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Neighbors express frustration at police response to Redwood City mass shooting

in Crime by
Man exposed self to teen

Suspect Remains At Large Four Days Later

Four days after an unidentified gunman shot four adults and one 16-year-old youth in the early hours of Sunday, May 7, the suspect remains at large, leaving many neighbors feeling frustrated and unsafe.

The five victims were drinking on the sidewalk around 4:30AM on the 400 block of Redwood Avenue in the Palm Park neighborhood when the suspect approach and fired a 9mm handgun. They were hospitalized with serious, but not life-threatening injuries.

The shooting is the first mass shooting in recent memory in Redwood City and occurred nearly four months after a gunman shot eight people in Half Moon Bay, killing seven.

The May 8 Redwood City council meeting opened with a brief statement from City Manager Melissa Stevenson Diaz acknowledging the tragedy and calling on the community to come forward with any information that can help lead to an arrest.

“We really welcome information from the community that will help us with understanding what has happened.” Stevenson Diaz continued, “We will be providing updates as soon as we have substantial updates to share.”

Mayor Jeff Gee commended the Police Department for its response. “I want to thank our law enforcement and our law enforcement partners that responded to this incident yesterday. This is an active and ongoing investigation.”

But while the investigation continues, many neighbors feel that the police department is not doing enough to engage the community and provide it with timely and pertinent information.

“Within 24 hours it was reported that ‘the area of the crime had returned to normal,’ and to this day, despite the assailant still not having been identified nor apprehended, impacted residents have not received any notice from authorities,” said Jason Lee, who bought his home in the Palm Park neighborhood just two weeks ago. “Some, including me, only found out through happenstance in Monday’s brief local news coverage or from neighbors.”

Despite strong calls for public support in the investigation, the Redwood City Police Department has struggled to make contact with neighbors willing to provide information. Investigators have gone door-to-door searching for witnesses, but have found many neighbors reluctant to open their doors.

Veronica Escamez, a prominent leader in the local Latino community, believes that residents are hesitant to speak to the police due to their immigration status and fears of retaliation.

“In my opinion, undocumented people often have fears and concerns about interacting with police due to their immigration status,” said Escamez. “They fear reporting a crime or cooperating with the police may lead to their arrest and removal from the county.”

“However,” Escamez continued, “efforts are being made by the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department through the CARON program to build trust between law enforcement agencies and undocumented populations, recognizing the importance of their safety and well-being in maintaining overall community safety.”

The City of Redwood City adopted a “Welcoming City” policy in 2017, which prohibited the Redwood City Police Department from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.

Then Mayor John Seybert said, “Our department only arrests or detains based on factors which establish probable cause of a crime rather than arbitrary aspects such as suspected immigration status. We believe we are all safer if anyone who contacts us to report a crime can speak freely rather than feel vulnerable to deportation.”

Police Chief Dan Mulholland did not respond to Climate Magazine’s request for comment by press time.

While the search continues, local leaders have sprung into action to bring the community together to collectively heal.

Councilmember Elmer Martinez Saballos, who represents the Palm Park neighborhood, is organizing a neighborhood listening session in the coming weeks to provide a forum for the community to share their thoughts and concerns.

“This is a horrific tragedy, and my heart goes out to the victims and their families,” said Councilmember Elmer Martinez Saballos, who represents the Palm Park neighborhood. “To heal from this, we need to lean on one another, to trust one another, and to work together as a community to ensure that our neighborhoods are safe.”

Martinez Saballos told Climate Magazine that the City offers robust mental health and other support services to the victims. He encouraged residents who are struggling to cope with the tragedy to seek out support from mental health services offered within Redwood City and San Mateo County.

Anyone with information about this incident should contact Detective James Schneider at 650-780-7607. Tips may be made anonymously.

When the Irish invaded the Peninsula—and Canada

in A&E/Community by
When the Irish Invaded the Peninsula—and Canada

By Jim Clifford

There’s a lot more to St. Patrick’s Day than green beer—usually imbibed by people who don’t know County Kerry from Marin. A new state law mandates one semester of ethnic studies for all California high school students who graduate starting in 2030. Such classes often focus on marginalized peoples, and it may help to remind high schoolers that most immigrants were considered “out groups” when they came the U.S.

The Irish were no different when they started arriving around 1820. In New York City, especially, newspapers carried employment ads with the acronym, “NINA”—”No Irish Need Apply.” Irish-American men and boys were routinely stereotyped as hooligans and drunks. As with derogatory images of other ethnic groups, the unflattering portrayal of 19th-century Irish-Americans has persisted, even appearing in a widely used U.S. history textbook first published in 1980.

But if it’s true that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, then March 17 is a good place to start finding one’s roots. It may come as a surprise, but there was a time when the Bay Area’s Irish heritage was strong and thousands of immigrants from the Emerald Isle headed every year for celebratory picnics on the Peninsula.

The numbers are difficult to confirm, but various reports say 15,000 people turned out for events in Redwood City and San Mateo, and a picnic in Belmont drew about 10,000. One newspaper story estimated the train carrying passengers to Belmont Park in 1868 was a half-mile long. Its account promoted the popular view of the Irish as brawlers, saying the train was “headed by three or four engines, puffing and blowing like so many thousand savage Fenians eager for the fray.” (The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish-American group that agitated for Ireland’s independence from Britain.)

The Redwood City picnic of 1870 was front-page news in the San Mateo County Gazette. The paper was a veteran in reporting on Irish-American gatherings, having covered the San Mateo event in 1866, the year the Fenians invaded Canada, which achieved its own independence from Great Britain 13 months later. In their quest for Irish freedom, the Fenians in 1881 also produced the first practical submarine in an attempt to end Britannia’s rule of the waves. The vessel, called the Fenian Ram, was tested but never used in battle.

Contemporary accounts of the Peninsula gatherings were a bit condescending, coming at a time when nativists warned of the presumed Irish three Rs of “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.”

“To the credit of the Irish, they disappointed many who anticipated a disorderly riotous rabble,” the Gazette said of the San Mateo picnic. The paper noted there were only a few drunks, “considering the amount of liquor” involved. Just a handful of arrests and fistfights were reported at the event in Redwood City, which had a population of only 1,000 at the time.

A Neglected Revolutionary Organization

The Fenians, the American branch of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which operated from 1858 to 1924, are among those militant groups largely overlooked in American history. They certainly weren’t ignored in Canada, however; certain historians say the attack by Fenian soldiers, mainly Irish-American veterans of the U.S. Civil War, contributed to the drive for Canadian independence.

The San Mateo picnic in 1866 came a month after Fenians crossed into Canada at Niagara Falls on June 2 and met opposing forces at Ridgeway, today part of the town of Fort Erie, Ontario. The disciplined fire of the 1,500 or so Irish-Americans was too much for the raw Canadian militia, which retreated from the battlefield upon which nine troops were killed. The Irish-American fighters then went to Fort Erie and captured a small garrison whose officer in charge cut off his whiskers and fled in disguise, according to Canadian poet and historian Edgar McInnis.

McInnis wrote in his book, “The Unguarded Frontier,” that the invaders became cut off when the United States sent a gunboat to prevent reinforcements. Most of the Fenians were arrested and released. The revolutionaries continued minor raids in Canada, the last in 1871. Why Canada? According to McInnis, the plan was to draw English troops out of Ireland and over to North America.

The Fenians also had a navy, or at least hoped to have one. They raised enough money to back Irish-born naval architect John Holland in his quest to build a submarine, which he accomplished in 1881 with the Fenian Ram. Even though the craft never saw action, Holland kept building submarines. His final design was sold to the United States and commissioned in 1900 as the USS Holland. The Fenian Ram still exists and can be viewed at the Paterson Museum in Paterson, New Jersey.

No Irish, No San Mateo County?

Some say San Mateo County owes its birth to the Irish. A stretch? Maybe not. Consider when the county was founded—1856, a year displayed prominently on the county seal. In San Francisco, 1856 is known for something else: It was the year of the Committee of Vigilance. Vigilantes, for short. It was a time when angry San Franciscans took the law into their own hands, hands that held guns and ropes—as in hanging.

To this day, historians debate if the main aim of the vigilantes was to crush crime or to rid San Francisco of a growing Democratic political machine run by Irish Catholics that was threatening the established power structure. “Anti-Catholic and anti-Irish feeling seethed through the Vigilantes,” wrote esteemed California historian Kevin Starr in his series, “Americans and the California Dream.” According to Starr, the Vigilante movements of both 1851 and 1856 were fueled by “anti-foreign reformism on the part of outraged businessmen.”

In 1856, the thinly settled Peninsula was part of San Francisco, whose population was approaching 60,000. Certain lawmakers thought making San Francisco both a city and a county would end jurisdictional disputes in the prosecution of so-called “toughs,” who were mostly Irish. For their own part, the “toughs,” a term used in histories written during the era, viewed the Peninsula as a promising place to enjoy pastimes that included prize fighting, gambling and drinking in saloons. State politicians in Sacramento agreed to San Francisco’s request, with the understanding that the new San Mateo County would be established.

It came to be in 1856, in an arrangement made to order for San Francisco’s criminal elements. The initial San Mateo County election to pick officials as well as the county seat was replete with stuffed ballot boxes and physical intimidation at the polls by thugs known in the day as “shoulder-strikers.” The California Supreme Court invalidated the results of the first election, in which Belmont was picked as the county seat. In the second election, the voters chose Redwood City.

