SPHS junior Quincy Sakai plans cultural mural for Gold Award

her friends in 7th grade, and carried this passion for origami making into her gold award project. Working in collaboration with the South Pas library, Sakai started an Origami Club for kids which she leads once a week. At the club, Sakai leads a different folding projects and reads some of a culture story. In a recent meeting in november prior to holiday break, club members learned to fold jumping frogs.

“Frog pronounced “kaeru” in Japanese is pronounced the same way as the word for return, so it was sort of like wishing the kids off for a good break and safe return for when we had meetings again in January.” Sakai explained. The club also spreads the word about the mural she will be painting, and the opportunity for the community to contribute to the mural by painting cranes.

“[The club] is to help children to find a way to discover more cultures and also just to have fun.” Sakai said.

Story Rose Vandevelde

Photo Samantha Shiroishi

A Junior at SPHS, Quincy Sakai encourages the community to connect with their own heritage through a community mural in her gold service award project. Sakai first joined the Girls Scouts program in first grade with her friends, and has contributed to the community through girls scouts service projects and volunteer opportunities ever since.

“It just a way to meet new friends at first - as we got older it started getting into more community based stuff, and I just decided to stick with it because I really liked the group I was with.” Sakai said.

Peacock removal in South Pasadena

The South Pasadena City Council has begun the process of relocating the city’s peacocks after years of residents complaining about the problem. Citizens have been voicing their concerns about numerous disturbances such as vandalism of vehicles, defecation on lawns, torn up gardens, and screeching from the birds.

Resident Shlomo Nitzani has taken matters into his own hands by starting a petition nine months ago to relocate the peacocks to other cities. The petition called on the City Council to relocate the birds to other cities in California.

A gold award project requires over 80 hours of time spent researching or executing the scout’s project in addition to the reflections that the scout must write about their project following completion. A girl scout can begin their gold award project starting freshman year of high school and ending senior year.

“It was a difficult decision at first because I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, a lot of the projects I was hearing about at the time were more science related… and one of the really popular methods for the take action portion was building a website and I wanted to stay away from that.” Sakai said

Sakai began learning origami as a hobby with two of

He collected a little over 200 signatures. Nitzani has had a lot of problems with the peafowls, the generic name for peacocks and peahens, for over seven years. He also wanted to reassure other citizens that he and his supporters are not killing the peafowls.

Nitzani said, “Eradicating is killing them. We are not killing peacocks, we are relocating them.”

South Pasadena adopted a new Peafowl Management Plan on Oct. 5, 2022. This plan outlined an annual census and review of the peafowl population, a no-feeding ordinance, with a potential fine ranging from $100 to $1000 alongside possible imprisonment for up to six months, and the removal of the birds from the city.

The peacocks are mainly disturbing the residential area near Monterey Hills Elementary School, where many

The “Take Action” portion of Sakai’s gold award project will be a community mural which she will paint the base of. The mural will include painted paper cranes that any volunteers can help to create.

“There’s this story - this really old Japanese myth that if you fold a thousand cranes, you get granted one wish… So I kinda want to take that idea into the mural and kind’ve extend it a little bit with the origami club.” Sakai said. The design of the mural includes flowers, and a muted background that features patterns peeks out from behind petals or edging out of the side. Leaves surround the delicately drawn flowers, and paper cranes float across the frame.

“Ultimately, I’d like people to feel more encourage to residents are taking their issues up with the South Pasadena City Council. The council agrees with citizens that there is a problem with the peafowls but residents have expressed their exasperation with the slow process. A month after Nitzani’s petition, the council hosted an open forum, with backers of removal and those who opposed in attendance.

Many other residents are worried at how the population of peafowls is growing “exponentially”. A 2021 census previously determined the peafowls were at a population of 36. A current census, from Dec. of 2022 counted 106 peafowls. There are no natural predators to take care of the peafowls, though coyotes have been known to attack peafowls on occasion.

Residents hope that, this time, city council will relocate the peafowls once and for all.