Volunteers Give Back
Frets & Vets
“Anything can be healed by music,” says Bill McAleavey, the Sacramento coordinator of Frets & Vets Six Strings Stronger, a guitar instruction program for veterans offered for free through the local VA. “It gives people a sense of purpose once they see what they can do.”
A veteran of the Navy himself, McAleavey is also an accomplished guitar player—he used to play in a rock ‘n’ roll band that performed at weddings and parties, although he admits they “never made any money at it.”
Perfect Match
Noelle Anderson loves to garden. She also loves the Shepard Garden and Arts Center, the venerable mid-century building in McKinley Park that’s played host to a wide variety of gardening, flower and creative arts clubs for more than 60 years. Put the two together and it’s a perfect match.
Never Forgotten
Bob Tribe talks about something that happened in 1965 like it was yesterday. His photographic memory is helpful in volunteer work for the Sacramento Library, where he interviews veterans for the “Valley to Vietnam” archive project.
“I’ve always been fascinated by history,” says Tribe, who passed up graduate school at San Francisco State to join the U.S. Army in 1966 at age 22.
Heart of (Girl Scout) Gold
When Rio Americano High School senior Anna Chriss received the Girl Scout Gold Award this year for The Anna Chriss Homeless Care Package Project, it was not only an acknowledgment of a job well done in the eyes of the Girl Scouts of America—less than 5 percent of Girl Scouts receive the award—but also a celebration of years of hard work that started when Chriss was only 11 years old.
Generous Results
Stuart Walthhall is a proud East Sac Baby Boomer. In fact, he was one of five founders of the group of the very same name—East Sac Baby Boomers—in 2015 that brought together local folks born between 1946 and 1964 to raise funds for worthy causes.
“A group of us who all went to school together 50 years ago would get together and have lunch once a month to catch up and gossip,”
SCORE!
Keith Walter is admittedly “terrible at retirement.” The 62-year-old has tried to retire several times over the past several years and each time he’s found himself diving back into the work world at the behest of friends who need his skills as a telecommunications expert.
“I love to problem solve,” says Walter, who started out as a physicist before getting involved in engineering and technology, where he specializes in “transformation projects”
