Featured - page 47

San Mateo County officials are “urging compassion” now that passengers from the Grand Princess cruise ship will be temporarily housed at a private San Carlos hotel.

The passengers need care, but not hospitalization, according to a statement by the City of San Carlos. The statement did not name the hotel nor the number of patients who will be housed there.

“We have been assured by federal and state authorities that the individuals now temporarily housed in San Carlos pose no health or safety risks to our residents or visitors,” County Manager Mike Callagy said in a statement. “They are now in a controlled environment managed and protected by the federal government.”

San Mateo County Supervisor Don Horsley, whose District 3 includes San Carlos, said the County has a “humanitarian responsibility to assist during this health crisis.”

“These passengers have to go someplace,” Horsley said. “We will do everything we can to help and protect our citizenry from exposure.”

For more information regarding the coronavirus, visit San Mateo County Health at www.smchealth.org/coronavirus or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at www.cdc.gov. For non-medical related questions regarding the coronavirus, call the County call-center (open 24/7) by dialing 2-1-1.

Photo credit: California National Guard; description: Guardian Angels, a group of highly trained medical personal, with the 129th Rescue Wing, working alongside individuals from the CDC on the GrandPrincess cruise ship to test passengers as the ship was located off the coast of California. The ship later docked in Oakland so that passengers could be transported off into care and quarantine.

News that a replica of World War I German flying ace Manfred von Richthofen’s blazing red triplane was being built in San Carlos triggered recollections of the city’s brush with another famous flyer from the “war to end all war” – Eddie Rickenbacker, dubbed America’s “Ace of Aces.” 

Note that Rickenbacker’s claim to fame has the qualifier “America” attached to it. Von Richthofen, whose plane has been brought back to life at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, was credited with 80 kills between 1916 and 1918 when he was shot out of the sky over France. Rickenbacker had 26 kills, but it must be pointed out that the United States didn’t enter the war until 1917. Still, that’s a pretty impressive record for such a short time in the deadly skies of the Western Front.  

Rickenbacker, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his combat exploits, lived an impressive life in many fields. He was a self-made man who blazed trails in the early days of auto racing as well as aviation. He set a land speed record of 134 miles an hour in 1914 at Daytona and went on to buy the Indianapolis Speedway. He also brought an airline, but it was his survival skills that captured the admiration of the public. Not only did he escape death in World War I, his luck continued on to World War II when he spent 24 days and nights floating in a rubber raft after the bomber he was on crashed in the Pacific on an inspection tour.  

Rickenbacker’s local connection came in 1921 when he flew across the nation, a flight that started in Redwood City on May 26 and ended two days later at Bolling Field in Washington D. C., a record-setting transcontinental venture that covered 3,000 miles, according to the Air Force website.  Rickenbacker wrote about the flight in his autobiography called simply “Rickenbacker: an Autobiography.”  The flight was made in a DH-4, a two-seater British biplane, actually a couple of them. The DH-4 he took off in at Redwood City was a “cannibalized” version of one that he crashed earlier in Los Angeles. 

In his book, Rickenbacker said he “planned to make my official start from San Francisco” but the field at the Presidio “was not long enough to take off with the (fuel) load I had to carry to get to North Platt, Nebraska – my first stop.” The Redwood City Standard for May 26, 1921 said his decision to take off from Redwood City made the San Mateo County seat “the center of interest in aviation circles on the coast.” The newspaper report said Rickenbacker told reporters Redwood City’s airport offered the best spot for a plane hauling a ton and a half of aviation fuel. 

In his book, Rickenbacker said he took off twice from Redwood City, once at 4 a.m. when he ran into thick fog and “almost took the top off Goat Island in San Francisco Bay. I hurried back to the field and waited until 8 a.m. for the fog to clear.” Another local newspaper, the Times-Gazette, also lauded the Redwood City airport’s advantages, particularly after his plane crashed in Wyoming on the first lap of his flight. Rickenbacker made a “landing on a poorly laid out field.” His plane was wrecked and the newspaper blamed ditches that surrounded the Wyoming airstrip. “Rickenbacker, having arrived late at night did not see them and dashed into one.”  