The county emerged at a time when Peninsula residents, including many Irish-Americans, were trying to live off the land, mainly through farming, dairy production and logging, all ventures needed to feed and house the giant city to the north. Eventually, both Redwood City’s police chief and fire chief would have Irish names, but it was ordinary men and women who formed families that were often founded on strong religious beliefs and that helped write the area’s growing success story.

Their faith was so enduring that what they started more than a century ago is still a household name in Redwood City. The community’s Irish-Americans settled mainly east of El Camino Real, on the historically poorer side of town. Virtually all the pastors of their Catholic church, St. Mary’s, were also Irish.

Today, the church and school, now called Mount Carmel, are literally located—as the old saying goes about upward mobility—on the other side of the tracks. The desirable Mount Carmel neighborhood on Redwood City’s west side is beloved by real-estate agents and offers strong evidence of Irish-Americans’ ascent in the 20th and 21st centuries.

What’s in a Name?

Throughout much of the 1900s, sociologists referred to the mingling of various ethnic groups in America as the “melting pot.” Later, emphasizing the identities of separate peoples, others started calling it the “mosaic.” However it’s viewed, it’s on display every St. Patrick’s Day at St. Francis of Assisi Church in East Palo Alto, which hosts a dinner that recalls the area’s Irish heritage.

Father Larry Goode says the parish today contains a mix of cultures, including African-American, European-American, Hispanic and Tongan. Near the church, it’s impossible to miss the area’s Irish roots, especially in the street names. One of them is Kavanaugh Drive, which commemorates the family that donated the land for the church.

Menlo Park has several streets named for Irish people, according to local historian Bo Crane. Crane says the city was founded in the 1850s by Irish pioneers Denis Oliver (whose first name is also recorded as “Dennis”) and Daniel McGlynn, who both hailed from Menlough, an Irish village in County Galway. How did Menlough get shortened to Menlo? The best guess is that something got lost in translation.

There is also the matter of that other Menlo Park, the one in New Jersey that was the home of inventor Thomas Edison. According to a 1941 program marking the dedication of a fire station in the New Jersey town, that Menlo Park was named “for a village in the County of San Mateo” in California. A welcoming gate with ”Menlo Park” arched over the top was dedicated in the California “village” in 2019 on the library corner of Ravenswood Avenue and Alma Street. The ceremony, of course, was held on St. Patrick’s Day.

A few Menlo Park citizens have visited Galway, Menlo Park’s sister city, returning with stories about the ties between the two towns. Galway even boasts a Menlo Park Hotel, which features a restaurant named “Oliver and McGlynn.” It’s a good bet that a resident of Menlo Park—or anywhere else—can enjoy an invigorating pint there, and not only on March 17.

During WWII, local banker watched over the affairs of Japanese-Americans sent to detention camps

in Community by
J. Elmer Morrish

By Kevin Kaatz

The year was 1990, and the man standing before the front desk at the Redwood City Library didn’t want to give his name. He handed the librarian, Jeanne Thivierge, a cardboard box that he said contained more than 2,000 letters and financial documents. He told her the management of Wells Fargo Bank had asked him to destroy them, but he thought they might have historical value.

He was right.

At first glance, the paper records looked nothing more than ordinary—receipts, tax bills, powers of attorney. But then there were the letters. As Thivierge read them, a rich history began to unfold about a remarkable man who consistently went out of his way to help his neighbors, American citizens of Japanese descent who had been removed from their homes and businesses in Redwood City and sent to prison camps early in World War II.

FDR’s Exclusion Order

On February 19, 1942, just a little more than two months after Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. Through broadly worded, the edict was employed to send West Coast residents considered Japanese—including U.S. citizens—far inland for presumed security reasons.

They were given just a few days to sell, rent or simply abandon their property, including houses, shops and small farms, before reporting to “assembly centers” at locations such as the Tanforan racetrack in San Bruno. From there, they were shipped on trains to 10 detention camps at remote points in California and Utah as well as Arizona, Wyoming and Arkansas. The lucky ones came home starting in 1945. Others never came home at all.

For many in Redwood City, a man named J. Elmer Morrish was their banker. A vice president of First National Bank (later Wells Fargo) at the corner of Broadway and Main Street, Morrish was widely known among local Japanese-Americans. Before being shipped out, numerous clients assigned him control over their accounts so he could pay invoices—especially tax bills—that would enable them to keep their homes and businesses.

J. Elmer Morrish

Over the course of three years, from 1942 to 1945, Morrish did that and much more. The correspondence in the box revealed relationships that extended far beyond routine transactions. Often, the letters demonstrate the trust Morrish had earned and the affection he shared with his neighbors.

Many Japanese-Americans in the area grew flowers, especially chrysanthemums. Minutes from a special meeting of the Peninsula Flower Growers (headed by a man named William Haruo Enomoto) gave Morrish full power to take care of the members’ businesses, except for conveying or mortgaging them. The document was signed on March 24, 1942, a month-and-a-half before Redwood City’s Japanese-American residents were forced out. Even though Roosevelt’s decree referred only to “any and all persons” who could be removed from “military areas,” clearly the flower farmers knew what it meant.

Other letters were more personal. On June 26, 1942, a Miss Adachi sent this note to Morrish: “We at Tanforan are fine and looking forward for brighter days. Deep in our hearts there is that deep appreciation for everything that you have been doing for us, but very hard to find the right words to express this thought.”

Two years later, on June 23, 1944, Morrish wrote to Miss Adachi in what appears to have been a fond and continuing exchange. “I have heard somewhere that you have married,” he said, “but I hardly believe that is true because you haven’t written to me to ask if it was all right.” Composed decades before emojis, the line can only be assumed to be playful. Morrish wrote again in October, saying he hoped all was well and that he had not heard from Miss Adachi in months.

Still more communications were serious, even urgent. Morrish often kept track of people’s property, monitoring empty homes and renting them when he could. Occasionally, there was vandalism. Regarding one such occurrence in November 1943, a frantic Mr. Nakano sent Morrish a list of personal possessions in his house along with a drawing of where things were, and asked him to check his belongings.

Mr. Nakano wrote, “Wife was quite alarmed over the incident because of some of the things she left at home that we should have taken greater precautions of security for them but at the time of evacuation our activities were so jumbled and curtailed by the thoughts of impending evacuation that we didn’t do many things that we should have done to protect our property.”

Decades-Old Memories

In oral histories recorded in 2003, members of Redwood City’s Japanese-American community remembered Morrish, who died in 1957, with respect and thanks.

“He was a prince of a gentleman,” said second-generation nurseryman Harry Higaki, who eventually resided in Hillsborough and lived to age 101. “He personified the meaning of the word ‘gentleman’ because he offered all of this to us. …Those were the times of tension and, I guess, you would say, discrimination. But yet he rose above that. He treated us the same, before and after. I just couldn’t believe how he was so kind and generous in helping our family. … I’ll never forget him. [I am] eternally grateful to him.”

A woman named Ruby Inouye told an interviewer, “Mr. Morrish took care of everything … He did a lot; [it was] personal—I mean, it was outside of the banking thing … He took it on his own to see what was going on at the nurseries …”

Added another woman named Teru Tamura Mitsuyoshi, “My dad always mentioned Mr. Morrish and had nothing but good things to say about him and how helpful he was. … He was always so good to [people].”

Appalling Conditions

The same could not be said of the U.S. government when the internees arrived at the camps. There was window dressing—a band played as they climbed down from the train in Topaz, Utah—but the ensuing reality was anything but melodious. At Topaz, what was to pass for housing hadn’t yet been completed. When it was, it consisted of tarpaper shacks built hastily with freshly cut wood that shrank over time, causing structural problems. Many accommodations lacked roofs and working bathrooms. People became ill with colds, the flu and more life-threatening illnesses, and the facilities weren’t set up to provide adequate medical care.

Then there were the not-so-subtle ironies. While living in converted racehorse stalls at the Tanforan assembly center, the detainees were encouraged to buy U.S. war bonds. The advertising mentioned that the funds would not only help the country fight the war but also keep the assembly centers going. Meanwhile, tax bills reminded people that they were paying government officials to retain homes and businesses from which they had been evicted.

Coming Home

Finally, in early January 1945, the government started allowing its citizen-prisoners to return. Morrish wrote that housekeeping jobs around Redwood City were plentiful but housing itself was scarce. He suggested that people wait “a few months.” Even those who owned property found difficulty removing tenants and squatters.

Over the next few months, however, residents began trickling back. The correspondence with Morrish stops by mid-1945, around the time the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. Japan officially surrendered on September 2, 1945.

From all that seems to be known, Morrish may have done his work quietly. It was 1956 before Mayor Bill Royer declared him Redwood City’s Citizen of the Year. Even then, the honor came for Morrish’s leadership of the chamber of commerce, the Kiwanis Club, the community chest, the YMCA and a regional bankers’ association. No official mention has been found of his help to the city’s Japanese-American community.

But people remembered. In 1957, local Japanese-Americans pooled their money and bought Morrish an around-the-world ticket for a long tour that included Japan, where their family members met him and showed him the sights. Not surprisingly, the nonstop letter-writer mailed back numerous accounts of the trip.

The extended sojourn represented more than just a warm gesture. In a way, it was a culmination. Less than two months after he returned, Morrish died on October 31, 1957. He was 71 years old.

His memory remains alive in the Morrish Collection at the Redwood City Library’s Karl A. Vollmayer Local History Room. In 2003, Jeanne Thivierge—the librarian who had accepted the mysterious box more than a decade before—and Gene Suarez, another library employee, organized a memorial and the oral histories of local families.

It’s often said there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend. True, J. Elmer Morrish didn’t make the ultimate sacrifice. But for three years in a tumultuous time, softly, deftly, unassumingly, he simply did what needed to be done.

