Local Heroes 2024

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Local Heroes 2024

Santa Barbara Independent
Honors Heroes Living Among Us

By Indy Staff | Photos by Ingrid Bostrom
November 27, 2024

Every Thanksgiving for the last 39 years, the staff of the Santa Barbara Independent seeks to honor some of the many heroes living among us. This year’s Local Heroes are the men and women whose very actions have helped keep decency, kindness, and generosity alive in Santa Barbara County. They are the men and women who, while going about their daily lives, replenish the spirit of community. Some have brought laughter and music into our lives, others have found ways to give voice to the vulnerable, and some have acted spontaneously to help complete strangers. 

Every one of these Local Heroes, whether intending to or not, have, by their actions, made us realize that we are all part of one community. Most are not public figures, few have accomplished earth-shattering feats, but all have stepped up to do their very best. 

What else can we ask of one another? 

Dr. Alonso Benavides

Profesor de Español

Longtime educator Alonso Benavides says that he frequently runs into his students, past and present, around town. After more than 35 years of teaching Spanish in Santa Barbara, it’s no wonder.

“When I go to the market, there’s always a student that I find in there, because it’s been a long time that I’ve been doing this,” he said, smiling. 

Originally from Arequipa, Peru, Dr. Benavides has an extensive history educating others in Spanish language and culture, from teaching Spanish at the university level to directing Latin American and Hispanic studies programs in Costa Rica and Spain.

In 1988, he founded Siglo XXI, a Spanish-language institute located right in downtown Santa Barbara, with the goal of offering an alternative learning style from standard school and university classes. At Siglo XXI, small groups of three to six people meet weekly to chat, practicing grammar in conversation. The institute also offers one-on-one lessons. 

“The emphasis that we put is [on] the conversation and making yourself understood,” Benavides said.

He estimates that between 200 and 300 students learn at Siglo XXI each year, some of them longtime learners. His students range from professionals, such as lawyers and healthcare workers, who need Spanish in their everyday lives, to retirees looking to stay sharp.

For Benavides, learning a language is like opening a world, fostering a deep understanding of culture and perspective.

“It opens so many windows. It just gives you so many opportunities to enjoy a culture,” he said.

As for the future, Benavides says he plans to continue offering classes to the Santa Barbara community — no end in sight.

Beth Rizo
Beth Hassenplug
Yukiko Irie

Teaching Little Children

“Why do you do what you do? That’s always a hard question — you just do it,” said Beth Rizo, director at the Orfalea Early Learning Center at Santa Barbara City College, where the young children of students and employees go to learn. Their parents can have peace of mind during the working day knowing that their children are nearby and well taken care of. Rizo, who has been in the community for 17 years, is also an instructor at the college, training students to become the next generation of early childhood educators, keeping this essential field staffed with competent and qualified people. 

At the First Presbyterian Church’s Early Childhood Center (ECC), Beth Hassenplug, a childcare veteran of 25 years, offers affordable, quality early care and education for children between 3 months and 6 years of age, regardless of factors like religion or race.

“A lot of people think that, oh, you’re just a babysitter; you change diapers,” Hassenplug said. “But I’m co-creating a child’s brain. We are literally wiring their brains as we care for them. They are learning all the time, and neurodevelopment during this time has lifelong implications.”

Yukiko Irie, the manager of childcare services at Cottage Hospital, can confirm that’s true. A child-life specialist, she was “always interested in taking care of children’s social-emotional health,” and wanted to work with children in healthcare settings to help them take care of themselves and be active participants in their own medical care. 

“I was the oldest in my family, so I always took care of the younger ones growing up,” she said. “I became a teacher at Cottage 15 years ago, and I’ve been there ever since.”

Similar to Rizo, Irie takes care of Cottage employees’ children so they can work with that peace of mind, which was no doubt essential during the roughest outbreaks of COVID-19.

“Teachers are also our employees,” she said. “Doctors and medical staff trust fellow coworkers to take care of their kids; it’s a cohesive partnership.”

Eddie and Alice Perez 

Hope and Help Providers

Husband and wife Eddie and Alice Perez have dedicated their lives to counseling, providing education, and helping transform the lives of men and women affected by the criminal justice system. Together, their nonprofit Impact Ministry has continually helped set people on a path for the better, and each year, their Christmas Drive provides a gift bag for every single person in Santa Barbara County jails.

“Pastor Eddie” first started the IMPACT (Individuals Making Peace and Change Together) program as a way to help fellow inmates when he was serving time at California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo in 2004. When he was paroled in 2011, he enrolled at Santa Barbara City College, where he met his wife, Alice, who worked in education.

