Helen Dittus’ workout regimen is impressive. Every morning, she wakes up at 5:15 to take care of her two cats. Then she walks for an hour.
After breakfast, she goes to the gym. Then she teaches a senior exercise class at Belle Cooledge Library or Belle Cooledge Community Center. She finishes the day with another 1.5-mile walk.
The fact that Dittus turned 85 in April makes her workout impressive, though she insists she’s not superhuman.
Janice Walth is a trailblazer. As a world champion archer in the visually impaired category, she worked more than a decade to create a competitive pathway for herself and others.
Walth, 64, was born to a Southern California family of four children. Two siblings were afflicted with retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive eye disease.
“My brother and I were both born legally blind, but we each had our own unique vision challenges,” Walth says.
The questions were straightforward. Does Front Street Animal Shelter provide policies and protocols to 311 on how to respond to animal-related requests?
How do 311 call agents determine if a situation is serious enough to dispatch an animal control officer?
How does 311 address urgent situations when animal control is days behind responding to requests?
Kara Haug’s big message to everyone she works with as a sexuality health educator and counselor is, “You are worth the awkward.”
The co-founder of Reframing Our Stories, an organization that provides sexual health education, resources and tools for families and communities to normalize conversations around sex and relationships, made a career of easing uncomfortable conversations.
“I became a sex educator because I don’t want people to hurt anymore,” Haug says. “The amount of shame that we hold around sexuality is immense. But we don’t need to hold onto it. It can be let go, and part of that is talking about it and learning how to be educated around it. When we do that, we’re healthier.”
A cardboard box can save lives.
Don’t believe me? Ask Robert Metcalf, professor emeritus of biological sciences at Sacramento State and co-founder of International Water and Health Alliances.
With his wife, Mary Beth, a retired physician, Metcalf helps raise funds to support an organization called Friends of the Old, or FOTO, a community group in Lower Nyakach, Kenya.
The program provides reading glasses for elderly people, seeds for the neediest households, education for girls and, perhaps most importantly, water-treatment supplies.
There is a hidden world in Sacramento, off the grid and unknown to most. Dogs in small cages or padlocked to trees and poles. Chains tangled with little room to move. Many without food, water or shelter.
These are the dogs of homeless camps.
“You know those commercials on TV?” Debbie Tillotson says. She’s talking about the heart-wrenching public service ads that expose the underworld of animal abuse. “You can easily insert Sacramento. This is your backyard, it’s the same thing.”