Is this Redwood City’s ultimate power couple?

in Community by
Is this Redwood City's ultimate power couple?

By Jill Singleton

What Colorado coal miner’s daughter launched Redwood City’s Pride and Beautification Committee and City Trees program? Who was key to bringing the San Mateo County History Museum to the city’s iconic 1910 courthouse, kickstarting not just the renovation of this neoclassical beauty, but the revitalization of Redwood City’s downtown?

What local pastor (and former merchant mariner) served 20 years on Redwood City’s Arts Commission, co-founded a countywide mediation service and became an internationally recognized expert on traumatic stress recovery, making more than 40 missions overseas to help survivors of war, earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorism and other disasters?

Bonus question: What Redwood City couple (now both in their 80s) remain competitive athletes, having each won gold medals at the World Senior Games in their respective events: power walking and volleyball?

A few hints: One volunteered with the Cub Scouts, Campfire Girls and her kids’ schools before being asked to serve on the city’s Parks, Recreation & Community Services Commission and then to run for the city council, to which she was elected three times and served two years as mayor.

—

This story first appeared in the February edition of Climate Magazine

—

The other, after graduating from the California Maritime Academy and serving a year-and-a-half at sea, returned to college at San Francisco State, where he got involved in campus ministry (the highlight—a trip to Nebraska where he heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak). As a newly ordained Methodist minister with master’s degrees in both counseling and divinity (he now holds a doctorate in the latter), he discovered his calling when he began helping Vietnam veterans recover from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Last chance: Together, this couple in 2006 received “Citizens of the Year” honors from Redwood City’s Sequoia Awards, which recognize exceptional contributions to the community.

Those who have not yet guessed “Georgi LaBerge and Warren Dale” can be forgiven. For these are two people who, for all their impressive accomplishments, have habitually focused on others and kept their own lives decidedly low-key.

Roots in Similarly Strong Families

As a first-generation American, LaBerge grew up in small-town southern Colorado, with a Czech mother and a Croatian father.

“Mom was a strong force in my life,” she recalls. “My father called her ‘the chief.’ She only went through sixth grade. My father never went to school at all. But we had a really happy home. My mother was a good homemaker and a good volunteer in the community, [and] even for the Democratic Party.

“I learned a lot from her. She said, ‘you can be anything you want to be, if you just focus on it and work on it.’ She gave me the gift of believing in myself.”

Of his own blue-collar upbringing in San Francisco and around the bay, Dale says, “I was very fortunate in that I had a mother who was intellectually challenged but knew how to care for others … and a stepfather who loved me and supported my life detours. He was a mechanic … in and out of work … and we moved around a lot: Bay View-Hunters Point, Vallejo, Napa. … We were on welfare for a time, and because of that I got to go to Jones Gulch YMCA Camp in La Honda when I was 10 years old. I was taught how to swim and later I became a member of the swim team in high school. I learned a lot of things including leadership there, and in the Boy Scouts. I always had leadership skills.”

LaBerge arrived in the land of “Climate Best by Government Test” in 1958. Her husband, Bob LaBerge, was a local man with whom she raised four children until their divorce 30 years later.

Dale, also recently divorced and a father of three, came to Redwood City in 1986. He and LaBerge met in a church singles group. A five-year courtship ensued. Then, Dale says, “in 1992, Georgi said to me, ‘I think I’d like to be married while I am still mayor.’ I responded with, ‘Are you asking me? My answer is yes!’” On October 3 of that year, they were married.

Mayor LaBerge had just created the city’s (and county’s) first childcare policies, which continue today. For their wedding, the couple asked for no gifts. Instead, would their friends please make donations to Redwood City’s newly formed LaBerge-Dale Child Care Fund?

Beyond Mayor

Mitch Postel, president of the San Mateo County Historical Association, knew LaBerge back when she did public relations for the College of San Mateo, where the history museum was housed. Postel says it was LaBerge’s vision to move the museum to the heart of Redwood City. He remembers that as a councilmember LaBerge “led the charge” to get $400,000 in city renovation funds to turn the old courthouse into today’s sparkling downtown centerpiece.

LaBerge’s official enthusiasm also helped Postel raise private gifts for the museum. He says, “It was a real contribution for us to be able to tell our donors that Redwood City was behind us.”

Postel believes the renovation has brought tremendous returns. In an email, he writes, “Today, in my opinion, the courthouse square and the museum together [create] the focal point for the city and for the county. This visibility has been key not only to our success, but it’s giving the public greater access to its local history.”

Following three stints on the city council, LaBerge went on to lead the San Mateo County Community Colleges Foundation for seven years, followed by six years as executive director of the Redwood City Library Foundation. Today, she remains an active board member of the historical association and Sustainable San Mateo County, an organization that emphasizes what it calls the “three E’s” of the economy, the environment and social equity.

A Different Kind of Repairman

While LaBerge was working at her job and attending to city business, Dale was called in to rescue several struggling churches around the Bay Area. At the same time, he co-founded the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center (PCRC), a nonprofit that today has 13 staff and 100 volunteers. It contracts with the county court system as well as several cities to help people resolve family problems and all sorts of neighborhood disputes, at little or no cost to those served.

PCRC Executive Director Malissa Netane-Jones counts herself among Dale’s biggest fans. “Warren is an unapologetic mediator,” she says. “He’s a peace-builder. He’s able to help people through really difficult conversations.

“He does not fear conflict,” Netane-Jones continues. “He sees conflict as an opportunity to bring people together to listen deeply to one another and for them to essentially resolve their own conflict. What’s more, he never says no. And I love that Georgi always flanks him. She has his back. She’s always present.”

International Works

As Dale tells it, it was LaBerge’s newspaper reading that tipped him to a group of Muslim psychologists who were traveling to Bosnia to work with refugees.

“I called them,” he says. “None had experience working with trauma. … I’m making $23,000 a year and I said to God, ‘If you want me to go, show me a sign and tell me how.’” The answer came on the radio, through a timely reading of a biblical passage from the book of Isaiah: “Then you will call, and the lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here am I.’”

Dale sent out an appeal to family and friends. Five weeks later he was on a plane, making the first of 40 trips to Bosnia and Kosovo.

Those early missions eventually led him to help people recover from 9/11 in New York City, the devastating 2001 San Bruno fire, earthquakes in California and El Salvador, an Indonesian tsunami, postwar Angola and hurricane-battered New Orleans, as well as domestic violence and human trafficking both in the U.S. and abroad. In conjunction with several international aid organizations, he began teaching his skills to others and recently published a disaster recovery guide.

Now pretty much retired, Dale still leads the First Church of Redwood City, a Congregationalist ministry. Most afternoons, he and LaBerge keep a cappuccino date at a local coffee house. Dale rides a bike twice a week with a group called Senior Spokes, plays volleyball at drop-in gyms and goes for walks with others venturing out from the Redwood City Veterans Memorial Senior Center.

Like her husband, LaBerge considers herself an outdoors person. She enjoys gardening, and when she heard about the sport of race-walking in the senior games—a national and international competition for older people—she quickly took it up. Gradually she moved to power walking, an event that “is a bit easier on the body,” she says. And she still helps plant trees through the community’s City Trees initiative.

Centenarian Inspiration

Dale takes delight in Millie Cole, a 102-year-old member of his church.  “She’s still in the Optimist Club,” he says. “She leads a chair-ersizing group, and her motto is, ‘Take a walk around the house once an hour and every day do something for someone else.’”

LaBerge echoes Cole’s advice almost verbatim, saying, “I would encourage people to think how satisfying it can be to help someone else.”

Few would doubt that LaBerge and Dale have the “do something for somebody else” part down. As for walking around the house, they go it a little better. LaBerge, who turns 87 this month, texted the outline of her biography for this article from a kayak on a Kauai lagoon. Dale, 83, was interviewed just after a 90-minute volleyball game with players 20 to 50 years his junior.

That sort of energy makes others marvel. “Individually, they are absolutely wonderful,” says Paula Uccelli, longtime Redwood City businesswoman, philanthropist and co-founder of the Sequoia Awards. “But as a power couple, they are awesome. They are the best.”

When it comes to local taxes, when is enough ‘enough?’

in Community/PoliticalClimate by
So when is enough “enough?” It depends on whom you ask—and what it’s for.

Closing out a year marked by high inflation and economic uncertainty, San Mateo County voters went to the polls in November and passed 13 out of 14 revenue measures on the ballot. Among them were four school district bonds that will have property owners writing bigger checks at tax time. Voters in Daly City’s Bayshore Elementary School District added eight years to the life of a $96 parcel tax. Brisbane and Pacifica residents upped their sales tax rates by a half-cent. And voters in Brisbane weren’t through; they joined their compatriots in Millbrae and Belmont in approving tax hikes on temporary lodging, including hotels.

Dial back to 2016, when the county board of supervisors asked voters to “extend” a 10-year sales tax increase that had been in effect only four years. The margin for the second go-around—70.37%—was even higher than the first time, when the half-cent tax passed by 65.4%.

Does that mean county voters are pushovers for taxes? Not exactly. When the supervisors last summer considered adding a parcel tax to the November ballot to address drought, wildfire and sea level rise, they pulled back after receiving unfavorable poll numbers.

So when is enough “enough?” It depends on whom you ask—and what it’s for.

“I’m clueless as to why they are voting for these things,” says Mark W.A. Hinkle, 71, president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association and a longtime Libertarian Party member. He is especially down on school bonds, given current test scores and declining enrollment in certain districts. “They want good-quality education but they’re not getting it … I think a lot of them do vote for these things thinking they will get better.”