Together, they brought programs to middle school and high school students, helping them avoid the gang lifestyle, and worked to expanded their programs into the county jail.

Seven years ago, the couple started their annual Christmas Drive as a way to provide a sense of normalcy to those stuck in jail for the holidays. “The hardest thing about the holidays is you’re away from everybody,” Eddie said.

In that first year, they gave gift bags to every woman, paying out of pocket for snacks, goodies, and even buying gifts for the children whose mothers were behind bars. The next year, they met their goal of giving gift bags to men as well.

Since then, the Christmas Drive has become a community event, with dozens of volunteers from the Sheriff’s Office, Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Freedom 4 Youth, and others donating money and time. Last year, the crew packed more than 850 bags for both the North County and Main Jail.

Today, Eddie serves as the jail’s lead chaplain, and Alice is the Programs and Services Manager. 

“Alice and I just see people for who they are,” Eddie said. “They’re human beings, but they haven’t been able to see a lot of kindness in their lives.”

Erron Vela
and Eric Widmer

Citizen First Responders

Both men heard the long screech and thunderous crash. It was just after
11 p.m. on April 20, 2023. They remember the time and date. Car accidents are common along their stretch of Cathedral Oaks Road, but this one was worse. Much worse. By the time Erron Vela and Eric Widmer threw on clothes and flew out their doors, the pickup truck was engulfed in flames 20 feet high. It looked like a movie set. 

While other witnesses stood aghast, Vela and Widmer — and a third neighbor named Alex Collins, who has since moved back to England — rushed in. They struggled to free the truck’s three screaming occupants as the fire raged around them. They swallowed smoke and felt their eyebrows singe as they cut seatbelts and dragged two of the young men to safety. It felt like an eternity before help arrived.

One of the truck’s passengers died at the scene. The 18-year-old driver was charged with DUI and succumbed to his injuries two weeks later. The third, Patrick Marasciullo, suffered severe burns and fractures but survived. He continues to recover. “Erron and Alex were incredibly brave and selfless in their actions that night,” said Marasciullo’s mother, Stephanie. “We can never thank them enough for what they did to keep Patrick alive.”

As heroes often do, Vela and Widmer reject the label. “Two people still died,” Vela said, shaken by the incident. “We weren’t trained for this.” Vela owns a window and door business and Widmer is an executive chef at a country club. Both men are fathers, which they said pushed them into the flames. “I would hope someone would do the same thing for my daughter,” Widmer said.

“It’s not something you want to do,” Vela said. “But you do it, you get over it, and you move on.”

George Thomson

Goleta’s Nature Czar

The eucalyptus groves in Ellwood Mesa, where monarch butterflies gather to spend the winter, still stand because of the lengthy battles fought by residents to protect the forest from development. It is George Thomson’s job as the manager of Goleta’s parks and open spaces to oversee Ellwood’s 90-acre forest and now to preserve it from the effects of hard weather.

Ellwood’s groves stretch from the beach to Sandpiper Golf Club and Hollister Avenue. “Early in the season, the butterflies are evenly dispersed among the six groves,” Thomson explained. With the arrival of winter, they cluster in the most sheltered areas.

A prolonged drought and beetle attacks have killed trees, while increased heat, wildfire, and storms have affected monarch butterfly populations. Sitting on a bench made of redwood planks from Stow Grove Park, Thomson pointed to eucalyptus saplings planted intensively — by volunteers and contractors — to replace the 2,000 lost to drought. The project required high-tech help: contour scans, wind analyses, and GPS points for each new tree.

“We want to place the trees so that the butterflies don’t have to leave their shelter to seek another one and lose the fat they need to survive,” Thomson said. In 20, 40, or 60 years, he added, these trees will give the butterflies maximum shelter from the cold, wind, and rain.

Engaging the community was all-important for the survival of the urban forest, Thomson said. When dozens of the century-old redwoods died during the drought, nearly 100 residents came to Stow Grove Park to plant new trees.

Thomson graduated from UC Santa Barbara in plant ecology, working for Wayne Ferren, a past Local Hero, to restore the university’s natural areas, and for Cris Sandoval at the snowy plover conservation site. “I would surf off Sands,” Thomson recalled, “and just look to shore. The butterfly grove always stood out as unique and magical.”

