each to owners of 173 very small businesses in certain ZIP codes.

Falling Through the Cracks That’s a lot of help, but many businesses couldn’t qualify. Zareen Khan, who runs Zareen’s restaurants in Palo Alto and Mountain View, decided in 2019 to open an outpost on Broadway in Redwood City, to attract office workers. She started construction, but it was halted by the Covid shutdown, then the wildfires.

It eventually resumed and the IndianPakistani restaurant opened in October. “It started out slow,” Khan said, and hasn’t gotten much assistance. She couldn’t get

• a PPP loan for that location, nor will she qualify for a county restaurant grant, because it wasn’t open in 2019.

At first she wasn’t allowed to put up a tent or tables in the street, because the fire department had blocked off the other half of Broadway for restaurants on that side of the street. In February, the city finally agreed to let her put up a small tent in the parallel parking spaces in front of her restaurant.

Finding good managers has also been challenging. “A lot of people are working now, or they are on unemployment and don’t want to work, or want to get paid in cash, which we can’t do,” she said. In hindsight, Khan says she still would have opened the Redwood City restaurant.

“There will be a lot of pent-up demand when the vaccine kicks in.”

Rent Relief Vivian Nguyen, owner of Bella Nails in San Mateo and Belmont, had to close three times in the past year. She tried to adapt by selling gift cards, do-it-yourself nail kits and other products online, but those revenues “were very minimal,” she said.

What helped her survive was a PPP loan and temporary rate abatements from her landlords in the Laurelwood and Carlmont shopping centers.

Mike Picone, operations manager for Carlmont Village Shopping Center, waived or reduced rent for tenants who needed help during mandatory closured.

Most were mom-and-pop operators; some had to sell a home or car as their income disappeared. “Any businesses we saw that were having trouble, we approached them and said we will consider making concessions, but it has to be validated,” Picone said. “We can do that because we are a family-owned business” and because there’s no mortgage on the property. Also, there is no demand for retail space, he said, although “there are a lot of people laying in wait,” for deals that may arise.

F E AT U R E • to soften due to increasing supply,” rents could come down “to make up for the decline in demand.”

Mike and Fera Hashemi

About 60 percent of [Arya's] business is coming through delivery apps such as Uber, Grubhub and Doordash. Fera says they’ve cut prices, and have also cut staff, from 25 to six.

Brett Weber, a commercial real estate agent with Kidder Matthews, said he won’t know the pandemic’s impact on retail space “until we get back to work.”

In Redwood City, he added, lease rates are being buoyed by demand from companies hoping to open cannabis storefronts. The city will permit up to six cannabis retailers; the application period closed Feb. 25.

The office market, however, “is dead right now,” Weber said.

The office vacancy rate in San Mateo County shot up from less than 7 percent in the first quarter of 2020 to 11.9 percent in the fourth quarter, according to a CBRE report. Asking rents, however, were basically flat. “Landlords have held firm to their pre-COVID asking rates, favoring concessions in the form of rent abatement and tenant improvement allowances during lease negotiations,” it said. “However, as the market continues

City, County Budgets The business downturn has also hurt city and county finances, but it could have been worse if not for a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2018 that allowed states to compel more out-of-state businesses to collect and remit sales taxes. Starting in April 2019, California was able to collect tax on far more online sales, which surged in 2020. Sales taxes are divided among the state, cities and counties. As a result of the decision, San Mateo County’s share is down “very minimally,” Callagy said.

The county took a much bigger hit on travel-related revenues, as the number of passengers passing through San Francisco International Airport fell 71.4 percent between 2019 and 2020. The county expects sales and use tax revenues for fiscal 202021 will be about $31 million less this last year, with most of that coming from lower taxes on fuel, car rentals and shops at SFO. In Redwood City, sales tax revenues increased by $6.7 million or 26 percent between fiscal years 2018-19 and 201920. Without Measure RR, the half-cent city tax increase that took effect in April 2019, revenues would have decreased by $1.2 million or 5.1 percent. City parking revenues decreased by $1 million or 37 percent because the city stopped ticketing temporarily and turned some spaces into outdoor dining.

“We are working on an 18- to 24-month resiliency plan to help our businesses get to the other side of the pandemic,” Assistant City Manager Khojikian said. “They are the lifeblood of our community. It’s where we get food, where our kids work, where we congregate, it’s our vitality,” C

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Crystal Lee Photography

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PROFILE•

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Finding Beauty in Struggle

By Elizabeth Sloan Photos by Crystal Lee Photography

From an early age, Amika Guillaume saw the world through a different lens. “We had bars on our windows when I was growing up,” she remembers. “I thought they were beautiful. I thought they made the house look fancy. My grandmother was proud of those bars. It meant you had valuable stuff. It wasn’t till years later, when I was in college, that I realized those bars meant you lived in a poor neighborhood.”

Today

Guillaume is principal of East Palo Alto Academy, a public charter high school within the Sequoia Union High School District. There are still bars on many of the surrounding houses. But where others see the struggles, what Guillaume sees in this community are courage, resilience, and “the beauty of what is possible.”