Others see value. As co-chair for the Redwood City School District’s successful bond campaign, financial adviser Jessica Meunier rang lots of doorbells and was gratified by its passage in November. “Education is a big passion for me,” the mother of two young girls explains. “… I want to invest in our schools, our education, our teachers. So whether I do it by donating to the schools or by taxes, I’m probably going to do it.”

The Local Share

At least conceptually, many people say taxes are too high. For Californians, the grass can look pretty green in nearby states such as Nevada and Washington, where there’s no state income tax. Not as noticeably, though, local taxes and fees—from school bonds to sales taxes—nibble at the family budget, too. The upshot: the Golden State came in No. 8 in the Tax Foundation’s most recent national State-Local Tax Burdens Rankings.

That was in 2019, when California’s effective tax rate was 11.5%. It was actually higher—13.3%—in 1977. That was the year before voters passed Proposition 13, which dramatically lowered property taxes and enshrined rates in the state constitution.

Follow-up measures have modified or clarified Prop. 13, which initially required a two-thirds vote to increase local special taxes. In 2000, voters passed Proposition 39, which lowered the threshold to 55% for school bonds. School districts can use bond funds to finance buildings or other capital projects, and property owners’ obligation to repay the borrowed funds shows up on their tax bills until the bonds are paid off. Bond money can’t be used for salaries or other operating expenses.

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This story first appeared in the February edition of Climate Magazine

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Not surprisingly, Prop. 39 made it much easier for school bonds to cross the finish line. Since 2001, more than 80% of school measures that qualify for 55% have passed, according to consultant Michael Coleman, who has spent decades tracking and reporting on taxes in California.  Statewide, 209 out of 303 tax and bond measures passed last November; 100 of those were for school bonds and 71 were approved. (The tallies can be found on Coleman’s website, CaliforniaCityFinance.com.)

Adding to the momentum, schools and local governments are expected to provide services that weren’t even on the radar screen decades ago; for government, addressing homelessness, human trafficking, sea level rise, and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to name a few. Schools have had added costs for the Covid pandemic and safety in the last couple of years.

The money for all that has to come from somewhere, be it taxes on property, hotel stays or corporate payrolls. But people these days seem more sanguine than in the past about ponying up. Much of the willingness seems to follow traditional political lines; San Mateo County—where Republican registration sits at an anemic 14%—has become one of the bluest counties in a reliably blue state whose voters often favor spending.

“I think we’re fortunate to live in an area where the local residents are willing to invest in the local government and the work that we do,” says county Board of Supervisors President Dave Pine. “And I think it makes a big difference in the quality of life in our community. But we couldn’t deliver many of the services that we all value if it weren’t for taxes.”

Odds of Passage

Some are easier to pass than others.

Coleman notes that if taxes are extended or revised without an increase—as in San Mateo County when voters added 20 years to 2012’s Measure A—most pass. Hotel and business license taxes succeed more often than utility taxes, which are among the hardest to enact.

Nonetheless, Coleman says there was “some dampening” in the November election, probably because of concerns about the economy. California’s overall passage rate of 69% was noticeably lower than in the last few election cycles (topping at 83% in 2016.).

More to the point, tax hikes aren’t even being placed on the ballot in some of the redder and more rural parts of the state. The lion’s share of the tax measures, Coleman says, are in the coastal and urban areas, such as the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

But taxes do add up. To the state’s 7.25% sales tax baseline, many jurisdictions tack on their own increments. Total sales tax rates exceed 10% in parts of Los Angeles County, and most San Mateo County cities are in the “high 9s.” Caltrain, which had been out in the cold among public transit agencies without a tax source of its own, finally got a one-eighth-cent levy in a three-county vote in November 2020. (The single losing tax measure in last November’s election was a parcel tax in South San Francisco for childcare.)

Redwood City’s Measure RR in 2018—called the “Redwood City Essential Services Protection Measure”—added a half cent (okayed by a 67.6% margin). Late last year, the city issued a request for proposals to analyze potential new revenue sources—among them parcel taxes and the creation of a new tax or special district—and update current sources of funds. If voter approval is required, the goal would be to get the recommendations to the city council by this November, with the June 2024 election in mind.

Hotel taxes offer a popular way to raise local revenues, because most often they’re paid by out-of-towners. Half Moon Bay’s hotel tax (called “TOT” for transient occupancy tax) reached 15% in July. In most of the county, it’s 12% to 14%.

On the other hand, bonds and parcel taxes literally hit property owners where they live.

This year, the owner of a house in the South San Francisco Unified School District valued at $1.5 million will see a property tax increase of about $900, as a result of $436 million in just-approved bonds. The additional cost for a homeowner in the Sequoia Union High School District with that value will be around $210 to begin repaying $591.5 million in new bonds. It’s $360 more for property owners in the Redwood City School District, where $298 million in bonds were also approved in November. For those who happen to live in both Redwood City districts, that’s an extra $570 per year.

Missing in Action

To oversimplify, Republicans typically are associated with a desire for lower taxes. With today’s lopsided Democratic margin in San Mateo County, it’s not as easy as it once was for voters to hear the opposite side of a tax proposal. There no longer seems even to be a local tax-fighting association. Years ago, the county to the north was absorbed into Hinkle’s Silicon Valley group. When Hinkle, a Morgan Hill resident, can’t locate someone to write the “anti” argument for a voter pamphlet somewhere, he often does it himself, at the risk of being called a carpetbagger.

Coleman, the tax expert, laments the loss of local newspapers. He says in many communities, the only thing voters can go on is the ballot pamphlet they get in the mail. “And,” he adds, “you just hope that they’re reading that. But I think many people aren’t.”

In the last two years, civil grand juries in Alameda and Santa Clara counties have also criticized the way ballot questions are phrased. Limited to 75 words, the question is supposed to be neutral and transparent. But many are considered to suffer from “proponents’ bias” because well-meaning people with a vested interest in the outcome may use “feel-good,” misleading or irrelevant language rather than just presenting the facts.

“It’s an offense against the system that you’re printing stuff to be on the ballot that’s basically a list of arguments,” says Richard Michael, a Southern California resident who maintains a website (bigbadbonds.com) about school bonds statewide.

He continues, “Everybody involved in this knows that the ballot label is the most important thing you can do because it’s the only thing that a voter will actually see when they vote. They might not hear any news. They might not see any mailers or hear any radio ads or whatever else they do, they might not even read the voter guide, which is mailed separately.”

Some critics say the odds are stacked in favor of school districts and government agencies, which can employ tools at taxpayer expense that leave the opposition outgunned—using pollsters to see what voters will support and how to frame it, sending out “informational” mailers, and then working with campaign consultants to craft arguments that hype the benefits and cloud the costs and/or duration of the tax.

Drawing the Line

“There’s really a bright line,” Supervisor Pine responds. “Taxpayers’ money can’t be used to advocate for a tax measure. But their money can be used to explore the viability of a measure and I think those are different.” More often than not, he says, polling keeps tax measures from going on the ballot. “You have to have a high degree of confidence that the electorate will support the tax. It’s expensive to go to the ballot and fail. It also positions you poorly having forced you maybe to go out a second time.”

Chris Robell, a retired corporate chief financial officer, wrote the ballot arguments against both of the Redwood City school measures on the November ballot, which he opposed because of the long-term cost of bond financing and the way he believed the measures were being presented. He posted about them on social media and produced a video explaining his opposition.

“Bonds are such an expensive way of doing financing,” Robell says, noting they’re similar to a home mortgage, which costs many times the sales price by the time the loan is paid off. Combined, he argues, the two districts’ estimate for the cost of $890 million in bonds is actually $1.7 billion, including principal and interest. He adds that soaring interest rates could create even more expense.

Robell figured there had to be a good reason to go into debt. But when he asked why the school districts needed the money, he started hearing alarm bells.

Chris Robell

“There’s a long list of projects and the projects are very general,” he says. “Then they say they’re going to consult with the community and figure out what we’re going to spend it on. They also make sure in their marketing materials to highlight things that have the highest voter excitement”—items such as deteriorating roofs and lack of air conditioning. He says he’d rather see additional funds go to hiring and retaining teachers than into infrastructure.

The “yes” citizen campaign committees for the two school measures raised sizable war chests for mailers and other campaign staples. “I’m just one person,” Robell says. “I don’t have $250,000 (for a campaign). It’s not a fair fight.”

Today’s vs. Tomorrow’s Dollars

Richard Ginn, who is president of the Sequoia district board and also a CFO, says there is a time value in being able to invest bond money today that is repaid in future dollars. (A basic financial principle holds that money in hand today is worth more than the prospect of money tomorrow, because today’s money can be used now and because the future contains uncertainty such as inflation, which could reduce the money’s value and effectively make it cheaper to pay back loans.)

With that in mind, Ginn says “we have aging buildings” that need upgrades every 10 to 15 years in a continuing process. “If the government is going to provide services and public facilities, you have to pay for it.”

Ginn says he’s among many people who moved to San Mateo County because of the quality of its schools, and that also translates into higher property values. He believes that in approving Measure W last November, voters understood that the funds would be used only for capital projects. The board will have to prioritize, Ginn says, but having air conditioning for classrooms will be high on the list. “We have had several days [last year] that were not conducive to learning.”

Meunier, the co-chair of the “Yes on S” committee supporting the Redwood City School District bond measure, was thrilled when it passed since it will help pay for costly, multi-year projects she believes are definitely needed. Voters in 2015 approved $193 million in bonds under another initiative called Measure T, but Measure S supporters said it covered only about a third of the need. Many of the district’s schools, Meunier says, are still “way behind.”