Gil Rosas

Piano Legend

Santa Barbara native Gil Rosas was destined to be a pianist, a champion of music, and a Santa Barbara treasure. At 10 years old, listening to his cousins playing the piano, he realized he had an ear for music and practiced only one hour per week at his aunt’s house. While attending local schools, Rosas became an accompanist for his school’s chorus, ballet and flamenco studios, and for Fiestas at the El Paseo Restaurant, as well as playing the organ at the roller rink and churches.

Rosas learned classical music pieces and took classes at UCSB; played many lounges, earning the title “King of the Piano Bar”; and even became co-owner of the Olive Mill Bistro. With a repertoire of more than 2,000 songs, and without using sheet music, Rosas plays a broad range of genres, including classical, Broadway show tunes, and the Great American Songbook, earning him a large and loyal fan base that spans generations. 

Rosas’s orchestral artistry, love of music, and big heart have been apparent as he has played countless benefits and fundraisers, weddings, bat mitzvahs, and more. He loves when people come up to him and say, “You played at our wedding,” proving how important he is to the fabric of so many lives. Rosas still plays at retirement homes, hosts occasional recitals in his living room, and remains an inspiration and a humble hero who has dedicated his life to bringing music, joy, and magic to the community.

Isabel Downs

Quintessential Volunteer

Volunteers are the people who make Santa Barbara tick as beautifully as it does, and when you meet Isabel Downs, you understand why. Over the years, Downs has been a marine biologist, an illustrator of botanical and archaeological specimens, a French teacher, and the maker of exquisite art quilts, and she brings all her skills to her volunteer work.

Among the many organizations Downs gives her time to is the Coastal Quilters Guild, where she’s one of the many behind-the-scenes volunteers putting together and organizing the shows, most recently the Harvest of Colors at Earl Warren Showgrounds. She won Best of Show for her duo of tidepool quilts: the first vibrant with life, the second with the sea life made from white cloth, ghosts of tidepools past. “Climate change,” said Downs with a scientist’s certainty.

She was already a sustaining docent with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and a Planet Protector with Sasha Ablitt’s plastics-recycling project when Downs became the “world books” manager for Planned Parenthood’s book sale. She made it her mission to increase the quantity of Spanish-language books: “I walked from Carpinteria to Goleta, visiting taquerias, barber shops, garages, anywhere someone who read in Spanish might see our donation flyers,” Downs recalled. She returns to post invitations to the giant book sale every fall.

Downs recently added the Santa Barbara Craftivists to her schedule, the group who made hundreds of pussy hats in 2016. Their Chase the Chill campaign knits and crochets scarves and beanies that are left on a bench for anyone in need. But her latest free gig is more active. Downs met up with World Dance for Humanity  at the Women’s March just before the election: “We danced up State Street and danced down State Street again!” Downs will be with them at the marches to come.

Joy Mok
and Hkawn Chea 

The Queens of Doughnuts

For more than 20 years, Joy Mok has been serving some of the happiest doughnuts on the South Coast. Her doughnuts are the old-school, traditional kind: glazed, old fashioneds, fry cakes, crullers, bear claws, and jelly-filleds — and all very fresh. But Mok might be best known for the generosity of her laughter. Everybody gets a little sugar and a gentle blast of light. That smile belies the grim origins of her family’s journey in the early 1980s. At age 9, she and her family marched three days and nights through the jungles of northern Cambodia into Thailand. There, they were lucky to gain entry to a refugee camp set up for Cambodians fleeing the genocidal violence unleashed the Khmer Rouge government. After three years there, the family landed in Southern California. 

One of five kids, Mok grew up in Long Beach, where her uncles worked for Ted Ngoy, the legendary Cambodian Doughnut King. She still remembers eating her first doughnut: “It was delish.” Twenty-three years ago, Mok moved to Santa Barbara to take over her shop, now a Spudnuts in a San Roque strip mall on State Street. Every morning, she’s at work by 5 a.m. Her mother, Hkawn Chea, helps hold down the fort. “She’s my Batman,” Mok said with a gentle laugh. She knows her customers, and they know her. 

“I love the human contact,” Mok says. “I get to know families. People I first met as little girls now show up with their kids.” Mok works hard, but “I’m lucky. I get to do what I love.” And after all these years, she still likes doughnuts. “Oh, I still eat them,” she laughs. “I’m not sick of them yet.”

Lauren Trujillo

Library Magician

Santa Barbara Public Library Foundation Director Lauren Trujillo grew up with a passion for public service. Back in her hometown of Crescent City, her father worked at the nearby Pelican Bay prison, and she remembers always being involved in campus clubs and community organizations. “It’s always been embedded in me,” she said.