“I am obsessed with this idea that no matter where you were born in this country, you should have the opportunity to have an excellent education,” says Guillaume. “I believe we fail as a democracy if we do not give this opportunity to everybody.”

The child of a Filipina mother and a Czech father, Guillaume attended 27 schools in her youth, hop-scotching across New Mexico, Florida and Southern California to follow her father’s Air Force career. Both sets of grandparents knew harrowing hardships. “My mother’s father survived the Bataan Death March, fighting for the U.S. in World War II,” she says. “My paternal grandmother watched her mother and grandmother board the train for Auschwitz.

They sacrificed so much to get their families to this country.”

Paths to Success Social consciousness awakened early, but Guillaume also acknowledges a tension she felt as the child of immigrants.

“It’s a strange dichotomy you see in a lot of immigrant children,” she muses. “A part of you wants to be very successful and buy nice things. I wanted to be general manager of a March 2021 ·

CLIMATE · 15

• fancy hotel at one point. I was fascinated

by Donald Trump; I read ‘The Art of the Deal’ in eighth grade. I remember thinking: You can really do incredible things in the U.S. Then, I read an article about somebody who lost their generations-old shop so they could build a Trump Tower.”

Education, she realized, is the equalizer. “So many of my students live with food, housing and immigration insecurity.

If they drop out, they will struggle for the rest of their lives. There is no pussyfooting around that. Some kids—ones with more wealth or privilege—they’ll be OK. Mine will not.” It’s a story she tells forcefully to her East Palo Alto Academy families, drawing on her own experiences to drive it home. “I don’t look like a person of color, but I feel that way, because I am half. I know what it is like to go to school when you’re cold, when you’re tired, when you aren’t sure if there is going to be food in the refrigerator.”

Guillaume first encountered Teach for America when she was in grade school in Long Beach. TFA recruits graduates from top colleges and trains them to teach in low-income schools for two years. These young teachers left a deep impression on Guillaume, especially after her family started taking them in to live in their home. “They were wonderful human beings,” says Guillaume. “I thought: ‘I want to be around that!’”

When it came time for college, Guillaume did a brief stint at UC Santa Barbara before transferring to UCLA to be closer to home. “Mom needed me,” she says.

“I was the oldest of five, and my grandmother, who lived with us, was sick.” At UCLA, she earned dual degrees in history and French, was a standout varsity rower (snagging most inspirational and most valuable awards), and spent a couple of summers teaching low-income students of color at Santa Monica High School.

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PROFILE•

“So many of my students live with food, housing and immigration insecurity. If they drop out, they will struggle for the rest of their lives."

Teacher Drop-outs Upon graduation, Guillaume joined Teach for America herself, and stayed for seven years. She loved it, but something troubled her. “I kept seeing highly successful, intelligent, motivated teachers leaving the profession. You’d think the teaching would feed their souls and make them stay. But it didn’t—and it was often because of the leadership they encountered in the schools.”

Next stop: a “really cool” 15-month program at Harvard that included classes at the university’s schools of education, business and law. Armed with her new master’s degree in education and school leadership from Harvard, Guillaume returned to the Bay Area and embarked on a succession of teaching jobs in Oakland, East San Jose, and East Palo Alto. When a friend who was principal at Cesar Chavez Academy in East Palo Alto offered her a job, she requested 7th grade language arts. The reason? “The district had started ‘tracking’ students (sorting them by test performance into different tracks that

directed their academic futures) based on their 7th grade standardized test scores,” Guillaume says. “Seventh grade! I think it’s wrong that college should be decided by the time you’re 12.”

The Chavez teaching position progressed to a vice-principalship, and then, the principal’s job. It was a challenging administrative role because it included oversight of three programs on one campus: Cesar Chavez, Green Oaks Academy, and Los Robles, a dual language immersion program.

In 2015, Guillaume became principal at East Palo Alto Academy. The place is a study in statistical contrasts: 98 percent of its 360 students are people of color; 95 percent qualify for free/reduced lunch; 75 percent are English language learners; and 65 percent are the first in their family to go to high school.

Yet 72 percent of 2020 graduates went directly to four-year colleges, with another 8 percent enrolling in other post-secondary training. Those numbers are a dip down from 2019’s numbers of 96 percent

• college enrollment and 3 percent other; the decline is likely due at least in part to the pandemic. During Guillaume’s tenure, academic gains have been steady, and the number of students who not only get to college, but stay there, is also rising. Seventy percent of the academy’s low-income students of color who are first-generation college attenders are “persisting” in college—well above the national average of 42 percent for that group.

Donor Support “Amika has done a wonderful job,” says Elisabeth Landa, who as executive director of the East Palo Alto Academy Foundation has worked closely with Guillaume for the past four years. “She has a passion and a vision. As we like to say, we are diversifying the culture of power, and changing the lives of our students.” The foundation raises more than $1 million per year and sponsors a number of programs to help East Palo Alto Academy students get to college and thrive there. “We are lucky to have such generous donors,” says Guillaume of the foundation’s impact.

The academy also benefits from operating within the Sequoia High School district, a “basic aid” district whose funding model is tied to the local property tax base.

As such, the school fares better financially than many whose districts operate on the ADA model—"average daily attendance.”