She adds, “If you don’t have the right technology, building safety and back-end stuff, you will not have the best teachers, happiness for the kids, teaching for the kids and the right environment.”

Furthermore, Meunier says, new and unexpected costs add to the schools’ financial burden. She recognizes that people who don’t have schoolkids or are retired may not share her passion about education. “The word ‘tax’ has a negative connotation,” says Meunier, “but what it’s actually funding is something I know that I want to do.”

Reporting to the Taxpayer

With the lowered threshold for passage, school districts with Prop. 39 bonds are required to have audits and independent citizen oversight committees looking at how the money is spent. There are now more than 500 of them in the state, according to the California Association of Bond Oversight Committees, which was formed in 2019. The organization says the reality sometimes falls short of the promise; some committees never meet or members haven’t been appointed. The group has proposed legislation to give the watchdogs more bite.

Annual reports by the Redwood City School District’s Measure T Oversight Committee are available online and detail where the money has helped modernize and upgrade schools throughout the district. The wide-ranging list includes new kitchen equipment, lunch tables and umbrellas, as well as fire alarm system upgrades, security cameras, safety locks and fencing, new fire escape ramps and emergency “wayfinding” signs.

The Sequoia high school district’s 2015 bond ($265 million for Measure A) financed a prodigious list of big projects, among them new classroom wings at Carlmont, Woodside and Menlo-Atherton high schools, renovation of the music building and the athletic practice field at Sequoia, a new gym at East Palo Academy and the new TIDE Academy.

San Mateo County maintains comprehensive online information on the 2016 Measure K sales tax, including annual reports, lists of specific expenditures and accountability criteria. One of the chief reasons county supervisors placed Measure K on the ballot was because of calls at the time for more affordable housing. Polling indicated that a bond for housing wouldn’t pass but a 10- or 20-year extension of Measure A would win handily. It did—and the former Measure A became Measure K. In December, the county announced the award of $54 million in housing grants that included more than $23 million in Measure K funds.

As its proponents promised, there is a citizen oversight committee. It meets twice a year. Its main role is to review the annual audit from the county controller’s office, but the committee has no power to recommend to the board of supervisors how funds should be spent.

Funding A New Agency

Meanwhile, the San Mateo County Flood & Sea Level Rise Resiliency District has a tax problem. Called OneShoreline for short, the agency was formed three years ago. The county and its cities were expected to contribute to it until it secured an independent source of funds. Some of the money from Measure K was supposed to go toward addressing sea level rise, and Pine says the county has indeed drawn on that source for its own OneShoreline share.

The board of supervisors last spring was looking at putting a parcel tax on the ballot, which had “kind of morphed into a broader climate resiliency tax,” Pine explains. Residents received glossy mailers about a “New Normal” of drought, wildfire and sea level rise, and were asked to comment online. But polling showed a parcel tax wouldn’t pass—illustrating Pine’s contention that polling often keeps tax measures off the ballot.

“Polling reflected what was going on in the world at the time,” he says, “which was inflation and gas prices were at a record high. People were still feeling uneasy about Covid. And it was clear that obtaining two-thirds approval [the margin a parcel tax needs] would be extremely hard to achieve. So we passed on it.”

Where does that leave OneShoreline? Pine says it’s not at imminent risk of going out of business. But long-term, he adds, “the need still exists to figure out how to fund OneShoreline.”

Virginia Chang Kiraly, who serves on the boards of both the Menlo Park Fire Protection District and the San Mateo County Harbor District, heard a similar message when she canvassed door-to-door last spring in her unsuccessful campaign for the board of supervisors. “I didn’t once talk to anyone who was for any taxes and I didn’t even bring up the tax measure,” she says. “And they don’t know how their tax dollars are being spent. I heard this over and over again.”

Chang Kiraly says she’s not anti-tax but that it was the wrong time to be going to the voters for more money when families were struggling to cover basic needs. She also contends OneShoreline should first try to partner with other taxpayer-supported special districts with overlapping missions to “figure out how you can expand on what they’re doing.”

Every harbor district infrastructure project, she adds, takes sea level rise into account. “How do you expand that and not have to reinvent the wheel? So it’s really about how do you become more resourceful with what you’ve got right now instead of working in silos?”

Keeping Up

Hinkle remains “baffled” why so many tax measures get approved by the people who will be paying the tab, though some of that may be because of residents who have been priced out of California and aren’t around to vote “no.”

Mark Hinkle

It bears noting that the Peninsula and Silicon Valley have some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country. For two-earner families or tech employees receiving stock options, thousands of dollars in taxes for quality public services and good schools may seem money well-spent.

Hinkle owns a swimming pool enclosure business, and his wife is an architect. They built their home in Morgan Hill 29 years ago. The property tax started at $4,000. Despite Prop. 13, their bill today runs more than $10,000. “Last time I looked, I had something like 19 different line items,” Hinkle says, add-ons for special districts, schools and other things. “Every year the property tax goes up $400 or $500.”

He’s lived his whole life in California but says if he and his wife ever quit working, “we can’t afford to stay here because of the property taxes and the cost of living. … You’ve heard the phrase ‘death by a thousand cuts?’ Well, I’ve had 19 cuts, and I’m not sure I can afford more.”

Menlo Park Chess Club an example of game’s Bay Area revival

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Menlo Park Chess Club an example of ancient's game Bay Area revival

By Vlae Kershner

The soft thump of plastic pieces stamping on green-and-white vinyl boards filled the room. Occasionally a player burst out in an exclamation.

With only seven seconds remaining on his clock, a reporter moved his black king out of check and pushed a button, stopping his countdown and turning his opponent’s timer on. Clyde, a towheaded nine-year-old boy, lifted his white rook and set it down on the reporter’s back row. “Check…and mate!” he exulted.

The action came in a December blitz tournament at the Menlo Park Chess Club. Each player had only three minutes, plus a two-second increment after each move, for the entire game. With such a quick time control, the entire five-round contest took only an hour. The 20 players ranged from ages 8 to around 70.

The reporter finished with a dismal record of 1-and-4 and an adrenaline rush that made it hard to sleep.

The weekly action has been going on since longtime Menlo Park resident Mark Drury formed the club in January 2022.

Drury says that 20 years ago, the area was home to several chess clubs. “They disappeared,” he laments. “Online chess killed them.” That left no place to play over the board between the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club in San Francisco and the Kolty Chess Club in Campbell.

Rise Of Internet Chess

Online chess exploded after Covid struck in 2020. The leading website, Chess.com, doubled its monthly active user base, and now has more than 97 million members. The New York Times called the boom the greatest since the Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky world championship match half a century ago.

Recently, people seeking social engagement have begun looking for over-the-board games, Drury says. Surveying the local landscape, he found lots of places for schoolkids but few for adults.

The club meets on Wednesday nights at the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center in Burgess Park. Players range from beginners to masters. One recent tournament attracted 63 contestants and was won by international master Olivia Smith from Wales. Smith is rated at around 2,050 points under the International Chess Federation’s official “Elo” system, which calculates a player’s prowess after every game played under tournament conditions. (Current world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway averages around 2,860.)

Drury says all competitors are welcome, adding that he can find an opponent within 100 rating points for anyone who wants to play. Beginners can also be linked up with a local chess teacher. The club is free, though non-residents are subject to a $3 facility fee. Players come mostly from San Mateo south on the Peninsula, with a few from across the bay.

Formats vary from week to week. They include classical, in which each player must complete 40 moves in an hour; rapid (10 minutes); blitz (three minutes); bullet (one minute); and duck (where both players can place a rubber duck on the board to block attacks). Recently gaining in popularity is a variety called Fischer Random, in which pieces are shuffled to discourage memorized openings.

Long History Across Continents

A non-lethal representation of war, chess has its origins in a game called chaturanga, which was played in sixth-century India. The pastime spread across the globe, its pieces gradually gaining power, and reached its standard form in 16th-century Spain. A Spanish priest, Ruy Lopez, published a chess book in 1561, giving a still-popular king’s pawn opening his name.

By the mid-20th century, players from the Soviet Union dominated the game, but were briefly overthrown by American chess genius Bobby Fischer in 1972, causing the game’s popularity to explode in the United States. The enthusiasm faded three years later when the tempestuous Fischer gave up his crown in a dispute with match organizers.

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This story first appeared in the January edition of Climate Magazine

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In the Bay Area, chess was popularized by Belgian-born international master George Koltanowski, a memory whiz renowned for playing as many as 34 games simultaneously while blindfolded. He wrote a chess column for the San Francisco Chronicle for 52 years until his death at 96 in 2000. His nickname lives on in the Kolty Chess Club in Campbell.

Around the time Koltanowski died, a threat to human chess supremacy began developing in the new digital world. Computer scientists programmed a machine to play perfect tic-tac-toe in 1952 and could hardly resist chess, which is estimated to have 10 to the 120th power possible moves, more than the number of atoms in the observable universe.

The first chess engines, as the programs are known, played poorly. It wasn’t until the 1980s that they became competitive with expert players. Finally, in 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov under tournament conditions, ending the reign of humans over one of the world’s most complex brain teasers.

Still Unsolved

Unlike in checkers, which was shown in 2007 to result in a draw if perfectly played on both sides, computers have not yet fully cracked chess. It remains unknown if an ideal sequence of play would bring victory for the white pieces, which move first, or a draw.

World champion Carlsen’s rating in the mid-2,800s pales next to the latest publicly available version of the Stockfish engine (a free, open-source, computer-driven chess program). It’s rated at more than 3,500. That means anyone cheating with a phone theoretically could beat any human in almost every contest.

