THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--The iconic beachfront Gladstone’s may be serving its last oysters by October 2017. County officials aim to entice a new restaurateur or developer by expanding the maximum concession terms, which would give the new developer time to recoup investments. 

A vote by the County Board of Supervisors has doubled the long-term lease for the Pacific Palisades property to forty years from its current twenty-year term and would require a redevelopment plan for the facility in hope that a new establishment would be constructed from the ground up. 

Supervisor Sheila Kuehl wrote in a motion to the board, “Because the existing facility is seriously deteriorated and outdated, the Department desires the successful bidder to construct an entirely new facility.” 

Angelenos and tourists have been ordering chowder, crab cakes and the like at Gladstone’s since 1972. The eatery pays about $1.7 million in rent each year to occupy the state-owned property, which is operated by the county. The county discounted the rent to $875 K this year to accommodate the restaurant’s financial setbacks, according to the LA Daily News. 

How would the lease expansion bring in a bidding war? Kuehl’s motion would give new facility owners or developers forty years to recoup the cost of renovations or redevelopment instead of the existing twenty. The current owners of Gladstone’s would be eligible to rebid on the property. 

Carol Baker, spokesperson for the LA County Beach and Harbors said, “This isn’t some, ‘Let’s do this to Gladstone’s.’ This lease was coming to an end. We need to think about what’s the best way to move forward on this iconic property. It’s a harsh environment, right on the ocean. That property experiences a lot of wear and tear. An operator will need to address that – while you’re at it, what is your concept?” 

Former Mayor and current majority stakes holder of Gladstone’s Richard Riordan has some ideas, including a possible museum with a restaurant. He’s not officially tied with any redevelopment plans but favors the idea. “I think it’s a good idea if they can put the pieces together,” he said. 

The benefits of the proposed amendment include minimizing loss of revenue for the county when Gladstone’s closes, as well as making maintenance and security costs more affordable for a new operator. According to The Daily News, the restaurant has been running at a deficit of $100,000 per month. 

Currently, Gladstone’s website assures guests that there is no set closure date for the beachside restaurant. 

ATTENTION GUESTS:

Despite what you may have heard throughout the media, at this present time, there is no set closure date for Gladstone’s Malibu. We are happy to continue taking your reservations and event inquiries over the phone or via email/website submission. Thank you for your continued support and patronage to an iconic beach landmark!-Management.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)

-cw

BILLBOARD WATCH--Dear Councilman Englander … At the August 23 meeting of the City Council’s PLUM committee, you publicly accused me of putting out false information in the articles I write about billboard and signage issues. Specifically, in asking a city official for clarification of a point under discussion, you said, “Because I want to make sure that when Mr. Hathaway writes about this, since he gets it wrong most of the time, that he hears it clearly.”

I consider this an attack on my personal integrity, because I always strive to be factually accurate and avoid taking things out of context or otherwise trafficking in misinformation. For example, before writing about PLUM committee meetings I almost always listen to the meeting audio, to make sure that I heard things correctly and that I accurately quote committee members and other speakers. I have a definite point of view about the signage issues the PLUM committee deals with, but that doesn’t mean I believe in using less than ethical and honest means to promote that view.

But your accusation was more than just an attack on me, it was an attack on the very idea that LA residents are entitled to be fully informed on the issues that affect them, in this case issues of billboard and signage regulation. That’s because the large majority of those residents can’t come to PLUM committee meetings to hear the discussion firsthand. Unlike lobbyists, billboard company representatives, and others who are paid to attend these meetings, most community people can’t take time off work, arrange child care, and make the necessary adjustments needed to attend a weekday meeting at City Hall. So, without someone reporting on the details of those meetings, they are denied the knowledge they need and deserve to form opinions and make decisions about the issues at hand.

I’m not paid, either, but I’m fortunate enough to be at a stage of my life that I can devote a significant amount of time to a cause I consider very important to the mental and physical health of communities throughout LA And an important part of that effort is to inform those citizens who want to know what their elected representatives are doing about billboards and signage but don’t have time to attend the many meetings held on the topic or read the many lengthy reports issued at various points in the deliberative process.

Unfortunately, your public statement at the Aug. 24 PLUM committee meeting tells those citizens, in essence, that the information they read online at the BanBillboardBlight [[banbillboardblight.org ]] website or in CityWatch or hear in public service programs on local radio stations is “wrong most of the time.” Doubly unfortunate is the fact that you didn’t specify a single instance of what you considered wrong, so it’s just an accusation put out there, deliberately or otherwise, to create doubt in some people’s minds that what they’re reading and hearing is factually accurate.