“We spend about $15,000 per pupil each year,” says Guillaume. That’s well above California’s average of $11,000. But the bigger picture of school funding in the state troubles her.

“California is 37th in the country in per pupil spending,” says Guillaume.

“Think about that. We are literally in the shadow of Amazon, Facebook and Stanford. Don’t tell me our state does not have the money. California’s GNP rivals that of many developed nations. Are we really satisfied with 37th?”

PROFILE•

The partnerships that Guillaume forges may be just as important as funding in producing success. Guillaume is a “master collaborator,” according to Paitra Houts, Director of Community Engaged Learning in Education at Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service, a program that connects Stanford faculty with community-based projects. “She creates deep and lasting partnerships.” One current example: A Spanish class co-taught by the East Palo Alto Academy and Stanford instructors, which enrolls students from both the high school and the university, who all learn together. “The focus is on reciprocity,” says Houts.

“Amika understands the current pulse of where things are at in the community,” she says. “She understands both the assets and needs. She is also super creative and highly focused on problem-solving. When something isn’t working, she finds another way. She has vision, but she is also flexible.”

Partnerships; funding; a driven, visionary leader—all are important. But the key ingredient, says Guillaume, is her teachers. “I have never been surrounded by so many qualified, hardworking, passionate teachers who know that good isn’t good enough. They believe in what our students are capable of. I challenge you to find a group of teachers anywhere who is more passionate about that idea.”

“Amika is the proud, proud principal of East Palo Alto Academy, says Landa.

“She knows everyone’s name, everyone’s story. She has created a community where everyone feels at home.”

Lessons Brought Home Guillaume met her French husband, Nicolas Guillaume, in a Louisiana restaurant in 1998. She was waitressing at night to boost her slender teaching salary; he was a patron. He asked her out. She turned him down—but did invite him to come speak

to her students about his construction career. Today, the couple lives in San Carlos with their three daughters.

“My husband and I like to say we meet in the middle each night in our little bungalow in San Carlos,” she says.

“He builds luxury homes for some of the wealthiest people in the world. I spend my days working with the students and families of East Palo Alto, a community that we love.” The Guillaumes made a conscious choice to send their kids to elementary school in East Palo Alto, in part because of the character they see in hard-working families who are given little, expect nothing and rise above long odds to achieve better lives.

“These are the kids I want my kids to be around,” she says simply. “They work hard, help their families, and know what real problems are.” The other reason for their choice: the Spanish-English immersion program at Los Robles, which has students completely bilingual by third grade. “This is an absolutely wonderful program,” says Guillaume. “Parents who complain about not having a good immersion program in Redwood City or Menlo Park should really check it out.” The Guillaume kids are trilingual: English, French and Spanish.

Like that child who straddled two worlds, Guillaume still lives and breathes the inequities of the world. She knows the quest to change it is very much a work in progress. And, as ever, she sees beauty in the struggle.

“I know how hard things are,” she says. “I also know that it shouldn’t be this hard. But at EPAA we also know how to celebrate, be positive; retain a sense of possibility. I look at my students, and they remind me of myself—highly capable, intelligent. They keep showing us, over and over again, why they are at the top of every level. The inequities of this world are theirs for the changing. And they will do it.” C March 2021 ·

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SPOTLIGHT•

The Price of Progress

By Vlae Kershner

If it seems hard to get around the Peninsula now, just imagine how long it would take to get around the county without its network of freeways and highways.

Still, those thoroughfares came at a cost.

Karen Moresco Busch of Menlo Park experienced that firsthand as a high school student when her family home on Railroad Avenue in Colma came in the path of plans for Interstate 280 around 1961.

“It was a close neighborhood. All of a sudden they took it with eminent domain. In a way, it’s very sad, but Highway 280, we needed that.”

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SPOTLIGHT•

Neighborhoods vanished when freeways came through

A

glimpse of what was lost was provided by San Mateo County Historical Association President Mitch Postel in a January 28 Zoom presentation entitled “Get Out of the Way for the Highway,” featuring slides from a new photo collection.

Caltrans donated the collection, which otherwise would have been thrown away, to the San Mateo County History Museum in Redwood City. It includes 10 boxes of photos, maps, and property listings used to plan routes and acquire right-of-way.

“If you were to take a time machine and go back to 1940 on the Peninsula, you might not even know where you were,” Postel said. “But if you took same time machine and went to 1970, you’d know a

lot. Roads, highways, schools, shopping centers materialized largely within that 30year span.”

Roads to the Suburbs The county mushroomed from 111,800 people in 1940 to 556,000 in 1970, even faster than California’s overall growth from 7 million to 20 million. Daly City alone grew sevenfold.

Postwar suburbanization occurred nationwide as people bought cars and moved out of crowded cities. The Bay Area’s expansion was particularly rapid.

“Our growth was largely people coming from other places all over the country. A lot of veterans had seen San Francisco during World War II and desired

Photo: The business area of East Palo Alto.

Photos courtesy San Mateo County History Museum

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• to come back. The airport was a tremendous source of jobs. While San Francisco was a source, our growth was based on people coming from all over the country and all over the world,” Postel said.

To accommodate them, better roads were needed.