When she moved to Santa Barbara to study history at UCSB, she used this passion toward community healing after two of her sorority sisters were killed in the 2014 Isla Vista shootings. She worked with friends to create the Isla Vista Memorial Project as a way to honor the victims with mementos from impromptu memorials. “We created an archive of these materials with the idea of reclaiming the story,” Trujillo said. “That got me into archives, libraries, and history.”

After earning her bachelor’s and internships at the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library and Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, Trujillo split her time working at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum and commuting to UCLA to earn her master’s in Library and Information Science. As soon as she finished, Trujillo now recognized as a rising star, was appointed Foundation Director at the age of 25.

Her first task was to head a multimillion-dollar fundraising campaign for the Library Plaza renovation — a project that became even more challenging during the pandemic. Despite complications and delays, the plaza was finished and opened this year in a grand ceremony downtown.

In addition to the Library Foundation, Trujillo keeps busy as a boardmember for several organizations, including the Women’s Fund, United for Libraries, Women’s Literary Voices, the Northside Optimist Club, Association for Fundraising Professionals, Environmental Defense Center, and the Junior League of Santa Barbara.

She thanked the many mentors, professors, and colleagues who gave her opportunities over the years, and said she hopes to encourage more young people of color to be active in the community and in the boardrooms. “I want to help invoke change,” she said.

Melissa Cronshaw

Protector of the Bees

Bees are not just in Melissa Cronshaw’s blood; they’re also in her name: Melissa means “honeybee” in Greek. Born and raised in Santa Barbara, the kindergarten-teacher-turned-beekeeper has followed in her dad’s footsteps — longtime high school teacher and bee whisperer Paul “The Beeman” Cronshaw.

Cronshaw began her own bee adventure a decade ago volunteering at her dad’s nonprofit, the Santa Barbara Beekeepers Association, eventually becoming a full-time beekeeper and educator. She takes a more bee-centric approach to the traditionally honey-centric endeavor. While she’ll happily harvest excess honey, her main goal is to support native bee species, which tend to be more “prolific pollinators” than the more popular but technically invasive honeybee. 

The best thing folks can do to save the bees, she said, is plant more pollinator-friendly flowers (wildflowers and purple flowers are best) and avoid using pesticides, which are linked to bee colony collapse.

Cronshaw manages around 40 apiaries and mentors budding beekeepers, working with folks from Hollister Ranch to Malibu. She’s done swarm captures and removals, but what she most enjoys is educating the bee-curious, through her in-person and online beekeeping classes, workshops, and presentations. When she visits schools, Cronshaw brings in observational beehives — not unlike the one in Mr. Torres’s Santa Barbara High classroom that inspired her dad to buy his first hive out of a Sears catalog more than 50 years ago. She’ll even get kids suited up and in front of hives for what she likes to call “Bee TV.” “Even the most hyper kids,” she said, “will just sit and stare.”

These close encounters of the bee kind can transform fear into curiosity, she said, and then into environmental consciousness — and perhaps even inspire a new generation of beekeepers to begin their own bee adventures.

Michael Montenegro

Cultural Chicano Cyclist

Part activist, artist, historian, and community organizer, Michael Montenegro has tapped into Santa Barbara’s deep cultural roots with Chicano Culture S.B., a social media page dedicated to preserving and celebrating Latino and Indigenous heritage.

For the past 10 years, Montenegro has used his platform to tell the stories of Santa Barbara’s diverse culture by sharing old film and photos, organizing community support for social justice causes, and promoting current events to his thousands of followers.

Montenegro was inspired after taking a Chicano studies class with Manuel Unzueta, a prominent muralist and educator whose activism and art had a profound impact on Santa Barbara during the ’70s and ’80s. The class changed the way Montenegro looked at his own cultural identity and made him think about what it meant to be a first-generation Chicano living in Santa Barbara. 

Montenegro was already passionate about activism, and as an avid cyclist, he had worked with Bici Centro (now MOVE S.B.) to advocate for safer neighborhoods for pedestrians and cyclists. So, when he went on a bike tour of historic murals in the East L.A. neighborhood Boyle Heights, he was struck by the idea. “I got inspired to do that in my own community,” he said. “We have our own amazing murals, and I love cycling.” 

His S.B. Mural Bike Ride has become an annual tradition, and this year, he collaborated with S.B. Neighborhood Walks to host a series of events where speakers were invited to explore complex issues such as Old Spanish Days from three different perspectives.

