This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Sonoma Kiwanis Club giving dictionaries to all Sonoma Valley third graders. This year also marks the year that their first third grade recipients will graduate from high school.
Ron Gruetter has led the Kiwanis Club’s dictionary program since its inception he and his wife purchase all the dictionaries and then hand-write each child’s name in his or her book. He goes to each school and presents the dictionaries to each student on behalf of the Kiwanis Club.
Back row: Chair of Kiwanis Club Dictionary Program Ron Greutter; Kiwanis Club President Bob Noble; Woodland Star Administrators Chip Romer and Sheila Reilly; Kiwanis member and Sonoma County Board of Education Trustee John Musilli; Kiwanis member Molly Fedorchak; SVUSD Trustee Nicole Abate Ducarroz;
Middle row: Woodland Star Third Grade teacher Carol Nimick; Ryan Pritel; Veronica Love; Maeve O’Reilly; Olivia Gregory; Randy Sou; Marco Schamoni; Jonas Ducarroz; Julian Ducarroz;
Front row: Ebony Davis; Leon McCarthy; Elena Golubovich; Azadeh Pournaderi; Javier Ramos; Bodhi Hope; James Paul Domizio; Remi Mansour; Japhu Koch; Sean Prasad; Nicholas Speich;
Very front row, right: Jessica Tobin
Ryan lely/ Sonoma Valley Sun
‘tis the season to be careful
Thanks to an unlocked car, a lazy burglar can become Santa in reverse, stealing out of your house with bags of wrapped or unwrapped treasure. Last week, certain burglars hit six unlocked cars in one night. In one car they found the keys, and were about to drive away when the owner’s father heard them and came to a window and scared them away. In other cases, they found the garage door remote, and simply let themselves in. In one house, an alert dog frightened them away, in another the police noticed the opened garage door and checked, frightening them away before they could steal anything. However, in the 100 block of Manor Drive, suspects again found an unlocked car, got into the house with the remote garage door opener (while the residents were sleeping), and took an iPod and the contents of a purse, and left in the owners’ Durango.
Advice from the Sonoma Police Department is basic common sense: be cautious, lock the car doors every time, and never leave valuables in the car. A car, with items inside, is attractive to a thief, and when people are busy, they get careless. Sergeant Dave Thompson said, “People are leaving gifts in their cars, in plain view. They’re leaving packages and bags—things that say, ‘I just went shopping.’ Thieves get the message and get to work.”
Disaster plan
At last week’s City Council meeting, a speaker asked whether the city has a disaster plan. The answer is yes. The plan resides with the city manager, and Vice Mayor Brown said that he hopes the incoming city manger, Linda Kelly, will take a look at the current plan and make recommendations for revisions to the council. Kelly is particularly suited to the task having been two days into her job as Fairfax City Manager when the 2006 flood inundated that town. Fairfax now has an extensive disaster plan and detailed information available on the Town of Fairfax website.
Sy Lenz is Sonoma’s new Alcalde
Mayor Joanne Sanders said she had been given three names of highly recommended candidates and with great difficulty had chosen one, Sy Lenz. She said she’s known him for 20 years and he’s always doing good deeds behind the scenes. “He’s special to me,” she said, “because he has been very involved in helping the homeless. When it’s driving rain, late at night, and the phone rings, he’s the kid of guy who’ll go out and find a place for someone to stay. He’s an unsung hero.”
Seymour (Sy) Lenz moved with his wife, Harriet, to Sonoma from the Washington D.C. area nearly 20 years ago after retiring from the Air Force. He got started in community service by joining the Kiwanis Club and has active ever since. Along with his work as president of the board of Sonoma Overnight Shelters, Lenz is also president of the board of Congregation Shir Shalom.
Bus hits Buick nobody hurt
At the corner of Broadway and West MacArthur Street, last Wednesday, a 1978 Buick Regal had a run-in with a No. 30 Sonoma County Transit bus. Deputies responding to a call around 11:30 a.m. found the side of the bus seriously dented, and the front end of the Buick crushed. The driver of the car and the bus driver and her lone passenger were all uninjured by the impact. The collision was called an accident.