Highway 101 had stoplights and no median strip and was considered one of the most dangerous in the country, earning the nickname “Bloody Bayshore.”

The Division of Highways (forerunner of Caltrans) transformed it into a freeway in stages between 1947 and 1958, eliminating head-on crashes, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Before that, you could cross Bayshore Highway at several points—Palo Alto and East Palo Alto were much more linked up,” Postel said.

A Freeway Divide Photos show a thriving downtown East Palo Alto along the four-lane highway, including the art deco Auten’s Restaurant with a rocket-like tower at the corner of Bayshore and University Avenue.

Because Palo Alto banned alcohol sales due to land restrictions placed by Stanford University, restaurants and bars gravitated to the East Palo Alto side of San Francisquito Creek. Auten’s special dinner

SPOTLIGHT•

boasted a top sirloin steak, soup, salad, ice cream and coffee for $1.85.

It was demolished for freeway construction in the mid-1950s, along with a service station and a Spanish-style house on University appraised at $14,430, a high price in those days.

“East Palo Alto exists on both sides of the Bayshore, but after the freeway came through, the west side became known as Whiskey Gulch,” Postel said. “It really did destroy part of the sense of community of East Palo Alto.”

In his book “From Frontier to Suburb,” the late College of San Mateo historian Alan Hynding outlined the connection between the freeway and racism: “…(T)he Bayshore Freeway isolated the town from other communities to the west. As business investors, apprehensive about the black population and the high incidence of poverty and crime, avoided the area, the employment problem worsened. Like Watts and other West Coast black enclaves, East Palo Alto had become a suburban ghetto of deteriorating neighborhoods, where unemployment ran at about 40 percent … Poverty, unemployment and a heavy turnover in the population left the town without any real economic or political base, and without much civic pride.”

Downtown East Palo Alto in 1947.

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Also taken was a portion of the Charles Weeks Poultry Colony, a chicken farm established in the 1920s as one of six such communes, known as runnymeads.

The commune was mostly deserted by that time anyhow, Postel said.

In Redwood City, the effects of Bayshore widening were also notable, if less dire. The old highway had run along what is now Veterans Boulevard, south of the current path.

The Last Rodeo The Peninsula Celebration Association had built a rodeo grounds for a two-day rodeo, part of the annual Fourth of July festivities.

Photos show a grandstand at the side of the old highway, along with a racetrack, a hot dog booth, and a Wheel of Chance.

Construction of the freeway cut the grounds in two, Postel said. The rodeo ended in 1963. Proceeds from the sale of the land were placed in a fund to support the annual parade and fireworks, which continues to this day.

In San Mateo, widening of the Bayshore and the need for an interchange with Highway 92 spelled the end for Henry’s Garage, which included an auto wrecking business, service station, and tavern. Also demolished was the private San Mateo Airport, which had been in

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SPOTLIGHT•

Private San Mateo Airport had been in service since at least 1947 but never got title to the land. It was also removed to make way for Highway 92.

A San Bruno house circa 1961

the area since at least 1947 but had never gotten title to its land.

Until the late 1960s, when community members blocked Interstate 380 from being extended to the coast, the Division of Highways simply appraised and took whatever was in the path.

“Early on, zero environmental reports were required. There was very little criticism of any of this development.

By the time we got around to building 380, it became the focus of the early environmental movement and the thought of development down the coast was abhorrent to many people,” Postel said.

Interstate 380 was originally designed to connect the Bayshore to Highway 1, but only got as far as 280, less than two miles.

Among the properties taken was a naval base across the street from the Tanforan racetrack. Some 81 homes were taken, among them one on Seventh Avenue in San Bruno for $10,760 in 1967.

Henry's Garage was demolished to make way for Highway 92.

Taken but Not Built “Montara was maybe the saddest case. A dozen homes were taken for the freeway to bypass Devil’s Slide. These houses were taken and demolished despite the fact they were never needed for construction. Very few of the condemned homes were moved, most were demolished,” Postel said.

While the San Mateo coast never got the direct freeway connection that would have fueled suburbanization, it wasn’t immune from construction. In Half Moon Bay, Highway 1 (then State Route 56) ran through Main Street before being rerouted west. “That’s still the way it is. You can imagine traffic if it still ran through the center of town,” Postel said.

In Daly City and Colma, I-280 construction proceeded along the original San Francisco to San Jose rail line, which had been downgraded to a branch after the bayside cutoff route was completed in 1906. Parts of the line were repurposed

as right-of-way for BART while 280 obliterated Railroad Avenue alongside it.

Among the buildings taken was Colma’s community center.

Karen Busch, who lived on Railroad Avenue, remembered her vanished neighborhood as a friendly one full of working people, living up to the cemetery city’s tongue-in-cheek motto, “It’s great to be alive in Colma.”

Her house, rented for $50 a month, was one of the few that was moved rather than be destroyed, but her family departed for Watsonville.

She showed photos of the residents’ farewell party, a potluck featuring a cake with a railroad decoration.

“I don’t think I cried. It’s just what happened.”