Captain Rickenbacker actually took a mail plane to Chicago – riding “the mail bags” was the term used then – where another DH-4 was ready for him, according to an account that appeared in the Redwood City Tribune in the 1970s that said he flew that plane to Dayton, Ohio, where he replaced it for the last leg of the flight to the capital. There was at least one report that the final leg to Bolling Field in Washington, D. C., was in a Junker – a German aircraft. 

A detailed story about the recreation of the Fokker fighter plane flown by the “Red Baron” appeared in the August 2019 issue of Climate  (and online here).

 This story was published in the March print edition of Climate Magazine. 

Photo credit: U.S. Air Force

Several years back, Tom Schramm was coming to Street Life Ministries’ outdoor gatherings for the free hot meal — not the food for the soul that preceded it. Homeless for 17 years and dealing with substance abuse, Schramm was among the street people fed through the ministry’s meal program which operates in Redwood City, Menlo Park and Palo Alto. Listening to speakers like pastor David Shearin was a preliminary before getting into the chow line.   

Today Schramm laughs when he recalls his sarcastic attitude. “I would say quite loudly, ‘And that’s how you control the population,’” meaning not just sitting through a sermon before eating but because of what scripture instructed about how to live. “Being homeless,” he explains, “that’s a freedom you can’t get anywhere, because you’re not living in the guidelines. You could do anything you want. You didn’t have to follow any rules.” 

Schramm has done a 180, albeit by degrees and without quite realizing it was happening until it had. Three years after enrolling in the City Team sober living program, his life is focused on recovery –and not just his own. Street Life recently hired him as a part-time outreach worker to the homeless. When the Mountain View resident seeks them out under bridges or in culverts, he meets people he used to live among, often interrupting their drug sessions.  

Schramm seems an unlikely candidate for homelessness. He grew up in a good home in San Mateo with loving parents. He was educated at Serra High School, excelled in college and then landed high-paying jobs in the semiconductor industry as a chip designer, programmer and technical writer. But the deaths of his parents a few years apart, along with other issues, were psychological blows.  Drugs, he says, allowed him not to feel.   

Success at work was never enough. “I tended always to do well and when I got there, I always found that this wasn’t what I expected,” he says. “Where’s the bowl of cherries? It’s never there.” He generally confined his drug use to the weekends. But he had not told one employer that he had a drug problem and was let go when he tested positive. Eventually he ended up homeless, first in San Jose, though he has lived all over the Peninsula,  always trying to be out of sight. “My whole goal was to have a place that I wouldn’t have to rebuild somewhere else again.” 

One site was in a creek side area off Veterans Boulevard; he also set up an elaborate campsite between U.S. 101 and Oddstad Way. People were astonished at his warm and sheltered digs, which had steps, lighting, and a glass table outside. “I had a bike.  I had a bike trailer. I had tree-to-tree carpeting. … It kept all the dirt down. It kept it cleaner, plus it’s easier to sweep all the leaves off the carpet than it is off the dirt.” 

Schramm had tried and failed at recovery before, but his arrest in Redwood City in 2017 was a turning point. He could have done 30 days in jail or 90 days in a program, but he knew it was too short and he’d be back on the streets. When he got out of jail, he called Shearin, who asked him if he could handle being in a Christian recovery program for a year. Despite Schramm’s sarcastic catcalling, Shearin says he never gave up on him.  “I think you’re better than your circumstances,” he told him. “I said, ‘I think you’re giving up on yourself.’” Schramm went through City Team’s program, but decided to stay another 18 months. Determined not to slip back, he says “staying connected” is critical. He is involved with several churches, and plays in a worship band at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto. He’s the manager for PBC’s sober living home for men called Our Brothers’ Home, and is site manager for Street Life’s meal program in Palo Alto. 

