Jan 28, 2021
“COVID test?”
Sonya Frausto and I have been talking by phone for only a few minutes before she pauses to greet a customer who’s come into her store for a COVID test. She points the customer in the right direction, continues our interview and then bids him farewell a few minutes later.
Frausto is the owner of Ten Acres Pharmacy, an independent pharmacy on Freeport Boulevard that opened last August in the midst of the pandemic. The store offers free COVID tests every day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (registration required), which keeps Frausto busier than ever on top of her normal duties running what she calls a “functional health pharmacy.”
Jan 28, 2021
One of Don Wulf’s favorite thoughts is from Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: The meaning and purpose of your life is to help others find theirs.
A favorite quote is from Dr. Seuss: To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.
Jan 28, 2021
According to the wedding website The Knot, the average bride spends $2,000 on flowers for the nuptials—which means two grand gets dumped in the trash after the Big Day has passed. But with the help of Nikki Gray and her floral-preservation company Endless Florals, those flowers and that big investment don’t have to go to waste.
“What I’m preserving is a memory,” says Gray, who officially launched Endless Florals at 51st and O streets last May. “Yes, it’s a flower. But it represents a significant one-time event in someone’s life that they can then look at day after day.” Seeing your wedding bouquet “has a different feeling than looking at pictures—it brings you back to the moment of holding it in your hand. There’s a certain romanticism to it.”
Dec 28, 2020
Though Derek Yuan is only 17 years old, you wouldn’t know it talking to him on the phone. The Mira Loma High School senior credits his impressive verbal poise to six years of speech and debate training. And he’s determined to give other kids the chance to develop their own public speaking skills through Leaders Speak, a free online training program he co-founded with fellow Mira Loma senior Hemang Dhaulakhandi.
“I was very shy growing up,” Yuan admits. “I was really lucky I made the speech and debate team in middle school or I wouldn’t have gotten started on this path. Once I got to high school, I realized that I’d gained all these skills by participating in speech and debate competitions—but not everyone has the same access to those opportunities. We decided to spread our experience and knowledge to as many people as possible.”
Dec 28, 2020
Sacramento has numerous boards, commissions and committees to help the mayor and City Council run the city smoothly. One of those entities is an advisory committee for the Front Street Animal Shelter.
Unfortunately, the Animal Care Services Citizens Advisory Committee, formed in 2002, has not met since 2018, mostly for lack of a quorum. The committee currently has one member and six vacancies—which is why the city is looking for a few good animal lovers to bring this board back to life.
Dec 28, 2020
“There’s a restaurant in every family tree,” writer Nancy Econome says. “I wanted to bring out those stories.”
Econome has done just that with her debut novel, “The Classic Grill: A Tale of Greek Gods and Immigrant Heroes,” which chronicles the family struggles of a successful Greek-owned restaurant in Vallejo in 1942. The book is loosely based on Econome’s grandparents’ restaurant of the same name.