I have been writing articles about PLUM committee actions and deliberations, as well as those of the City Planning Commission and other government agencies, for almost nine years. In that time, not a single billboard company lobbyist or billboard company executive or employee has approached me and said that something I wrote was false. Not a single member of the PLUM committee, present or past, has contacted me to make that complaint. Not a single City Councilmember, not a single city planner or member of the city attorney’s staff or any other city official involved with billboard and signage issues has told me that something I wrote was inaccurate.

You surely understand that people come to meetings and otherwise involve themselves in community affairs, not because they are paid to, but because they believe in a vision of a better community and a better city. Those people deserve the respect and even the encouragement of their elected representatives, regardless of where they happen to stand on a particular project or issue. Those people deserve access to as much information as possible, so that they can make the kind of informed decisions that are in important part of the bedrock of a democratic system.

I hope you will take that into consideration before making unsupported accusations against someone who has volunteered his time and energy to disseminate that information as widely as possible and help make the system work the way it was intended.

(Dennis Hathaway is the president of the Ban Billboard Blight Coalition and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected].)

-cw

BUTCHER ON LA-“Reform” of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is on the November ballot as Charter Amendment Measure RRR and it’s just (w)Rong, (w)Rong, (w)Rong! Wrong for the ratepayers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. 

Remember Gene Maddaus’ clear, uncontested explanation in the LA Weekly about how the current “reform” proposal is really a guise for future rate increases that will be easier to accomplish without even a hint of public oversight or accountability? Maddaus noted that, "Board actions -- including ratemaking -- would no longer require City Council approval unless the City Council asserts jurisdiction." (Emphasis added.) 

“It's hard to overstate the importance of this provision,” Maddaus continued. “Under the current system -- the product of more than 100 years of governance reform -- the City Council must approve any rate increases. This exerts a downward pressure on rates. No politician wants to approve an increase and face the wrath of voters. (In his first State of the City address, Garcetti made a big deal of delaying any rate increases for a year.) 

“If you give ratemaking authority to an independent body, you remove that downward pressure. The result: Rates will go up. Fuentes, of course, has no incentive to spell this out, and neither does D'Arcy. (Both declined interview requests.) If you're campaigning for a ballot measure, you wouldn't want to tout the prospect of higher utility bills. It's much better to say, as Fuentes does, that the measure will ‘take the politics out of the DWP.’” 

Charter Amendment RRR will make future rate increases easier to just slide through, further away from the public eye than now. 

DWP rates too high? Secret future rate hikes? Who you gonna call? Your Councilmember? Good luck with that! 

No on RRR! 

It is wrong, wrong, wrong for workers! 

Kevin Walker of KPCC/89.3 explains in “5 things to know about the Los Angeles DWP reform plan,”  in his point #4, “Civil Service Exemption:” 

If the ballot measure passes, the DWP might be exempted from LA’s civil service rules, which dictate how city workers are hired, promoted and fired. 

Supporters of the changes say it would make the department more nimble. They also argue the DWP should be able to manage its workforce more independently because of the specialized nature of their employees.  

Organized labor defends the civil service rules as a protection against corruption and nepotism. 

"We are deeply troubled by the City’s refusal to recognize the long-term consequences that this ballot measure will have," wrote Cheryl Parisi, chair of the Coalition of LA City Unions.  

The measure also leaves the council the option to delegate its salary setting authority to the DWP’s board of commissioners. 

For many years, some public sector union leaders have argued that the protections of a merit-based civil service system are redundant and even unnecessary if strong due-process provisions and other assurances are negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement. That hypothetical argument continues: when workplace protections come from “the employer,” the work of the union is undermined; workers see their rights and benefits arriving because of the beneficence of the boss, the law, the government rather than stemming from the contract and the historical struggles that led to a strong, enforceable agreement. 

Civil service protections for the workers of the DWP are as important today as ever; the DWP has a long, strong history of advancing white men who already work for “the company,” and/or those with family already working there. Currently, hiring, promotions, testing, and disciplinary procedures are all administered by the City’s Personnel Department, and the DWP is treated as one of 40+ city departments. It may be slow and tedious but it’s slow and tedious in the very same way for every single person. It’s fundamentally a fair and open system that has helped build a diverse, competent city workforce. 