Looking back, Schramm, 62, says “I knew I was getting to the point where I have a lot more past than I have future. So how am I going to go out?” He credits Shearin for saving his life. Schramm knows the challenge firsthand getting people out of homelessness. “They don’t know how to,’” he says. “They say they do want to change but they can’t.”  

He’s evidence that it can be done. “I’m going to tell you, those dinners started changing me. Over a period of years, it did change me. I didn’t see it until later. Why do you think I’m working for them? 

—

UPDATE:  The “mystery” in Jim Clifford’s February History column about a street clock at Courthouse Square in downtown Redwood City appears to have been solved.  He had asked various officials in the city where the landmark clock came from and how it got installed there but no one knew. City Councilman Ian Bain says he’d heard that the clock used to be on Broadway — near where the Talk of Broadway restaurant is. City forces removed it in 2016 and placed it the current location in 2017. 

 This story was originally published in the March print edition of Climate Magazine.

Most people may think they know the whipsawing story of Richard Jewell, the vigilant security guard at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996 who, in just days, went from being an acclaimed hero to the FBI’s main suspect in planting a bomb that killed one woman and injured scores. Then three months later, after unsuccessful digging for evidence against Jewell, the script was flipped again when the government declared him no longer a “target.”   

The Richard Jewell of October 1996 was exactly the same guy who had spotted and reported an unattended backpack at Centennial Olympic Park on July 27 — a bona fide hero responsible for helping usher crowds out of the area before the bomb exploded. But FBI profiling, a media frenzy, and a public demand for immediate answers left a tarnished asterisk after Jewell’s name that he never quite lived down: “former suspect.”  

Five years ago, Kevin Salwen, who ran the Wall Street Journal’s Southeast regional coverage of the Jewell story, and Kent Alexander, the U.S. Attorney positioned to prosecute a case against an actual bomber, teamed up to write a book reconstructing and examining those events. “The Suspect: An Olympic Bombing, the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, the Man Caught in the Middle,” was published in November, just days before the Clint Eastwood movie called “Richard Jewell” came out. An Amazon bestseller, the book is due out in paperback this fall. 

“In thinking about the case afterward,” says Salwen, who now lives in Redwood City, “I always wondered how it got so horribly wrong that a guy who should have a statue in the center of Atlanta for the scores of lives that he saved ends up being remembered incorrectly as either a guy who was involved with the bombing or possibly involved with the bombing. And I always wondered how this from a law enforcement and a media and a public perception went so wrong.” 

Writing a book was Alexander’s idea, and he approached Salwen about possibilities for collaborating. Each thought they knew about half of the story before they started their research, but “In reality, neither one of us probably knew 25 percent of it,” Salwen says. They interviewed 187 people and read 90,000 pages of documents to create a detailed history that is also as gripping a read as a crime novel.   

The book begins with the genesis of the “audacious dream” of bringing the Olympics to Atlanta, and the preparations that kicked in for welcoming the world to the largest peacetime event ever. That included ramping up security for everything from traffic management to terrorism threats. Jewell, who dreamed of landing a job in police work, hoped his stint as a member of the 30,000-person security force might provide a desperately desired entrée.  

Salwen, 61, says it was eye-opening to learn what had been going on behind the scenes. “I didn’t understand anything about, for instance, how many bomb scares there are during the Olympic Games and how many crazies are out there and what the preparations look like from law enforcement.”  

The co-authors did research and interviews separately and together. Alexander was able to secure interviews with current and retired FBI agents. “We weren’t getting in those rooms without Kent’s connection,” Salwen says. He had similar links with the news media and the knowledge of how editorial decisions are made in a news room. “Because he had been inside the FBI and because I had been inside the media world, we had a way to triangulate the story to give it a real sense of three dimensionality and depth.” 

The authors decided not to write alternating chapters and strive instead for “a single harmonized voice that carries through the entire book,” Salwen says. They developed an outline and then a first draft, sending chapters back and forth for editing. In 2016, Salwen and wife Joan moved to Menlo Park to participate in Stanford University’s Distinguished Careers Institute, but he made frequent trips to work on the book. 

