Candidate for
Council Member; City of Laguna Woods

• I am an optimist.

• I lived overseas in Israel for 3 1/2 years and was exposed to many different cultures, customs and languages. Once I spoke the language I went to work for Bank Leumi in the Foreign Currency Division, working exclusively with Barclays Bank in London and South Africa. This gave me an interest in International markets, for which I later took advanced college courses.

• I owned my own consumer products business for more than 10 years. I started small doing the inventory, advertising and budgets myself. I became one of the top representatives for the company out-selling many in my region; I received recognition at the Company's national convention. Later I reached out to other business owners of different products and we formed a network to offer our clients a fuller range of products and services. We became the 'go to' place for people to call first. We could all reach more people than any of us could reach alone. It was very successful.

• I was going to school for Financial Planning and Portfolio Analysis during this time, changing my business to a more mail order model to accommodate school. The stock market drove my curiosity, and was a lot of fun: I enjoyed researching companies, and the International currency exchange I'd learned dovetailed with my new expanding knowledge.

• I went to work for a Board and Care for chronically ill psychotic and schizophrenic patients. I became a Program Director with an out-patient hospitalization program for those patients. We worked with three hospitals and many different diagnosis patients. Here I learned "crisis management" skills, like how to diffuse potentially dangerous situations and how to work with difficult people in stressful situations. It was a most rewarding job. I got to touch lives and that became everything for me. It is one major reason why I decided to run for City Council.

• While Treasurer for the Earthworks club, I was one of the leaders who started the Pilot Recycling Program in an effort to bring real recycling to Laguna Woods Village. We collected trash from several multiple story buildings for months and months. We were able to keep contaminates low and were successful enough that the City stepped in and offered to buy us 50, then 100 bins, to expand the Pilot Program in the Village. I was fortunate enough to organize the placement of those bins, and again, we were successful in our educational efforts to keep contaminents low as the Program expanded to the whole of the Village. I also helped write and distribute much of the educational materials used: we advertised on the local cable channel, the local newspaper and went door to door. The program, now a permenent part of Village life, is up and running well.

• I was appointed to the city's prestigeous 'Greening of the Woods" committee and have served for three years. My husband and I became trained CERT (Certified Emergency Response Team) volunteers and I was also trained in TIP (Trauma Intervention Program).

• I am an advisor to the Third Mutual's Maintaineance and Construction Committee, Landscape and Recycling committees, and the Candidate Information Committee. I attend most Third Mutual Board meetings, and watch most GRF and United Mutual meetings. And, of course, the City Council meetings.

• I am a vice president of the Garden Villa Association, and serve as a Building Captain and Regional Representative.

• I organized an event in the Village for the group "350.org" to raise awareness of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere. We placed golf carts in the shape of the number 350, took a photo from a manlift and it was shown in New York's Times Square and got attention and publicity worldwide.

• I belong to many clubs here, among them: Concerned Citizens, where I did street theater in support of senior services; Vilage Cannabis, for seniors' rights to alternative medication; also Friends of the Village and the Community Civic Association.