C

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M I C R O C L I M AT E •

Redwood City Woman’s Club Hoping for National Honor Members of the Redwood City Woman’s Club are awaiting the verdict on whether their clubhouse at 149 Clinton St. will make it onto the National Register of Historic Places. The City Council designated the one-story Craftsman-style building a city landmark last November, and in January, the California State Historical Commission voted to send the nomination on to Washington, D.C. If the application is approved, the clubhouse will automatically be placed on the California Register of Historical Resources.

The roots of feminism and sisterhood locally can trace right to the front door of the clubhouse, which was built in 1911 to provide women a needed social outlet. Once they get out of the house, member Francis Fitzgerald wrote in a 1910 newspaper editorial, “The monotony of house work is broken …. The busy housewife who attends club meetings is refreshed, uplifted, rested and inspired.”

Added Corresponding Secretary Blanche Morse, “Gradually it will be discovered that ‘home’ and ‘solitary confinement’ are not synonymous.” When those pioneering women formed the Redwood City Woman’s Club, there were some 19 lodges in town. It was the only one that was not an auxiliary of one of the popular men-only fraternal organizations of the day, such as the Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World. From a myriad of early 20th century women’s groups, it appears that the woman’s club and the Native Daughters of the Golden West are the only two that still exist, according to architectural historian William Kostura, who wrote the informative and entertaining National Register application.

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approved, would bring the city’s total to nine (including one historic district downtown.)

The Woman's Club on Clinton Street and, below, a group shot of original members in 1911.

The wood-shingled landmark was built on a 75-by-130-foot lot, evidently donated by the owner/developer of the Dingee Park subdivision if the women built a clubhouse. They raised the funds (about $2,900 initially; the building has been added onto and remodeled over the decades.) Members wanted to develop their intellects, and meeting topics ranged from “Practical Results of Right Thinking” to “The Decay of Our Merchant Marine.”

Club members were also active in the drive to get women the right to vote, according to member Dee Eva, who worked on the nomination research. At its peak in 1949, there were about 300 members; the number declined but is rebounding and is up to about 70.

“We felt that recognition of the clubhouse as a significant building in Redwood City’s history was long overdue,” says President Elaine Park, “based on its status as one of the first buildings erected in the Dingee Park area and the role of the club in Redwood City since our formation in 1909.” The National Register listing, if

In a contest for who’s got the biggest heart in town, Steve and Tami Pellizzari would seem the walkaway winners.

From January until just after Valentine’s Day, a 13-foothigh red heart stood front and center in the yard of their Edgewood Park area home, beaming out love in red and pink LED lights. Steve is the president of the Redwood City electrical contracting firm Atlas-Pellizzari. Brother Ron Pellizzari and other co-workers created the outsized romantic statement in PVC pipe several years ago at the shop and two of them install it every January.

There’s a back story: In 2009, family friend Richard Philpot noticed that neighbor John Meany’s tree on Oak Creek Lane in San Carlos was in the shape of a heart.

Philpot pitched an idea to decorate the tree with lights for Valentine’s Day —a 13-foothigh heart with a white arrow through it.

They both built it and the heart went up every year—to gratifying feedback. After the Meany family moved in 2014, Philpott says the new residents weren’t interested in carrying on the tradition.

Ron Pellizzari

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Steve and Tami Pellizzari

The Pellizzers took it from there and have been putting up their jumbo heart in the front yard for about five years. Reaction from neighbors has especially heartfelt in 2021. “I don’t know if there’s more people out walking because of the Covid,” Steve says, “but it really has attracted a lot of attention this year.” He adds, “I think if it makes people happy it makes us happy.”

Downtown Redwood City may have been rather deserted over the past few months, but that hasn’t kept the hardy members of the Downtown Streets Team from their appointed clean-up rounds – searching for litter first and foremost, but for opportunities for themselves along the way. Begun in Palo Alto in 2005 and with branches all over Northern California, the nonprofit came to Redwood City in October 2019 to beautify the city and help homeless and low-income people build a foundation for a better life.

The organization recruits local “team members” who pick up trash – from paper cups to cigarette butts and occasionally needles. They are readily identifiable by their bright yellow, blue, green and purple T-shirts as they go out with orange buckets,

M I C R O C L I M AT E •

pushcarts and “pickers.” Monday through Friday, they report at 8 a.m. behind the main library and then break out into teams covering a territory roughly between Veterans Boulevard and El Camino Real and from Whipple Avenue to Woodside Road.

Classified as volunteers, they can receive a non-cash stipend for the hours they put in, which can be channeled to pay for basics like rent.

About half of current participants are living on the streets, and the others have some form of temporary housing, according to Project Manager Matty Shirer; some, in fact, got into housing through the various resources his organization connects them with – food, clothing and even help writing a résumé. Shirer finds it gratifying to see people broken by the challenges of life change so much. “I think a lot of people come up against so many walls that they stop believing in themselves or that change is really possible,” he says.

Among them is Kimberly H-Smith, 28, who grew up in Mountain View but ended up homeless because of some “personal issues” after her mother died. “I got stuck in a rut and I thought that was what I deserved,” she says, but the Downtown Streets Team “gave me a chance to show that I can improve myself even if I’m on the street. They didn’t give up on me.” Promoted to a team manager about six months ago, she puts her earnings toward her Section 8 housing rental and other bills.