Although authors often need only submit to publishers a chapter or two, Salwen and Alexander ended up writing a 110-page mini version of the book. “People believed that they understood the Richard Jewell story,” Salwen explains. “You had to prove to them that they didn’t and that took a bit of length.”  

The three main characters had died years ago, Jewell of a heart attack in 2007 at the age of 44. Kathy Scruggs, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter who broke the story that the Olympic Park hero was the suspect, was 42 when she died in 2001. Don Johnson, the relentless FBI agent who tried to make the case against Jewell, was 57 when he died in 2003.  

After five years as a fugitive, the actual bomber, Eric Rudolph, who was responsible for three additional bombings, was captured in 2003.  He is serving multiple life sentences in a Colorado penitentiary. 

Fortunately, the three principal characters left abundant resource material that the authors used to develop them as real people. Family, friends and associates also sat for interviews. Jewell’s mother (portrayed by Kathy Bates in the movie) and his closest friends talked to the writers. Both Jewell and Scruggs gave depositions and did recordings about the case, which illuminated what they were thinking during and after that eventful summer.  

Agent Johnson’s sons and colleagues also agreed to talk to the authors, and his estranged widow handed over “a treasure trove” of materials about the case.  

Prior to working at the Olympics, Jewell had several security and law enforcement-type jobs, but various misadventures and personal quirks kept tripping him up. Still he was determined to get back into police work. Jewell’s history seemed to feed into a profile created at the FBI of a frustrated wannabe cop who would plant a bomb and then “discover it” to get public acclaim – and a job.  

Salwen describes Jewell as “a very human figure,” a “goofy” person totally without guile. “He was over-zealous. … He was a guy who made deep friendships but also could alienate other people,” an interesting character to capture in all his facets. 

Scruggs, a striking and effervescent blond who had established herself as the newspaper’s top police reporter, “was super fun to write,” Salwen says. “There’s a little bit of an archetype of the female police reporter and she took that and essentially put it on steroids.” Some people adored her. Others, especially women in the news room, thought she was setting back equality with her revealing leather miniskirts and high heels. “It just made her a fascinating character to write because she was so divisive and so larger than life,” Salwen says.  

Originally, the authors had until April of this year to complete their book. On a separate track, meanwhile, work was under way in Hollywood to make a film about Richard Jewell. The producers had wanted to talk to Alexander, since he’d been involved in the case. On learning about the book that he and Salwen were writing, they asked them to provide information for the screenplay, which was being revised, and as script consultants, they could add background to give the characters more dimension.  

With the revised screenplay, Eastwood got very interested. Early in 2019 when he decided he wanted to direct the movie, “Richard Jewell” moved on a very fast track indeed, filmed in just 37 days. Salwen and Alexander got to meet with him and cast members, answer questions about character motivation and provide access to their background material.  

Their work on the film moved their April book deadline to November 2019 because the book had to come out before the movie. The authors were only on the set in Atlanta one time “because we were crashing to get the book done,” Salwen says.  “I moved to Atlanta essentially for the summer just so Kent and I could be shoulder-to-shoulder and get the book finished.” 

The movie has come in for some criticism from journalists because it implies that Scruggs slept with an FBI agent to get her big scoop. It’s a biographical film, not a documentary, Salwen responds, although that’s not a liberty he would have taken. “Our book certainly does not say that,” he adds. “But at the same time, it’s 20 seconds of the film.”  

People who focus on that alone, he says, miss the broader message. “I think what Clint Eastwood was able to capture very well was the story of an unsung hero who gets caught in the crosshairs of two of the most powerful forces on the planet, the FBI and the media.” Salwen’s goal was to create a book people enjoyed reading that would spark debates about contentious subjects including the FBI, journalism standards, and the ways people using social media contribute to the spread of false information.  

The co-authors got to walk the red carpet at the Hollywood movie premiere in December with its stars,  Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, John Hamm, Olivia Wilde, and Bates. “It’s kind of crazy,” Salwen says. “Your book’s there and then eight days later, you’re walking the red carpet at the Chinese Theatre. What world did I drop into?”   