Montenegro says he hopes to continue to show how much Latino, Indigenous, and other working-class people have contributed to making Santa Barbara the diverse and beautiful place it is.

“Sometimes, people are left out of conversation,” he said. “Our culture has so much value, and it’s sometimes not properly promoted for what it is.”

Moss Jacobs

Music Man

Even for those who don’t know the name or legacy, Moss Jacobs has had a long and sweeping impact on the musical culture in Santa Barbara. He is the music man behind the curtain, as the Goldenvoice–empowered booker of concerts at the Santa Barbara Bowl, about to celebrate his 30th anniversary in that role.

But Jacobs’s links to the Santa Barbara music scene go way back, before his high-profile Bowl gig, to the 1980s when he was booking shows at La Casa de la Raza. He’s still bringing music there, most recently a show featuring Marlon Funaki.

He first moved to Santa Barbara from Florida to attend UCSB, eventually finding his way into music promotion, first as manager for the band Giant Eden, then forming the Moss Jacobs Presents company, which then gained attention in the broader music world. He worked with Avalon, Nederlander, and now Golden Voice.

But Jacobs, after a time in Los Angeles, moved back to Santa Barbara 22 years ago. He lives here with his wife and three children and is very much plugged into the whole community, not the least of which is being the man who books all the Bowl shows.

Jacobs deflects his personal role at the Bowl, pointing to the staff and Bowl team as “the best people in the world to work with me. A large part of the success is the team’s love of the facility. And it shows. The bands feel it; the public feels it. It’s always there.”

Jacobs is in the hectic thick of planning the 2025 Bowl season, always an exciting element in Santa Barbara’s cultural consciousness — including his own. “If I’m a resident,” he said, “part of my lifestyle that I enjoy about being here is having that facility. And it’s part of what I do and what I like to do, or part of my activities as a human here. How I’m existing on this planet includes fun and stimulating activities, and the Bowl is part of the summertime world that we have.”

Perie Longo

Poet of Peace and Love

Grief comes in waves and in different shapes, and Perie Longo has found poetry to have a uniquely profound impact on that human experience. It’s all about finding lines where the poem “speaks something to you about where your mind has been, where your heart is going,” Longo said. 

As a means of therapy, she had held poetry workshops before COVID at Sanctuary Centers of Santa Barbara. There, attendees shared what means the most to them. Longo has facilitated such groups for Hospice of Santa Barbara for years and will again be part of their December Light Up a Life ceremony, sharing one of her poems in remembrance of those who are missed. 

Longo served as Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate from 2007 to 2008, and in her words, “Poetry is magic.” While she uses it to help people process complicated emotions, she also teaches people how to create their own poetry. For 25 years, she went into Santa Barbara classrooms through the California Poets in the Schools program, teaching kids poetry as an art form. And since 1984, Longo has done a poetry workshop for the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. 

Longo is also the poetry chair for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation centered in Santa Barbara, encouraging people internationally, from children to adults, to submit poems on peace. 

“The thing that always made me happy was poetry,” Longo said, and she continues to dedicate her time and effort to bringing more of it into the world.

Rakesh Bahadur

Master of Kites

Rakesh Bahadur may have created the Santa Barbara Kite Festival back in 1985, but he credits generations of attendees for growing it into one of our town’s most beloved events. “I didn’t make it,” he said. “The people made it. The festival is people’s love.”

Born in Rampur, India — known as the “City of Kites” — Bahadur learned to fly soon after he learned to walk. At 24, he moved to San Francisco, where he and his brother opened a kite shop in Ghirardelli Square. It was a soaring success, and they’d open many more: Atlanta, Colorado, Hawai‘i, and in Piccadilly Square in Santa Barbara, where Bahadur finally settled and started a family. “I love this city,” he said. “It’s home. There’s nothing I don’t like about Santa Barbara.”

Now retired with four grandkids, Bahadur cuts a familiar figure around town in a traditional Indian kurta, or pajamas, as he calls it. But every spring he has another day in the sun as the main attraction of the Kite Festival. As its resident flight master, he leads the tail chase, where groups of kids run and grab for one of his colorful kites, which he steers with such precision he could knock the hat off your head from 100 yards away.

The beauty of the festival is that it’s free and everyone is welcome, Bahadur said. People share kites and enjoy the time outside with each other. “It’s not a money-making effort,” he said. “It’s a party.” The next one takes place April 13 on the west campus lawn of Santa Barbara City College. 