Acceding to the elitist isolationism of the current DWP workforce and leadership is a terrible idea. Instead, the City’s utility should step right into the nascent local hiring program aimed at training city residents to fill critical immediate job openings all across the City.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, chair of the elected Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission, advocates for the continued inclusion of civil service protections for DWP workers in an op-ed in the LA Times originally titled “A plan to make DWP even worse”: 

“Separating DWP’s hiring from the city’s Civil Service system is problematic too. The city of Los Angeles is a single employer and the DWP just one of its many departments. Employees can transfer among departments, depending on their skills and the city’s needs, through the city’s Civil Service system. This gives workers access to new opportunities throughout city government and helps the city deploy its talented employees to maximum benefit. 

“The Civil Service also provides objective procedures for hiring and promotion so that city jobs aren’t handed out as patronage. It was introduced in the city of Los Angeles in 1903 to counter a flagrant system of political spoils. In 1939, after the recall of Mayor Frank L. Shaw for corruption, the Civil Service system was overhauled and strengthened into a nationally recognized model of honesty and professionalism. 

“The Civil Service system has served Los Angeles well for decades, which is why the charter reform commissions insisted on keeping it in 1999. This merit-based, competitive method of hiring and promotion limits exposure to claims of discrimination, because the city must prove its testing practices are job-related and skills-based according to accepted legal models. This good government measure is as necessary now as ever.” 

The DWP works best as an integral part of a vibrant city. Open, fair, and transparent labor practices at Water & Power impact workers throughout the City as well as potential city employees, potentially benefit seniors in local LA high schools who are heading towards their futures. Who will get these great jobs? Will the department participate in the City’s local hiring outreach and put qualified Angelenos to work right now to start replacing the 40% of the current workforce soon eligible to retire? Or will the DWP kowtow to the crusty, inbred, nepotistic-leaning voices urging a private personnel system all their own? 

The Coalition of LA City Unions points out the myriad legal issues in one of its numerous legal briefings: 

“The proposed wholesale exemption of DWP from Civil Service violates the civil service mandate principle. If broad authorization of contracting out undermines civil service (Los Angeles Charter section 1022 narrowly limits contracting out to work that can be performed more economically or feasibly by independent contractors than by City employees), then surely exempting approximately one quarter of the civil service workforce subverts the entire system. Although the Motion - which has no specifics - cites an inability to hire quickly, there is no claim that the current DWP workforce does not perform DWP work efficiently, as the civil service rules seek to ensure. There is no basis to violate the civil service mandate as to existing City employees.” 

Perhaps most significantly, Charter Amendment Measure RRR is bad for the environment, for anyone committed to cleaner energy choices.

It is wrong for lovers of open, transparent, accountable government, and horrible for enthusiasts of public power. 

That’s why a broad new coalition is growing to oppose Measure RRR. Neighborhoods Against the DWP Power Grab recently announced its organizing efforts DWP ballot battle: Power grab or good government?               

It notes the involvement of former City Controller Laura Chick, actor/environmentalist Ed Begley Jr., former City Councilmembers Nate Holden, Robert Farrell, Hal Bernson, and Dennis Zine. The coalition also includes the unions of the Coalition of LA City Unions, UCI law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, William D. Smart Jr. of the Fix L.A. Coalition, and National Organization for Women California President Jerilyn Stapleton. In addition, it has support from Food and Water Watch, Consumer Watchdog, the Southern California Watershed Alliance, and Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association President Richard Close. 

According to the organization, “Chick, Begley and Holden are among the members of Neighborhoods Against DWP Power Grab, which is fighting Los Angeles Charter Amendment RRR.  Opponents say the measure will give DWP officials and the board overseeing the utility too much power, and makes the utility less transparent and accountable to voters.” 

Here is part of the organization’s argument against RRR: 

"Don't believe the false claims that this measure is ‘reform.’ Charter Amendment RRR is a power-grab by the DWP that gives voters less oversight over the DWP— not more. 

"This measure takes away voters' decision-making powers and accountability over the DWP by enabling unelected bureaucrats to run the department and determine rate hikes. 

"This measure gives the DWP Board the extraordinary power to spend millions of ratepayer dollars on contracts, rate hikes, and salaries without preserving currently existing oversight and approvals from voters and elected officials. 

"The DWP needs serious overhaul and reform, but this reckless proposal takes us backwards and does not reflect the good-government changes that ratepayers want and need. 

"In fact, this measure limits scrutiny over the DWP and decreases transparency by eliminating existing checks and balances. 