A multicity book launch followed, and the two authors have had no shortage of speaking opportunities, among them a talk Salwen gave in January at the downtown library in the city he and Joan have called home since mid-2017.  The Brooklyn native says they’ve always been urbanites and were attracted by Redwood City’s “small city” feel, as well as its diversity.  The couple purposely chose a house within walking distance of downtown restaurants, Courthouse Square and entertainment. Joan is the CEO of a start-up called Blue Ocean Barns, whose office is also downtown. The Salwens have two children, Hannah, 27, who lives in New York; and Joe 25, who lives in Los Angeles.. 

Kevin Salwen has about “eight buckets of ideas” for books but is in no rush to settle on a next project. “I don’t work very fast,” he says, “so I’m very careful about not only what subject matter I write about but which characters I want to live with for several years.” 

 This story was originally published in the March print edition of Climate Magazine. 

After an employee recently tested positive for the coronavirus, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative asked its 400 Redwood City-based employees to work from home. Similarly, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter have asked employees to work remotely to prevent the illness’ spread.

Now, local leaders are calling on governments and public agencies to revise procedures to allow for more flexibility with remote communication.

While local government and public agencies are some of the largest employers in their communities, existing laws are unclear on how technologies such as video-conferencing, tele-working and social media can be used in the context of public meetings, according to Dr. Aaron Nayfack, a member of the Sequoia Healthcare District Board of Directors, and Redwood City Councilman Giselle Hale.

In an opinion piece they co-authored in the San Mateo Daily Journal, Nayfack and Hale advocate for upgrades in technology and policies that enable remote communication in local government and public agencies.

“Local governments can and should play a role in slowing the spread of coronavirus,” Hale stated in posts on Facebook and Twitter today, adding, “This may mean videoconferencing into City Hall meetings and canceling non-essential events.”

As one solution, Nayfack and Hale are advocating for the passage of Assembly Bill 992, “Modernizing the Brown Act,” introduced by Assemblymember Kevin Mullin in collaboration with Hale. Approved by the Assembly in January, the legislation would clear a path for public officials to engage with the public on social media without violating the Brown Act, they said. The Brown Act is the 1953 law aiming to prevent legislative bodies from conducting the public’s business in secret.

“This is a first step toward modernizing California’s open government and transparency rules to leverage modern technology for remote governing in times like our brewing public health emergency,” Nayfack and Hale state.

With coronavirus cases spreading rapidly in U.S. communities, local governments should begin canceling nonessential public events for the next several months to prevent avoidable community spread of the coronavirus, according to Nayfack and Hale.

In a statement Thursday, San Mateo County Health Officer Dr. Scott Morrow made a similar suggestion, recommending that “all non-essential gatherings” be canceled, postponed or done remotely. Morrow also advocated for increasing remote working teleworking “to the extent possible, especially for those who appear at higher risk for developing the disease, those over the age of 60 and those with co-morbid conditions.”

For more on coronavirus and its impact on San Mateo County, visit the San Mateo County Health website here.

The road to becoming a professional chef can be a very long and rocky one, with multiple twists along the way. There is culinary school, then the slow slog through the hierarchy of kitchen staff to climb: porter, station chef, line chef, line cook, sous chef, head chef to the to the top—executive chef. Since those who choose this profession usually begin after completing college, Gavin Gonzado’s rise to executive chef is pretty impressive: He got his start as a dishwasher.  

That’s the beginning of Gonzado’s most unusual journey through the cooking world. He’s a veteran of upscale restaurants in Hawaii and California, dishing up choice fare ranging from foie gras with Bing cherry compote to seared duck breasts and gooseberry jus. But over seven years ago, he opted for what some might consider a comedown in the cooking world’s pecking order: Gonzado is the chef at Redwood City’s Veterans Memorial Senior Center. Four days a week, he dishes up lunches of restaurant quality to his appreciative elderly clientele, and kicks it up a notch for special occasions. 