High-level chess engines at times seem to be playing a different game. For example, it is usually a fatal blunder to allow a major piece to be captured without being able to recapture it. But in a recent tournament, another engine called Leela Chess Zero left a rook (the castle) hanging for half the game. Stockfish refused to take it, both sides apparently calculating the piece would not play a part in more imminent checkmate threats.

When Kasparov, a self-exiled political foe of Vladimir Putin, got into a Twitter battle with Elon Musk over the Russia-Ukraine war, the Silicon Valley billionaire taunted him, tweeting, “While it’s true that Kasparov is almost as good at playing chess as my iPhone, he is otherwise an idiot.”

Musk’s comment may have been rude, but it pointed out a huge problem for a game synonymous with intellectual challenge. Cheating is difficult to catch without sophisticated programs that evaluate whether a player is getting help.

“Game That Broke Internet”

In September, chess made international headlines following suggestions that American 19-year-old Hans Niemann had cheated to beat Carlsen in the prestigious Sinquefield Cup, an over-the-board tournament in St. Louis. Rumors flew that Niemann had received electronic signals from a vibrating sex toy.

Niemann, who twice as a juvenile had been caught cheating online by Chess.com, vigorously denied the allegations and sarcastically offered to play naked. For weeks, the chess world argued about “the game that broke the Internet.” Niemann has since filed a $100-million defamation suit against Carlsen, his company (Play Magnus Group), Chess.com and others.

Niemann was born in San Francisco and was the youngest winner of the Mechanics’ Institute Thursday Night Marathon tournament at age 11. He now lives in New York, the center of U.S. chess.

But the local region appears to be catching up. “The Bay Area is quite the chess hub—almost rivaling New York, not quite,” says Wolfgang Behm, who works for Bay Area Chess, a San Jose nonprofit that promotes the game. Run by enthusiast Salman Azhar, it establishes tournaments, camps and clubs for children K-12, mostly from first to fifth grade. Players who have taken part in the program include 17-year-old Christopher Yoo, now a grandmaster who four years ago became the youngest international master in U.S. history.

On Saturday mornings, Bay Area Chess holds a tournament at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, with an average of 12 to 24 players a week. On a recent Saturday, a group of children averaging ages 7 and 8 gathered for a quad tournament, a round-robin competition matching players of approximately equal strength in groups of four.

Slow Recovery from Pandemic

During Covid, the games had to move online. “We’re not even close to back where it was,” Behm says. “We need more coaches,” he adds, noting many were forced to move to other jobs.

Several factors have sparked local interest, starting when India’s Viswanathan “Vishy” Anand became a five-time world champion in the early 2000s, attracting Indian American youngsters from places such as Cupertino. Behm says Carlsen is also popular in the Bay Area.

“Queen’s Gambit,” a hit Netflix series in 2020 about a Kentucky orphan who rises to challenge the world champion, also engaged new players, especially girls. In the real world, the closest equivalent to the fictional Beth Harmon may be Hungarian-born Judit Polgár, one of the world’s 10 top players in the early 2000s.

Still, a tournament of 50 players might include just five or six girls “if we’re lucky,” Behm says. He considers it unfortunate because he finds girls typically more focused and easier to teach than boys.

Considering the queen is the most powerful piece on the board, it might be time for that to change. Perhaps the newfound popularity of chess on the Peninsula will play a role.

For those seeking a more casual over-the-board experience, the City of San Carlos recently installed a pair of chess tables in Frank D. Harrington Park on Laurel Street.

The little bus that could

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The Little Bus That Could

“The Little Engine That Could” is the classic children’s story about an undersized yet determined railroad locomotive that kept puffing away until it reached the top of a steep hill. The book, by Wally Piper, popularized the line, “I think I can, I think I can.”  It was published in 1930 and later adapted to film and song.

Perhaps it’s time to tell the tale of the “little bus that could”—the minibus service in Redwood City that had a short but very successful career.

The line, which operated from 1968 and ended in 1976 when SamTrans took over San Mateo County’s bus service, quickly drew praise.  In 1972, it was featured in Nation’s Cities, a prestigious magazine published by the National League of Cities. Among other things, the article lauded the bustling fleet of six buses for keeping prompt half-hour schedules and dropping off passengers who flagged down the vehicles anywhere along the routes.

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This story first appeared in the December edition of Climate Magazine

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Bob Bury, Redwood City’s mayor from 1968 to 1972, said the bus service was “one of the most satisfying things we have accomplished in government.” As if speaking about today’s issues, Bury noted that people without cars could get to their jobs more easily, and older people could be more independent by being able to get around without depending on others to take them somewhere.

Is there a chance the line might be reincarnated? Doesn’t look good. Rick Hunter, chair of Redwood City’s current planning commission, says SamTrans recently reviewed its service and developed recommendations in a report entitled “Reimagine SamTrans.” If the old bus line “isn’t reflected in that document, there aren’t any plans to have it return,” Hunter told Climate.

Minibuses the Key

With such great praise, what went wrong? Nothing, at least not with the bus system itself. Like other Peninsula lines, Redwood City’s became a thing of the past in 1976 when SamTrans started rolling.  At that time, an overriding problem was the lack of north-south bus service from one Peninsula city to another. Today, a major concern is east-west service.

What made the Redwood City system nearly unique were the buses and the labor contract. Instead of opting for big buses that had room for many passengers, which often meant a lot of empty seats, city officials went for those that seated 17 people with standing room for eight more. The contract was with  an organization called ServiCar of Northern California, which provided drivers and partial maintenance. A key feature of the pact included an incentive clause that gave drivers raises when revenues went up—and they did.

The buses worked five routes, starting at what is now Redwood City’s Caltrain station but was then the depot for the old Southern Pacific railroad, which merged with the Union Pacific in 1996. They had regular stops that included Whipple Avenue, Woodside Road, Marsh Manor, Farm Hill and Roosevelt. Before the unusual system was born, Redwood City, like most other towns, contracted with private bus companies. In Redwood City, the line was Peninsula Transit, which dropped to just one bus in 1967, resulting in outrage from stranded passengers.  City council members up for reelection took note of the public frustration and called for a “mini muni” service in the county seat.

It was initially estimated that about 600 people would ride the buses every day. The fare was 25 cents and officials figured the city would have to cover about $100,000 of the yearly $150,000 operating cost. The forecast was much brighter by the end of the first year of operation, when the deficit dropped to $63,000 and the number of passengers turned out to be far more than expected.  In 1976, the nine buses carried more than 2,000 passengers a day.

Art Balsamo was the city director of transportation when the first buses rolled out on a rainy April morning in 1968. Interviewed in 1976 when SamTrans took over, he recalled that the line had few problems. “The buses were serving the people, and they knew it and took care of them,” he said. Balsamo was asked if he would have done anything differently. His answer: “How do you change success?”

The system did have a few gaps. For one thing, there was no Sunday or late evening service. The system was designed to run on a 13-hour schedule during the week, starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 7:30 p.m. The buses ran for just nine hours on Saturday. Whatever the shortcomings, they must have been few. Researchers at the history room in Redwood City’s main library found no reported complaints.

Surprisingly, few people know of the bus line’s history. I asked Hunter if there had been a feasibility study about bringing back the line. He put the question to transportation manager Jessica Manzi. Hunter said Manzi had “heard about the service, likely from your articles, but didn’t know anything more about it.” The article he referred to appeared in the June 2016 issue of Climate. Apparently, it didn’t gain much traction. I will keep writing about what I regard an important, and overlooked, part of city history until it gets the attention it deserves – all the time telling myself, “I think I can, I think I can.”

For decades, Cocco family has brought Christmas trees to the Peninsula

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How Lovely Are Thy Branches Across four decades, Redwood City’s Cocco family has brought Christmas trees to the Peninsula.

By Joanne Engelhardt

For many people, the holidays would be nothing without a Christmas tree. Reaching high to place an angel or a star atop a traditional evergreen isn’t limited to those who celebrate the season in a religious manner; non-Christians also enjoy the invigorating scent and spirit that rise from the graceful boughs of a brightly trimmed tree.

Since the 1980s, the Coccos of Redwood City have been selling Christmas trees and wreaths on the Peninsula. And the business has always been a family affair. Mike and Judi Cocco’s five children, now grown, started helping as soon as they were old enough. And most are still part of the long-running enterprise.

Mike grew up in Redwood City and Sunnyvale, attending Stanford on a baseball scholarship and graduating with a geology degree in 1972. He met Judi in Arizona while traveling the west as a young geoscientist. They married in the mid-1970s, and in 1980 settled in Pescadero, where Mike took up farming and Judi entered the nursing profession, eventually working at Kaiser Permanente in Redwood City.

Mike grew pumpkins on 100 acres, and soon split his property equally between future jack o’ lanterns and a new venture—Christmas trees. But in 1985, before the first tree crop had matured, he and Judi sold the farm and moved back to Redwood City. The Bay Area’s housing market taking off, and Mike became a building contractor, constructing and remodeling houses. Says daughter Shelly Cocco, who was 8 years old at the time, “If you could drive a nail in it, my dad was building it.”But Christmas trees still appealed to Mike and Judi. They leased various lots along the Peninsula, and in 1990 established a cut-it-yourself Christmas tree business in Cupertino. Then, in the mid-1990s, they bought 40 acres near Portland, Oregon, and finally started growing trees in earnest.