"This measure severely restricts voters’ power over DWP operations and rate hikes, and gives voters less of a say on clean water and renewable energy policies. 

"Making matters worse, this measure gives the DWP Commissioners, currently appointed citizen volunteers, ratepayer funded pay that could total as much as $2 million throughout the next decade. 

"This measure also opens the door to corruption and unethical hiring of friends and family by allowing the department to opt out of the civil service system. 

"This proposal could easily lead to mismanagement of our most precious resource: our water.

"If this misleading measure passes, the Mayor won’t have final authority to fire unelected and unaccountable DWP Board Members, who will have unprecedented power and control over rate hikes. 

"Vote NO on Charter Amendment RRR— the DWP power-grab. It’s misleading, worse than the status quo, and doesn’t represent the real change we need at DWP." 

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Vote No on RRR on November 8! Get involved in the campaign! Contact your Union! Watch this spot!

(Julie Butcher writes for CityWatch, is a retired union leader and is now enjoying Riverside and her first grandchild. She can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--The editor of CityWatch sent me a news clip along with a question, "Is this a column?" Translated, that editorial question refers to whether the story of Israel Stinson provides important public policy questions, the kind that CityWatch covers. Israel Stinson was a two year old boy who had been kept barely alive through life support. Machines kept his lungs moving artificially. At the order of a judge, the life support was disconnected and the boy passed away almost immediately. 

The grieving parents are asking why their baby couldn't have been kept alive. The lawyers are asking why the hospital was in such a rush to pull the plug without bringing in the parents for one last visit. Members of the public commenting on internet sites are split as to whether life support should have been continued. 

There are numerous public policy questions. There is also a question of simple humanity that doesn't seem to be getting any play. That's because, sadly, it goes against the grieving parents, the pro-life organization that was representing them, and members of the public who donated money. 

Israel Stinson was barely two years old when he suffered a serious asthma attack. There are many children who get asthma, but luckily only a few get it badly enough for it to be a risk to life. Israel was one of the unlucky ones. His ability to take in oxygen became so limited that his heart stopped. News stories indicate that doctors worked on him for about an hour, using CPR while trying to get the heart to restart. Eventually the heart restarted, but the question remained, how much damage had been done? In retrospect, he had probably suffered widespread, irreversible brain damage in the first few minutes of his heart stoppage, but the doctors couldn't know this for sure at the time. All they could do is wait and watch. 

Faced with an uncertain outcome, the medical profession understands that there is nothing to do but provide supportive care and then just wait and see. So that's what they did. But eventually, after appropriate testing, they recognized that Israel Stinson was truly gone. They could keep his lungs moving and stimulate his heart to beat, but faced with evidence of his widespread, massive loss of brain tissue, they concluded that Israel was brain dead. 

Parts of our bodies can withstand the loss of oxygen for a substantial period of time. People get freezing injuries, yet somehow not lose all their toes. But the brain is an exception. Brain cells die rather quickly, and as far as medical science knows, once lost they stay lost. The cases where stroke victims recover function are generally attributed to the fact that other parts of the brain can learn to take over where the original tissue has failed. But when there is widespread, massive loss of brain cells, there isn't much to provide recovery. 

The case of Israel Stinson, as described in the Los Angeles Times by Erica Evans, establishes the simple facts, and then delves into the competing legal claims. Videos on YouTube provide the pro- and con arguments. There are numerous legal issues that are left hanging. Does a hospital have the duty to provide life support to a person that is brain dead? As the hospital sees it, they are being asked to tend to what is little more than a corpse. To the parents, things are different. They have the opportunity to spend time with their baby, whether or not he is responding in the way they would like. They have memories of his birth and subsequent life. They try to maintain hope. 

To the cold blooded rationalist, all hope for Israel was false hope. This may be, but the most cold blooded of rationalists has to concede that the choice being thrust upon the parents was horrifying beyond belief. They desperately wanted to believe that their child would get better, and doctors were telling them that this would never happen. In the meanwhile, they were getting some comfort by visiting with him, hugging him, tickling him to try to evoke some response. 

Some people are able to make the decision to pull the plug. Others are not. Sometimes it's because they can't bring themselves to make a decision that is so painful. Other people won't accept the fact that when brain function is irreversibly lost, their loved one is -- for all intents and purposes -- gone. They can see the chest moving in and out, and the occasional twitch, and for some, this is hope. 

The parents were advised to take him off life support. This is a polite way of saying that his breathing would no longer be created artificially, and he would almost immediately die, in body as well as brain. 