“I serve other venues like a venture capital company in Palo Alto that keeps me in the industry trend where I can practice my skills,” Gonzado says. “Serving the senior center was a huge transition. I had to watch how I seasoned and cooked my meals. I consider that an important technical advancement in my culinary education.” 

The 52-year-old Gonzado, whose identical twin brother Greg is also a chef, is a San Francisco native, one of seven siblings. His father was an oil-commodities broker whose territory included Hawaii. Traveling back and forth to the islands was so constant that the family decided to move there. By the time Gonzado was eight years old, he had traded his warm jacket for a flowered shirt and surfboard.  

He first became interested in cooking at age 16 while working as a dishwasher at the Hard Rock Café in Honolulu. Learning by paying careful attention to the hectic activity of a professional kitchen, he slowly worked his way up to sous chef.  

That is the person who makes sure everything gets done in the kitchen before the chef arrives. This includes managing other employees, from dishwashers to food safety/prep people. The sous chef essentially is the chef’s right-hand man. The chef handles day-to-day menu planning, as well as for events and of course, creates and prepares recipes. Gonzado continued to grow within the industry. Working at various high-end restaurants in Honolulu, he managed to connect with many of the top chefs. 

“I was lucky and met up with the right people in the hospitality business, executive chefs from the big hotels in Hawaii,” he says. The most important was William Trask, president of the Hawaiian chapter of the American Culinary Association, a professional organization for chefs founded in 1929 in New York City; who took him under his wing. Trask saw something special in the hard-working youngster and helped the young man advance in a career in the food industry. Unlike many chefs who attended culinary school, Gonzado learned on the job as an apprentice.  

From the Hard Rock Café to the Ilikai Hotel with chef Trask, Gonzado paid his dues in pursuit of the prized position as a chef. Gonzado worked in various upscale restaurant kitchens in pursuit of his goal to become a chef. Finally, after 10 years he got that job at the Lobster and Crab House in Honolulu.   

In 2000, Gonzado returned to California, “I’ve always considered California my home and wanted to come back,” he says. Settling first in Pleasant Hill, he worked at the Pepper Mill restaurant. He finally made his way to Redwood City in 2006, where he met his wife, Gail. They married and now have a 13-year-old daughter Marissa, who attends Kennedy Middle School.  

One might think he’d arrived at the end of his career journey, since he had made it as a bona fide chef. But the man who had gotten that far without formal training decided it was time for culinary school and attended the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in Boulder, Colorado. “I felt it was very important for me to further my education to be the best chef I could be,” he explains. 

Fortune was still with Gonzado. One day in Redwood City he was walking down Theatre Way and saw construction going on at a new restaurant called the Portobello Grill. Popping his head in, he asked the first person he met if they were seeking a chef. That person happened to be owner Kamran Mahrouzadeh, who replied in the affirmative. Gonzado explained his background and offered to prove his worth.  

After his shift at another restaurant, he went home and designed a menu, then made a beeline to Whole Foods, returning the next day to the Portobello Grill to prepare a “tasting”—essentially an entire menu of dishes, including entrées, salads and main dishes—while Mahrouzadeh observed how he moved about the kitchen, prepped, cooked and plated each dish.  

Mahrouzadeh was impressed enough to hire Gonzado on the spot. “We opened in July of 2007 and it was crazy,” Gonzado says. “Watching the transformation of Theatre Way was overwhelming.” It was the beginning of high-end restaurants in Redwood City and the Portobello Grill’s popularity was immediate.  

“We have a small kitchen and Gavin worked very well in that environment,” Mahrouzadeh says.  “A lot of chefs need large kitchens and lots of tools, but Gavin was adept at making everything happen with what was available. He relied more on himself and his abilities. It was awesome working with Gavin—he was very talented and easy to work with.” 

But a seven-day diet of hectic restaurant work can take its toll. “Seven years is a lot of time at a restaurant,” says Gonzado. “It can be chaotic in a small kitchen, and on the weekends, I could have a staff of six working in there.”  