Now 39, Steve Martin, became homeless at the age of 16 when his grandparents died and he “didn’t have parents that could take care of me.” With no place to go, he says he “pretty much raised myself since then.” A carpenter, Martin says he’d had trouble finding jobs because of the Covid and appreciates being able to get work thanks to the nonprofit. In fact, he used his skills to remake a shipping container and a shed with shelving, a door and signage to accommodate supplies. Of the Downtown

Streets Team, he says, “You can come here, not to judge, a place you can come and expect to work, move up if you like, and there’s plenty of resources.”

The city provides some financial support for the organization, which is also tackling the clean-up of some homeless encampment “hot spots.” At the end of their four-hour Wednesday shifts, team members meet to share what’s going on in their lives, followed by lunch, catered on a recent afternoon by Street Life Ministries.

Luis Sanchez did Spanish translation for the non-English-speaking members of the team. The Redwood City resident says he’s done all kinds of work over the years, but a fall off a ladder while picking peaches put him on a downhill trajectory. He broke both wrists, and “with both hands, you can’t do nothing.” Eventually Sanchez became homeless. Praise from passers-by is one bonus from working on the Downtown Streets team: “I like it when people come up and say ‘Thank you,’” Sanchez says. “Yeah, it feels good.”

Right: Project Manager Matty Shirer and outreach worker Robin Vaka.

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C H A N G I N G C L I M AT E •

Photos courtesy of San Mateo County

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C H A N G I N G C L I M AT E •

The Ethics of Scoring a Covid Shot A shot in the arm jabs the conscience when there’s not enough vaccine for everyone

By Don Shoecraft

With Covid-19 vaccine hard to come by, unease, even guilt, that they may have done something wrong is affecting those who got the vaccine. And those who didn’t.

To begin, consider this intimate account of obtaining the vaccine, my own.

I do not know the private individuals responsible for me getting the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine on Jan. 26. It was unclear at the time whether I qualified.

It was administered by a health care organization of which I am not a member.

My health care provider was not offering shots at the time, for anyone, let alone the target group of healthcare workers and those over age 75.

M

y spouse had received a vaccination appointment through her health care provider. It had come to her through someone who knew of the availability of the vaccine and shared the information privately. Even so, I was vaccinated ahead of my spouse, who had obtained an appointment 10 days before I received an email from the friend of a friend and would get the shot 10 days after I got mine.

An Ethical Dilemma

Did I do the right thing? Or did I, as San Mateo County Health Officer Scott Morrow, M.D. put in his lengthy and emotionally charged letter to the public of Jan. 19, “jump the line” and receive a dose that could have saved the life of “some 89-yearold widow”?

I fit vaccine guidelines when I received my shot, but, still, it’s a devastating indictment. Conversations with others who stressed over if and when and where they might receive the vaccine show many have faced or are facing it, too.

Experts looking back in hindsight in the future may be able to resolve the issue, but in the moment, in a period of changing medical guidelines, fluctuating rates of disease and inadequate supply of vaccine, it’s impossible.

Of the many stories about scoring the vaccine, few are the same. Those who succeeded in the prescribed way — submitting an online form or calling published phone numbers — appear less common than those who got lucky, or who happened to be in the right place at the right time, or who happened to know people.

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• If it sounds chaotic, it’s because chaos at the top is forcing those at the end of the line, the counties, to adapt to chaos.

Epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the first critical vaccine decision when they were forced to choose: vaccinate to minimize deaths or minimize spread? Lives of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands depended on whether priority went to preventing deaths, in which case age would be the determining factor, or spread, in which case age would not be the dominant factor. They chose to minimize deaths: People over 65 account for most hospitalizations and over 80 percent of Covid-19 deaths.

Priority by Age Because vaccine supplies were limited, the age range was set at 75 and above unless sufficient vaccine were available to vaccinate those 65 or older. Healthcare workers also got priority in the effort to keep hospitals open.

This was the setup: Under its 1a guidelines, the federal government would buy all vaccine and allocate it to states, the states in turn would allocate to localities — in California’s case, counties. Frontline vaccinators would receive doses in the allocated quantity directly from the federal government.

In San Mateo County the setup created three vaccine streams.

One stream inoculates veterans, the elderly in long-term care facilities and healthcare workers. The Veterans Administration and two pharmacy chains, CVS and Walgreens, receive vaccine to inoculate that population. This channel, especially the VA, has operated without much public complaining, presumably because it has been efficient.

The second channel allocates to San Mateo County itself. The county is the community safety net, the healthcare agency of last resort. Its stream goes to the

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C H A N G I N G C L I M AT E •

Epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the first critical vaccine decision when they were forced to choose: vaccinate to minimize deaths or minimize spread? most vulnerable population, to the county hospital and to small community clinics usually run by nonprofits.

The third allocation goes to “MCEs,” multi-county entities, the major community healthcare providers. In San Mateo County, Kaiser, Sutter/Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Dignity Health and AHMC/ Seton comprise this group. Long-term, the plan is to give MCEs the largest number of doses, but for now they receive sometimes a quarter of what counties get.

