Dec 28, 2021
If you are interested in music and making new friends, James Broderick has a perfect opportunity.
Broderick is volunteer coordinator for the Sacramento chapter of Guitars for Vets, a national nonprofit that provides free guitar instruction to struggling veterans.
“The vets we serve have been referred to us by counselors and therapists at the VA and lessons are held at VA facilities,” Broderick says. “Few of the vets we teach have any musical experience. For the most part, we’re talking raw beginners.
“Our goal for 2022 is to expand our volunteer corps dramatically and unleash an army of guitar players upon the world.”
Nov 28, 2021
Rekhi Singh’s motto is simple: “Happy people are more successful.”
Singh is on a mission to help everyone find wellbeing through happiness. He has founded programs and centers around the world to study of the science of happiness—including one at his alma mater, Sacramento State.
“Whatever you do unhappily, you can do it better if done happily,” says Singh, a native of India who moved to Singapore at age 30 and then to Sacramento in 1987 to earn his MBA. “Happy people are more successful than the other way around. A meaningful life is where you feel connected and help others.”
Nov 28, 2021
When I first arrived in Sacramento, yearning to play tennis, I lurked around the McKinley Park courts in East Sacramento to see who was playing and when. Feeling courageous, I stuck my nose through the fence to watch a senior mixed doubles group.
A player retrieving a ball asked if he could be of help. “I’m looking for a game,” I said. Generously he offered, “You can play with us.” That was the beginning of fun and friendship.
A perfect example of energetic, enthusiastic play, this McKinley senior mixed doubles group has existed for more than 20 years. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, they use about three courts—down from five courts or more during healthier, pre-COVID times.
Nov 28, 2021
In 1984, a group of singers formed the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus to provide a safe place for gay men to meet and make music as the AIDS epidemic began to rage.
That same year, Lynda Walls was in Washington state managing and promoting bands at the start of the grunge movement, while “doing everything from stuffing envelopes to organizing marches” as an AIDS-awareness activist.
Little did Walls know that decades later, she would become executive director of the chorus that provides a voice—in more ways than one—for more than 100 LGBTQ residents of the Sacramento area.
Nov 28, 2021
Each one can teach one. Just ask Judith Pothier, 74, of Sacramento. She suffered peripheral vision loss from a car crash as a teen, yet as an adult has helped others with visual impairments live better.
Case in point is Pothier’s role as a beta tester on the design and rollout of new software by Hadley, a nonprofit organization that offers support free of charge to people with vision loss. In using the website, Pothier helped find and acquire new ways of adjusting to her visual impairment, which also helped other low-vision users.
Nov 28, 2021
When Denise Rochelle McCoy dons a pink hard hat in March to participate in the annual Women Build event for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento, it will bring back memories. McCoy wore a hard hat to build her own Habitat house in 2015, when she took the leap into homeownership.
“I was renting a one-bedroom apartment in a challenging neighborhood where there was a lot of violence after losing my job,” McCoy says. “I thought, am I ever going to get out of this? It took three years of research, cleaning up my credit and saving money for a down payment, but I finally purchased my current property through Habitat for Humanity in 2015.”