The parents refused. They kept the body of their son alive, going so far as to take him to Guatemala for interim treatment, then bringing him back to California. There is some question as to why the local hospital here in Los Angeles accepted Israel as a patient, but they did. But finally, recognizing his brain dead condition, the hospital petitioned the courts to allow them to pull the plug. The parents had the help of pro bono legal support and won a few days and a little false hope. Then a local judge pulled the plug judicially, and the hospital performed the physical act of turning off life support. 

The Los Angeles Times reporter Erica Evans began the account of Israel's last moments by describing him as "angelic-looking." It's true. The pictures look like a sleeping baby. It's only when you see the YouTube videos that you realize that there is almost no response to continued prodding and poking, in spite of the parents' desperate belief that they are seeing something going on. 

I am going to make a conjecture here. The parents saw Israel as injured, but somehow still with us. In photos, he looks like a sleeping baby. The parents refer to their strong religious beliefs, and felt (I think sincerely) that God was telling them to keep going. That's how they describe their beliefs on video. Perhaps they hoped that some day, this sleeping baby would awake to some level of normality. In brief, the parents were viewing their baby as comatose, and capable of recovery. It's true that some people in comas eventually wake up, sometimes years later. But they have to have intact brains for this to happen. 

These beliefs were opposed by members of the medical profession. There were several neurologists who did the standard, accepted tests, and concluded that brain death had occurred. The news story says that the doctors "declared the boy brain dead," as if it were an arbitrary ruling rather than a careful judgment based on the evidence of physical examination and lab tests. 

One YouTube discussion involved the legal definition of death. The attorney pointed out that in some states, death is defined as the cessation of heart beat rather than brain death. It was kind of irrelevant in the context, but it is part of the wider public policy question. 

Another public policy question that is of utmost importance but was avoided almost entirely, involves whether there is any obligation for any entity, public or private, to continue providing long term care. Lack of payment in a system which avoids government funded of national health care is just one element in the discussion. The other question is whether an entity, public or private, can be compelled to continue treating a person that is, in their judgment, already dead at the level of the brain. It's a legitimate question. 

I'm going to change the subject just a little, and make a serious comment that is not meant to be morbid or rude, but is based on a real life experience. It's a comment that I don't see very often in these debates over heroic measures and prolonged life support. 

The context of this comment involves the shooting death of a friend that happened a little more than 19 years ago. I can remember looking down on the body, which had a gunshot wound where his right eye had been just a few minutes earlier. The bullet had obviously gone through the eye and into the brain. 

I remember staring for perhaps 15 seconds, watching carefully to make sure that he was really dead. My thought in the stress of the moment was this: Why would anyone want to survive that kind of wound? He would be blind, probably mostly paralyzed, and severely damaged in his ability to form any thoughts. I don't think he would have chosen to survive that level of destruction if he had had any say in the matter. 

How could you want anything like that for your friend or spouse or for your own child? Obviously the parents had a different sort of hope. They tried to believe that Israel would come back to life and live normally. 

But in trying to keep their child alive, they were also ignoring the fact that getting a little better would be the worst thing that could have happened to their baby, because there wasn't the surviving brain tissue for him to get truly better. 

I truly believe that from the moment of his cardiac arrest, Israel felt no pain and endured no suffering. It's not a lot, but it's the best we have. 

Addendum: The Epi Pen 

Whether Israel Stinson's story is a legitimate part of the national healthcare debate, the Epi Pen scandal certainly is. As almost everyone knows by now, the number of pharmaceutical companies making automatically injectable epinephrin dwindled to one. Given their newfound monopoly status, the company raised rates, and raised them again, and yet again. This is what private companies do when faced with a chance to make serious money. 

It's almost amusing to see members of congress complaining. Isn't the congress the organization that refuses to allow Medicare the chance to negotiate drug pricing? Isn't this the organization that could have invented some federal agency to oversee drug pricing, the same way that the state of California has some regulation over automobile insurance rates? They didn't, but they are complaining.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])

-cw

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Members of state commissions are dumb enough when they talk to people. Keeping them apart from conversations won’t make them any smarter.

That basic insight is why efforts to “reform” the Coastal Commission and various other commissions don’t make much sense. The idea should be to encourage more conversation—public conversation—from which commissioners and everyone else can learn. And legislation shouldn’t pick and choose—making conversations with some people permissible, and conversations with other people impermissible.

So discard any reform that limits conversations. And adopt simpler reforms that encourage more conversation.