Then an unexpected—and unlikely—detour opened in Gonzado’s career path. 

Bruce Utecht, Redwood City Community Services Recreation Manager, was a frequent customer of the Portobello Grill. He got to know Gonzado casually and eventually invited him to join a group of his friends who enjoyed fishing at the Port of Redwood City during the summer. Utecht would bring along his barbecue and the friends would cook up their catch right there and have a feast.  

One day Gonzado asked Utecht what he did for a living. Upon learning about the lunch program at the Veterans Memorial Senior Center, Gonzado offered to volunteer as a cook. “He wanted to give back to the community and seniors had a special place in his heart,” Utecht recalls. He thanked him but at the same time was happy to offer a paying gig, as the position of lunch and special event chef had just opened. 

Within a couple of months, Gonzado had left the Portobello Grill to cook for the senior center, at the same time getting himself established to offer similar services to other senior clients. That was six and a half years ago. “The seniors love him and they love his food,” says Utecht. 

The new job in a senior center kitchen provided Gonzado with the pace he was looking for.  Meals were much simpler and the preparation less intensive. The kitchen at the senior center located on Madison Avenue is larger than a typical restaurant’s.  

Arriving at 8 a.m., he spends the next four hours prepping dishes featuring homestyle comfort food found in restaurants, such as bistro and hangar steak, salmon, shrimp scampi, lobster rolls and salads. For Valentine’s Day, he served tiger prawns over thin spaghetti.  The meals for St. Patrick’s Day and Thanksgiving are traditional: corned beef and cabbage on March 17 and roast turkey, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie in November.  Meals that could cost well over $18 in a restaurant are just $10 at the senior center because the program is subsidized by grants.   

His staff of eight to 10 people (up to 20 for special events) is all volunteer, but Gonzado sees them as employees. He smiles when he talks about why they’re so enjoyable to work with: “They don’t give you a funny look when you ask them to do something.”  

Retiree Pat Jones, who was a nurse at Sequoia Hospital for 40 years, is one of chef Gavin’s volunteers. “I always enjoy working here,” Jones says. “The food is very good and Gavin is an excellent manager. He is strict, in the areas where he should be, but is kind in correcting me when I make a mistake. And I do make mistakes.” 

 “Gavin, don’t you dare leave us,” says Jodi Walsh, who eats lunch at the senior center every Tuesday and Friday. His volunteers feel the same way. 

“Usually we would have chefs last around here for about two years before they were off to something else,” says Utecht, “but the seniors here would be pretty upset if Gavin were to leave.” 

“I kind of miss the madness of being in a restaurant kitchen,” says Gonzado. “It’s a kind of a sickness every cook or chef has. The energy, sounds of pots and pans clanging, voices calling out orders. It’s a fun environment and rewarding.”  

Though the kitchen pace at the senior center is more laidback than in a commercial kitchen, things can get hectic feeding up to 200 people for holidays and other special occasions. The senior center holds eight to 10 large functions a year, hosting 160 to 200 people.  

The last 15 minutes before serving begins is what gets Gonzado’s heart pumping. “When we are laying out the food,” he says, “it is go time.” 

 This story was originally published in the March print edition of Climate Magazine. 

San Mateo County has opened a public call center to field non-medical questions about the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19.

The number is (650) 363-4422. The call center will open no later than noon today.

A “tremendous number of calls” to emergency dispatchers and county health officials prompted the new call center, the county said.  The call center will accept calls from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday-Friday. It will use a three-way language line for non-English speakers.

The new center will “relieve those departments and connect the public with resources and information related to COVID-19 and its impact on our area,” County Manager Mike Callagy said.

In San Mateo County, one adult resident tested presumptively positive for the virus. The patient wasn’t exposed to the virus by travel or other known sources. Earlier, the County reported a second case of an individual who was repatriated to the U.S. by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who is currently in isolation.

General information about the novel coronavirus is available at www.cdc.gov or https://smchealth.org/coronavirus.