Puzzling Numbers Each MCE tries to match up its vaccine supply with its members, leading to some neck-snapping discrepancies. In mid-February Dignity Health had enough supply to vaccinate 65 and older, while Kaiser had enough only for 75-plus and Sutter had not even begun vaccinating.

Complaints about long telephone hold times or websites that crash or have no appointments available probably concern one of these MCEs. At the delivery end, once it’s in hand the vaccine reverses the official dynamic. Where the CDC guidance is to vaccinate the elderly and healthcare workers, state guidance can vary week-to-week — partly because it has little advance information about how many doses it will receive. When it arrives locally, the supply is unevenly distributed among the supply streams. On the front lines, if vaccine be-

comes available and the choice is use it or lose it, the 1a age guideline appears to be holding, but the healthcare worker guideline is slipping.

Having vaccine to spare in a vaccine desert happens.

Even casual conversation turns up many people who secured a vaccination appointment, found another because it was sooner or closer and did not, or could not find a way to cancel the first.

For whatever reason, a west side medical facility last month at the end of the day found itself with 40 no-shows and 40 unclaimed doses. The physician contacted churches, who in turn passed the news about the doses to whomever they chose, however they chose.

The physician confirmed the essentials of the account but declined to be identified and demurred when asked for additional detail except to say the 40 shots found arms. In most cases, background for this story came from individuals the same way: Use the information but don’t use the name. Covid vaccine nervousness, shyness — or guilt — may be misplaced, but it also may be justified.

Avoiding Waste The state of Texas asked Houston physician Dr. Hasan Gokal to set up a vaccination site with instructions to dose those in the 1a category and not waste vaccine. At closing, one vial remained. A last patient arrived and the seal on the last vial was punctured, which meant Dr. Gokal had six hours to find arms for the 10 doses left in the vial. At midnight, after hours of hustle, he’d found nine patients with 15 minutes to go and no one left in line. He gave the tenth to his wife, who had a medical condition making her vulnerable but who did not meet the age guideline.

Dr. Gokal was fired and the Houston district attorney filed charges for misuse of the $135 vial of vaccine. The judge threw

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out the charges, but the state did not give him back his job, claiming he had violated the federal guideline on equity: Too many recipients had Indian-sounding names.

Fundamentally, vaccination is an equity equation, equity being a pillar of the federal government’s Covid response. A select Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices aligned the CDC’s guidelines with an ethics pledge to “maximize benefits and minimize harms, promote justice, and mitigate health inequities.”

“Equity” as a goal runs throughout the program from Washington on down — San Mateo’s Health Department declares three banner vaccine program principles: Safety, Transparency and Equity.

Inequity can be simple to detect. Consider the vaccination appointment process.

It can take just a phone, if one is willing to spend 10 hours holding, waiting to be told no appointments are available, as happened to one source. But it still takes a phone.

C H A N G I N G C L I M AT E •

Deciding What’s Equal Online registration takes a computer, internet access and, depending on the website, substantial technical skill. Some application processes require an ID image or a picture of a vaccination or health record.

For that one needs a smartphone or even a digital scanner at a minimum.

The county works hard to reduce inequality, discloses data consistent with its transparency principle and reaches out to bridge ethnic and racial gaps where it can. It publishes volumes of data proving Covid kills minorities and the poor, particularly Hispanics, disproportionately.

The graphic shown here takes a different approach. Is any one area getting disproportionately more vaccine? If so, what may account for that? We looked at how age of population and wealth correlate to what percentage of a city’s residents received vaccination.

Age and household income track — young populations haven’t had long enough income-earning careers to catch up with retirees or those in career primes.

Vaccinations do not. Portola Valley has two percent more residents in the 70-79 age range as Half Moon Bay but twice the vaccination rate. Atherton’s proportion of those aged 70-79 is nearly the same as Millbrae’s, but its vaccination rate also is double.

The graph, which was put together from county information, is not perfect. It does not track another possible variable, proportion of population who are healthcare workers. Charting populations of doctors and hospital workers might be illuminating. C Note: The county website at www.SMCHEALTH.org is a trove of Covid information with links to many resources, including performance data and mass vaccination and testing sites and schedules.

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AROUND TOWN•

Union Cemetery Roses Get Pruned Volunteers from groups including the Woodside Master Gardeners, the Redwood City Woman’s Club and the local Daughters of the American Republic chapter turned out recently to join members of the Historic Union Cemetery Association in pruning the rose bushes that grow throughout the landmark cemetery.

Altogether, the volunteers contributed more than 100 hours working on four Saturdays in a row in January and February getting the roses at the cemetery on Woodside Road into shape. For information and a look at the cemetery founded in 1859, check out facebook.com/UnionCemeteryRWC.

Bravemaker Welcomes a New Board Member Keren Southall, an American actress, dancer, model, entrepreneur and mental health advocate, has joined the board of directors of local film production company Bravemaker. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Southall began her film and commercial acting career at a young age, working with Pixar, Apple, Visa, Stanford, and Coca Cola. Southall has spent the past five years working with Pro Athletes, Fitness Enthusiasts, and Children of all ages to help push past their mental limitations to succeed in their physical accomplishments. For the past few years, Southall has partnered with BraveMaker on various film projects and hosted live shows.