What does that mean in practice? It means adopting two categories.

If there’s a conversation between a commissioner and anyone whose work involves talking to commissioners, then that conversation needs to be disclosed the very day it happens. Not just the fact of the conversation, but some details – the subjects covered, the amount of time, the location. And that disclosure must come from both sides – the commissioner and the people approaching the commissioner. If people take notes, they should share their notes.

The teeth of the matter is this: if there are private conversations that go undisclosed, those are illegal—and both commission members and the lobbyist or lawyer involved in the conversation should be subject to fines and other penalties.

Such rapidly disclosed conversations should be the norm—and the only path to conversation. There can’t be another secret path, or some exemption, or some way to go off-the-record. If you don’t want to have a public conversation with commission members, great, but the world gets to know about it.

Otherwise, the only other path is to go to a meeting and talk to the commission in public.

Of course, three minutes at the microphone isn’t a great way to have conversations. If people want to throw energy into reform in this area, they should devise new kinds of public meetings ( there are many people that have thought about such things) that allows for real conversations, not just speaking. There are many models for such things, all of which drive lawyers for commissions crazy.

Which is another good argument for approaching this problem differently.

(Joe Mathews writes Connecting California and is an editor for Zocalo Public Square.This column was posted most recently at Fox and Hounds.) 

-cw

CHAPMAN REPORT-A 17-year-old boy attending the Boys and Girls Club College Bound program in San Pedro won a $10,000 college scholarship this month from the Taco Bell Foundation for his personal anti-bullying video.    

Stephen Lee took the stance after struggling with bullying for years. He made the video with his own art work and the club staff helped him put it together. He received the good news call from the Live Mas team with the Taco Bell foundation while visiting his grandmother in Vietnam in July.  

“I was very grateful when I heard from a Skype call with the (scholarship) team early in the morning that I won $10K. I burst into tears. I am so grateful.”  

Taryn McNamara, the Taco Bell Foundation coordinator, said the Live Mas scholarship team gives out 220 scholarships across the country to students each year totaling $1 million. The scholarships range between $2,500 and $25,000 and are awarded to those who seem the most passionate about their future dreams and careers.  

“We’re looking at videos for kids with the most passion and desire,” she said. “We’re looking for the next generation of creators and innovators. We really like Stephen’s video and how he had so much passion for computer science.”  

Lee said the club at the Cabrillo Avenue site gave him the safe haven he needed to explore his dreams and passions. He was able to enhance his skills in art, animation, graphical design, game design and video editing. He was tutored, guided to prep for college and he even played ping pong. 

It was the first time he felt accepted despite “my quiet nature,” he said. Middle school and high school were filled with years of dealing with bullying. Students would attack him “verbally” he said and began making fake posts on social media using his name. His grades suffered horribly in those early years and he later spent much of his time feeling lost about his future. 

Once he attended the club, however, his life began to change for the better. His parents, Hudson and Sylvia who came from Vietnam and are U.S. citizens, were so delighted he felt at home there that they drove and picked him up from the club nearly every day and on the weekends.  

His father, Hudson, said when his son called “and told me he had won a 10k scholarship during work, I was so shocked and speechless I didn’t know what to say to him. I am very proud of him.”  

Eventually, the younger Lee said he found the courage at last to go to administrators at South Torrance High school where he attended and officials there acted on his concerns.  

But the club, he said, is where he made his discoveries that he enjoyed computer science. Family members in the field also taught him about coding and he was able to design three computer games at the club.  

“The Boys and Girls club…helped me calm down whenever I was stressed,” Lee said. “I have a lot of friends over there that I talked to. However, I talk to the staff a lot as well. I felt very comfortable talking to every single one of them. Even when I had a personal problem, they were there to hear me out and give me advice without judging.”  

His suggestions to other children who are bullied is to understand that no one else can solve “your problems” and to look to the people who do support you, a family member, a friend. “There’s always at least one person who is there for you.” 

“I feel every single situation is different and I feel that some people had it even worse than me,” he explained. “All I can say is what I learned. Learn to laugh at yourself, but don’t put yourself down. Don’t take actual constructive criticism as an attack, but learn from it. Lastly, don’t expect anyone else to solve your problems.” 

His future plans, he said, include making an app that will help school teachers and administrators determine whether students are being bullied.

See Steven’s video.

(Diana Chapman has been a writer/journalist for nearly thirty years. She has written for magazines, newspapers and the best-seller series, “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” You can reach her at: [email protected].)