Honey and Christmas Trees

Along the way, the Coccos became friends with Hans and Dieter Else, brothers who operated a Christmas tree lot on Woodside Road in Redwood City. Hans doubled as a beekeeper. Their business, Honey Bear Trees, offered a free jar of honey with every purchase. In 2006, the Elses were ready to retire. Mike and Judi bought their company and continued both the name and the tradition.

How Lovely Are Thy Branches Across four decades, Redwood City’s Cocco family has brought Christmas trees to the Peninsula.

Gradually, they expanded to another lot in San Carlos and two in San Mateo near the county event center. They left the latter sites after four or five years; Shelly says their location away from heavily traveled streets made it difficult to develop a clientele.

But business remained brisk at the Redwood City lot on Woodside Road and the San Carlos location on El Camino Real. Last year, however, the family learned the Woodside Road spot would be developed. So this year, the Coccos are operating on one lot in San Carlos, across from Trader Joe’s on El Camino.

Size Matters

Selling to the public always brings a few good stories. Shelly says one year, a recently divorced man wanted Honey Bear’s biggest evergreen because his ex-wife never let him buy tall trees. He selected one 15 feet high. Shelly recalls that it hung halfway off the man’s truck when he pulled away.

This holiday season, Honey Bear is offering 6-to-7-foot conifers for the same $108 it charged last year. As for once-popular flocking sprayed to imitate snow-covered branches, Shelly says demand has waned because the necessary equipment increases the cost significantly. For those who keep their trees up for a month or more, she recommends Nordmann fir or noble fir. Douglas-fir, she says, tends to dry out more quickly.

Customers looking for big trees should be able to find what they need. Shelly notes Honey Bear can provide taller trees, between 10 and 20 feet in height, which she says can be hard to find. The company also offers special orders and deliveries for larger clients, one of whom requested 20 trees this season.

Shelly says few people realize the family’s sales begin in mid-fall; this year, the San Carlos lot opened on November 12. “I know it sounds crazy,” she says. “But a lot of people want to buy their trees that early.”

The Coccos hope to sell between 3,500 and 4,000 trees this year. Shelly says if the inventory gets low early, “we’ll scramble to harvest more” from the family’s tree farms in Oregon. (Mike leases another 10 acres beyond his own operation, and son Mikey tends 30 acres nearby.)

A Commuter Business

Much of the family shuttles between the Bay Area and the town of Oregon City, population 37,572, in suburban Clackamas County, southeast of Portland. Mikey, the youngest sibling, spends considerable time there. (Shelly, the next-to-youngest, calls him “the baby of the family” despite his having been one of the original partners in Honey Bear Trees.) Even Mike and Judi, who own a home in Redwood City, also live part-time in Oregon City, with a broad view of their rows of Christmas trees, which extend to the wooded hills beyond.

Indeed, many in the Cocco brood are still part of the business in one way or another. Shelly’s brother, Jeff, helps at the main farm in Oregon City, tagging trees, harvesting and “doing just about anything else we need him to do,” Shelly says. Another brother, Chris Cocco, now lives in Texas but has worked on the tree lots and, like Shelly, managed one of them. Chris now has four sons, three of whom have worked for the company over the years. So have Jeff’s son, known to the family as “Little Jeff,” and Shelly’s boys, Conor and Joey.

Another Cocco sibling, Nikki Boyle, lives in Redwood City with her husband Aaron and their two children. Nikki is a realtor; Aaron was also one of the original partners in Honey Bear Trees, but left to work in the restaurant business. (He sold his share to Shelly.) These days, their daughter, Hudson, and their son, Bowie, also help at the tree lots, and Bowie sometimes makes deliveries with his Uncle Mikey.

Supporting the Community

The Coccos’ business has traditionally provided seasonal employment for dozens of local young people. High school and college students have cleared the tree lots before opening day and pitched in over the long Thanksgiving weekend, when things get especially busy.

Shelly estimates that, over the years, the business has donated more than $80,000 to support local schools, clubs, churches and other nonprofits in both San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. She says Honey Bear donates 15 percent of the price of a tree or holiday wreath to local institutions such as Sequoia and Woodside high schools, Sacred Heart Schools in Atherton, Woodside Elementary School and the San Carlos Education Foundation, which distributes the money among public schools in San Carlos.

By December 20—whether or not they’re sold out—Shelly says, “we’re all dead on our feet.” At that point, the family closes the business in order to enjoy the holidays with family and friends.

Their takeaway after all the frenzied months of work?

“I’ve always loved seeing the joy we can bring a family during the holidays,” Shelly says. “Even now, that’s my favorite part. It never grows old.”

Children’s story time — presented by a drag queen

in Community by

By Jim Kirkland and Scott Dailey

Place this event in the category of “the times, they are a-changin.’” And to no one’s surprise, it brought a strong dose of controversy to Redwood City.

Approximately 50 adults and 15 kids on November 19 turned out to hear drag queen Reina De Aztlan read LGBTQ-oriented children’s books at the Redwood City Main Library. Nearly all the adults appeared to listen respectfully, although one woman stood with arms held high and thumbs pointed down.

Outside, protesters silently held signs with slogans such as “Drag Queens are adult entertainment, not children’s!” and “Are our tax $$ funding drag queens reading to kids?”

De Aztlan read, “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo,” about a boy bunny who falls in love with another boy bunny; “They, She, He, Me: Free to Be!” about various gender presentations; and “10,000 Dresses,” about a boy whose parents discourage him from liking dresses and an older girl who supports him, among other books.

Redwood City Library Director Derek Wolfgram said he planned the event to coincide with United Against Hate Week (November 13-19), sponsored by the organization Not in Our Town and endorsed unanimously by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors at its meeting November 15.

“We feel the LGBTQ community is often subject to discrimination and thought this was an opportunity to have a positive experience around that,” Wolfgram said. He added that the library has become “very intentional” in its attempts to create opportunities for all kinds of people to talk about their life experiences.

De Aztlan, an Oakland resident, has been performing in drag for 15 years and in 2015 became involved with Drag Queen Story Hour, a creation of RADAR Productions in San Francisco. RADAR’s website describes the group as “a Bay Area queer literary arts organization creating and supporting a community of queer artists through commissioning, developing and presenting groundbreaking literary work.”

“I think it’s really important that children have role models with people they identify with,” said De Aztlan. At the reading, De Aztlan introduced their parents, describing lifelong support that included buying De Aztlan a dress during childhood.

Before the event, Wolfgram had expressed concern that the performance might result in confrontation, as happened in June at drag queen story times in San Lorenzo and Sparks, Nevada. In front of the Redwood City Library, protesters remained peaceful but were pointed in their comments.

“I’m a Christian missionary and I talk to LGBTQ people all the time,” said Daniel Beaudoin of San Jose. “But I believe that sexuality and gender were designed by God in a particular context in accordance to scripture. So, no matter what the intentions of the people here may be, promoting things like this is social engineering.” On his LinkedIn page, Beaudoin says he is affiliated with Open Air Campaigners, described on its website as “an evangelistic ministry of preaching the gospel to lost people and mobilizing the body of Christ.”

Redwood City Vice Mayor Diana Reddy attended the event and said, “Redwood City believes in equity all through the community. This is an opportunity for parents who wish to bring their kids and have this experience of maybe meeting someone they would never have the chance to meet.”

Dynasty: How the Kopfs of Redwood City created an automotive powerhouse

in Community by

The Kopf family, owners of Towne Ford, an Acura dealership and Boardwalk Auto Mall in Redwood City, come by their passion for cars honestly.

It all started in 1917, when Benjamin Kopf Sr. joined the staff of Ford Motor Company’s recently opened factory in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Kopf, who was born in the city, eventually established and ran five Ford plants throughout South America. His reputation spread, and company founder Henry Ford himself asked his rising Latin star to build a fresh franchise abroad.

Had either Kopf or Ford possessed a crystal ball, they might have reconsidered the new market: Japan. There, Kopf would achieve great success before finding himself under house arrest during World War II.

Like many during the wave of European immigration to the Western Hemisphere, Kopf’s father had come to Buenos Aires from France in the late 1800s. A brewer by trade, he died in 1892, when Benjamin was two years old. His wife remarried a farmer named Alfredo Johanessen, but young Ben didn’t take to farm life. His brilliant mind harbored dreams of bigger things than feeding chickens and milking cows. Still, what education he received was by way of a tutor. Even that limited book-learning held contrary to his stepfather’s belief that the simple pleasures of hard work in the fields were all one needed in life.

It was far from surprising, then, that Kopf left home at 13, returning to the big city of Buenos Aires. He worked at odd jobs while satiating his desire for knowledge with help from the book collection at the YMCA. Along the way, he discovered a knack for languages, eventually speaking seven: German, Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, Italian and Japanese.

Disciplined and driven, Kopf joined Ford four years after his re-arrival in the city. It didn’t take long before the new hire’s talents were recognized, and he was elevated to assistant manager of the company’s local manufacturing plant. Cars were quickly catching on in Argentina, with Ford pushing out more than 1,000 vehicles a month in a country that didn’t have paved roads. By 1921, Kopf was head of a new Brazilian facility before moving to open another in Uruguay a year later—all while managing Ford dealerships in Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Peru.

A New Assignment

A year later, Kopf was a father of two children, Margarita and Benjamin Jr.  With his wife, Margo, the young executive was ready for new challenges. While in Uruguay, he wrote to Ford, “The satisfaction of work well done, and hope of getting bigger and bigger jobs, are constant inspiration to me and a spur to exert more and better efforts.”

Kopf was angling to open a factory in Mexico.

Ford had other ideas.

He had decided his go-getting Argentine was just the man to crack the market in Japan, which had been shut off to Westerners. Undaunted by his then-lack of knowledge about Japanese culture and language, Kopf dutifully gathered up his family and in 1925 sailed for Yokohama, where the new plant would be constructed.