28 · CLIMATE · March 2021

Port Open for Drive-in Movies

The drive-in theater made a comeback at the Port of Redwood City in February where families enjoyed the movie experience of yesteryear. All that was required were a vehicle, reservation, and an FM radio tuner. Movies at the Port provided a safe throwback movie experience in the comfort and safety of ones own car, with online ticket sales, contactless check-in, safe physical distance between vehicles, limited capacity, frequent cleaning and sanitatized restrooms.

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HISTORY by Jim Clifford•

George Whittell Put the “Play” in Playboy F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the rich are different from you and me,” to which Ernest Hemingway famously retorted: “Yes. They have more money.” George Whittell was rich, very rich, and was certainly different, so different he had his own zoo on his Woodside estate.

Born into a wealthy San Francisco family in 1882, Whittell had the smarts to sell off his inherited stock just before Wall Street crashed in 1929 and invest in gold.

He died in 1969 in Redwood City when he was worth $40 million. In between, he lived a life that has been variously described as “colorful,” “eccentric” and “flamboyant.” Check all of the above.

One historian called Whittell a “kingsized playboy,” which is as good a summation as any. Another said Whittell liked “fast things, including cars, airplanes and women.” Classic Duesenbergs were among his autos while the airplanes ranged from a seaplane to a four-engine Boeing aircraft that had three lounges, four bedrooms and four baths.

According to court documents filed in a lawsuit involving a tax squabble with Whittell, in 1909 his father built the 50-acre Woodside estate, which featured a large two-story house and additional structures, including servant cottages, a gatekeeper’s lodge, and a dairy. Eventually the land on Kings Mountain Road included a theater that could seat an audience of 100, a swimming pool, and a six-car garage. There was also a tunnel that reportedly allowed Whittell’s party guests to flee arrest during Prohibition.

Today the estate belongs to entrepreneur Mike Markkula, an early investor in Apple Computers.

Photo courtesy of the Tahoe Quarterly

Off to the Circus While Markkula has often been called “reclusive,” Whittell was just the opposite.

For instance, he ran away from home and joined the Barnum and Bailey circus when he was a teenager, which early on showed his love of animals, clearly displayed later when he left the bulk of his estate to various animal welfare organizations.

Like Hemingway, he served as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, the setting for the author’s “A Farewell to Arms.”

Whittell joined the American Army when the United States entered the conflict. After the war, in which Whittell was decorated by the French government, he returned to Woodside where his behavior can be charitably regarded as strange or bizarre. Newspapers reported his estate was home to a menagerie that included a lion, elephant, giraffe and a cheetah, the latter often seen seated in the passenger seat of Whittell’s car. Thalia Lubin of the Woodside History Committee told Climate that her husband, who grew up in Woodside, remembers Whittell “driving

around town in his convertible with animals in the back seat.” He also recalled the loud roaring of the animals at night.

The lion, then a five-month-old cub, got Whittell into serious trouble at a Half Moon Bay hotel in 1934 when it attacked a man, according to the late Half Moon Bay historian June Morrall. In her book ”Half Moon Bay Memories,” Morrall wrote that the elegantly dressed millionaire got out of his car with the lion on a leash “ … as though he were walking a pet dog.” The man sued, but his case was dismissed, even though Whittell conceded the lion may have inflicted “a scratch.” Morrall wrote that Whittell’s defense included his claiming he was a resident of Nevada and was safe from California litigation.

A Home in Nevada Whittell split his time between California and Nevada, which he used as tax haven. In 1938 he built the Thunderbird Lodge on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

The Nevada estate included a structure to house Mingo the elephant. The lodge is now a museum that offers docent-led tours to guests who arrive by boat.

According to the archives at the lodge, most of Whittell’s animals ended up in San Francisco’s Fleishhacker Zoo during World War II. However, he did keep many dogs and birds until his death.

“He entertained a lot of people until his 70s,” an archives spokesperson said. “He just became less likely to leave Woodside due to his decline in health.”

Whittell was married three times. His third wife, Elia, was with him when he passed away. C

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TOGETHER, WE DESIGN PLACES THAT INSPIRE PEOPLE

851 MAIN STREET

30 · CLIMATE · March 2021

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The Redwood City Downtown • C L I M A T E

Gems

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Ralphs Vacuum & Sewing Center !

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Well folks, we moved. Sort of. For the time being we will be located at 2011 Broadway until our new super store at Woodside Plaza is completed.

So stay tuned — and stay safe!

• Sales & Service • Bags, Belts & Filters • Sewing Classes

2011 Broadway • 650-368-2841 • ralphsvacnsew.com

SUE LEHR MITCHELL Realtor

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EXPERIENCE MATTERS

650.619.9311 suelehrmitchell@gmail.com suelehrmitchell.com DRE# 01087715

SPONSOR AND CHAIR, HOMETOWN HOLIDAYS Downtown Redwood City Office located at 555 Middlefield Rd. Each office is independently owned and operated.

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avies

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daviesappliance.com • (650) 366-5728 • 1580 El Camino Real, Redwood City, CA 94063 Hours: Tuesday - Thursday 8:30am - 6pm • Friday & Saturday 8:30am - 5pm • Closed Sunday/Monday