It took years to grasp the Japanese world, but gaining a foothold in the country’s auto market was a different matter. In short order, Kopf had Ford number-one in vehicle sales and oversaw 1,150 employees while setting up dealerships in China, the Philippines and French Indochina. In 1929 alone, Ford sold more than 10,000 units built in Japan.

According to a generational history written by grandson Rick, the visionary Kopf believed in modern technology and at one point sought unsuccessfully to introduce commercial aviation to Japan through the Ford tri-motor airplane. Never one to leave money on the table, Kopf was said to have sold the prototype to a Chinese warlord.

For 15 years, Ford boomed in Japan. Its cars became so popular that the royal family visited the Yokohama plant. Benjamin Kopf Sr. was on top of his game, the darling of Ford Motor Company and a respected, influential businessman.

Then came December 7, 1941.

Increasingly alarmed at the unsettling signs of war, Margo and Ben in 1934 had sent Ben Jr. to the U.S. and Margarita to Canada to be educated. Margo followed in 1940, taking residence in Palo Alto, adjacent to where the children had reunited at Stanford.

Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kopf found himself locked out of his factory, held under house arrest and searching for a way out of Japan. Even though he was an Argentinean citizen, he was a foreigner who ran an American manufacturing facility that had been seized and converted to military production.

Eventually, in 1943, Kopf was released under a prisoner exchange and boarded a series of ships that took him to Shanghai, the Philippines, India, South Africa and Rio de Janeiro before arriving in New York, where Margo met him. After three months of recuperation in Palo Alto, Ford sent the restless Benjamin Kopf Sr. to the assignment he had originally sought: Mexico City. There, he became president, treasurer and general manager of Ford South America and Mexico, where he spent the rest of his career before returning to the Peninsula and retiring in Menlo Park during the late 1970s.

The Next Generation

At Stanford, it was customary for those with wheels to give rides to the less-fortunate hoofing it along Palm Drive between downtown Palo Alto and the center of the campus. That courtesy extended especially from young men to young women. One morning, Benjamin Jr. was driving a shiny new 1940 black Mercury convertible with a red leather interior—a gift from his parents—when he pulled over and offered a lift to a student named Marian Malquist.

“She fell in love with my car,” said Ben Jr., with apparent chagrin, on a video his sons taped, “and the romance started from there.” He added with a smile, “If I hadn’t married Marian, I would have probably become a beach bum.”

Ben Jr. sought to join up at the outbreak of World War II, but as a domicile of Japan and non-American citizen of German ancestry, he attracted natural scrutiny. As his son, Ben Kopf III, relates, “The story told to me was that Dad went into the recruiting office and said, ‘I want to volunteer.’ To which his recruitment officer replied, ‘Let’s see your I.D.’

“The sergeant looked at Dad’s birth certificate and passport and said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ But then Dad informed the sergeant that he spoke fluent Japanese, German and Tagalog (the basis of standard Filipino). The recruiter’s next request was, ‘Raise your right hand.’”

Ben Jr. was attached to the Army Intelligence Corps and sent to the Philippines to lead the division there. Before he departed, however, came some unfinished business: He and Marian eloped.

Coming home in 1946, Ben Jr. found he had to compete with swarms of other returning G.I.s for a job. He and Marian decided they would fare better in Mexico City working for Ford under Ben Sr. But after two years in Mexico, Marian had had enough and the couple returned to California to give birth to their first two sons, Richard (Rick) and Robert (Bob) in Menlo Park.

It should have come as little surprise that Ben Jr. found his next job at a Ford dealership.

—

This story first appeared in the November edition of Climate Magazine

—

The Mercury drop-top that had captured Marian’s heart was serviced at Towne Ford in Redwood City. While waiting for his car one day, Ben Jr. struck up a conversation with one of the partners, Ame Cahors, who oversaw the service department. Cahors asked what he was up to, and Ben Jr. admitted he was looking for work. Cahors offered him a position as a salesman. Thus began Benjamin Kopf Jr.’s entry into an auto store he would ultimately own.

Ben Jr. lived by a simple philosophy. “It’s important that you be lucky,” he said, “and to be lucky you have to work hard. And the harder you work, the luckier you get.”

As time went by, Kopf began buying out the other partners, coming to full ownership by 1970. Then he began to expand. Over the next 20 years, he purchased Stanford Lincoln-Mercury in Menlo Park, along with Towne Ford, Towne Mitsubishi and Hopkins Acura with co-owner Steve Hopkins in Redwood City. For a while, he also held franchises to sell Studebakers and the Ford Edsel, and was even a DeLorean dealer.

Win some, lose some.

Ben Jr.’s eldest son, Rick, says his father “could be tough when fighting the unions.” On the other hand, Rick adds that he “was known to be a gentleman car dealer.” An example: One night, under yellow lights, a customer bought a truck he thought was white. The next morning, he discovered it was pink.  Ben Jr. gave him a refund.

And the Next Generation

Ben Jr. and Marian had four sons: Rick, Bob, Jamie and Ben III. Only Rick pursued a career outside the automobile business that stuck; he became a lawyer, notably chief counsel for Sprint Communications and then chief counsel for the investment arm of the Bechtel family.

Bob rose through the business to own Stanford Lincoln-Mercury in Menlo Park for 33 years while buying another Lincoln dealership in Fresno. Jamie—son number three—is an aviator at heart, having earned a commercial pilot’s license by his early 20s. But on the Peninsula, especially, the acorn often falls close to the oak. After college and a stint in the Army as a combat engineer, Jamie, too, entered the automobile business.

“I grew up in a car family,” he says. “But my dad said, ‘You’re not going to work at Towne. Go out and make your own life.”

Jamie worked for numerous other dealerships, learning the business with an eye on establishing his own shop. He found that opportunity in 1980 through Bob Kesek, who owned a Volkswagen store in Redwood City. The timing was good from one perspective; Kesek’s partner wanted to sell his stake. But the country was in a dramatic recession, with interest rates hitting 20 percent that December. Car sales were sinking fast. Undaunted, Kopf jumped in, believing the economy would turn around.

He was right.

Jamie joined Kesek in a new venture—Boardwalk Group on Convention Way, a street where many envisioned a Redwood City auto row. The young dealership flourished, and the two partners were set to expand in the neighborhood.

Then the cops showed up. The California Highway Patrol took over a large section of the area for its local headquarters, effectively nixing the auto row plan. Still aspiring to grow, Kopf and Kesek began searching for other land. They found it across the freeway, at the site of the former E.H. Bean Trucking and Rigging business on Bair Island Road.

Kesek, a Volkswagen man since the 1950s, wanted to remain one exclusively. But Jamie sought to broaden the firm’s offerings.

“I didn’t want all our eggs in one basket,” he says. “Volkswagen was fine, but I felt the future was in a multi-line.” The dealership added the Lotus, Chevrolet and AMC Jeep brands, among others. (American Motors Corp. produced the Jeep from 1970 to 1987, when Chrysler Corp. bought AMC.) Eventually Jamie would expand on his own, creating an auto mall in Reno, where he combined two Honda dealerships and another Acura franchise.

By 1995, with four successful sons, Ben Kopf Jr. was ready to retire. Jamie was building his own auto empire, Rick was lawyering and Bob had his hands full with Stanford Lincoln-Mercury in Menlo Park and other ventures. So, Ben Jr. made an offer to his youngest son, Ben III.

“My dad said, ‘I can sell the business or bring a general manager from the outside—which means it will be broke in three years—or do you want it?’” recalls Ben III.

The 50-year-old owner of a successful electronics manufacturing company, Ben III had never imagined he would enter the car business. But after consideration, he agreed to buy Towne Ford. The wrinkle was that his family lived in Great Falls, Virginia. Ben III tried commuting for a year, but quickly discovered the dealership required far more than part-time on-site management. Packing up the family, Ben III returned home to the Bay Area and never looked back. “I enjoy every day I come in,” he says.

And the Generation After

The family business has continued for yet another generation. Neither Rick nor Bob’s children opted for the auto industry. But Jamie’s two sons, Jamie Jr. and Doug, are now the owners and general managers of Boardwalk Auto Mall. Jamie Sr. acts as the director, loosely overseeing operations. Daughter Lindsay heads another Kopf enterprise, a nonprofit that removes trash from Lake Tahoe (see the August issue of Climate).

Ben III has two sons of his own, Ben IV and Taylor. After years overseas in the advertising business, Ben IV joined Towne Ford, acting as the internet guru for the company website before becoming general manager of both Towne and Hopkins Acura.

But five years ago, the entrepreneurial bug bit him, as well. Ben IV opened a brewery on Maui, and now lives at the base of the dormant Haleakala volcano, which dominates much of the island’s eastern side.

Ben III’s other son, Taylor, stayed in transportation but with a different twist. A bicycling enthusiast, he opened and operated two bike shops, one in Mountain View and the other San Mateo, called Cognition Cyclery. The stores were so successful that cycling-industry giant Specialized bought Taylor out. Now, Taylor is the latest member of the Kopf family working at Towne, learning the business from the ground up.

The auto pedigree may run deep in the Kopfs’ history, but it hardly defines them. Too many other passions have found their way into their internal-combustion engines: Flying, tech, bicycles, beer, law and their beloved Lake Tahoe.

Perhaps Benjamin Kopf Jr. summed it up best when he said, “For anybody to be happy, they need three things: Someone to love, something to do and something to want.”

Argentinian patriarch Benjamin Kopf Sr. would likely agree.

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