Now 76 years old, Bahadur wonders how many more festivals he has in him. But he’s not worried about its future. Last year, a boy Bahadur had met during his San Francisco days showed up with his own young sons. It goes to show the timelessness of kites and the joy they bring, he said. The festival, he declared, will continue for another 100 years. “It just happens,” he said. “Like the wind blows.”

Robert Graham

Wizard of Squash

Robert Graham admits it’s not the greatest name: Santa Barbara School of Squash. “People think we’re a for-profit sports program for rich kids, when it couldn’t be more the opposite,” the longtime director said. In fact, the nonprofit serves a small cohort of low-income students — all of whom qualify for the federal lunch program — with an after-school program of mentoring, tutoring, community service, and squash.

But instead of spending time rebranding, Graham forges ahead, connecting one-on-one with young people, bringing up their grades, helping them navigate teen life, and coaching them in a niche sport that will separate them from the pack when they apply to college.

Graham, a former squash pro who traded a job in finance for a career in service, is a hands-on director, picking up students from school, hearing about their home lives, attending every weekday session, and arranging trips to Yosemite and squash tournaments.

The program has around 30 students from a dozen Santa Barbara schools enrolled at any given time, all operating out of a converted racquetball court at the YMCA. It has secured more than $6.2 million in private grants, college scholarships, and financial aid. One hundred percent of the students who have completed the program have graduated high school and enrolled in post-secondary education.

“At times, it can feel like I have 30 kids of my own instead of the one,” Graham laughed. His 15-year-old son is a nationally ranked squash player who learned the sport from his dad, who learned from his own father. “But I love it,” he said.

There are 175 college teams across the country, many on the East Coast, many looking for West Coast residents, and kids of color who may be the first in their families to attend college, Graham said. 

Just recently, one of his students graduated from an Ivy League school and is now teaching history back in Santa Barbara. “It was one of those full-circle moments,” Graham said. “It’s just awesome.”

Russ Lazarenko

Ukrainian Flag Bearer 

If you’ve driven down Upper State Street at any point in the last two years, odds are you’ve seen Russ Lazarenko waving Ukrainian and American flags on the corner of San Roque Road.

He’s there every single day, for one to two hours, with a perma-smile on his face.

“My grandparents are from Ukraine,” he explained, in a voice that could only belong to the sweetest of old men. “Women and children are being blown up and killed — the rich ones took off and left the poor ones behind…. I’m protesting that.”

Lazarenko has been waving his flags ever since the war started. But he’s not anti-Russia, he explained. “I’m anti-war. I’m anti–what’s happening to innocent people over there,” he said.

People have offered him money, but he never accepts it. “I’m not there to make money,” he emphasized. “I have my own reasons for being there.”

Although a few people from the community have threatened him or desecrated his flags, he said, 98 percent of people are supportive.

“Even the police all wave at me, the fire department waves at me, and when a funeral hearse passes by, I lower my flag [to] half-mast and take off my hat, so now they wave at me, too!”

When people do try to argue, he thanks them for their comments. He doesn’t argue back — he’s not there to do that. But he is happy to engage in conversation.

A resident of the Friendship Manor retirement home, Lazarenko only abandons his post if he is sick, or the weather is dismal, or he needs to help out one of his fellow retirees by driving someone to the doctor or the bank. “It doesn’t hurt to help,” he said.

But like all great heroes, Lazarenko would not call himself a hero. 

“I’m not risking my life,” he said. “I’m no hero; the heroes are the guys wearing the uniforms.”

Sylvia Barnard

Getting It Done

Sylvia Barnard fell into the business of sheltering homeless people almost by accident. It was 27 years ago, and Barnard, then 25, had been forced to learn early in life what resources were available to help single mothers in Santa Barbara County. She wrote an instructional booklet detailing what she found out.

From there, she became a grant writer for a small homeless shelter in Santa Maria, the Good Samaritan, then struggling just to stay afloat. Acrimony among the staff was high; tempers flared. Barnard attended Bishop Diego, S.B. City College, and UCSB. She covered Isla Vista governmental meetings for the campus paper with her daughter in tow. She turned out to be a rigorous reporter. Barnard proved even more gifted as a grant writer. As an administrator, she discovered entrepreneurial gifts and political chops that would leave most elected officials gasping.

Good Samaritan is the biggest, most diversified, integrated nonprofit in Santa Barbara County, focused exclusively on the needs of unhoused people. When Barnard started out, Good Samaritan had 20 employees, serving 300 clients a year out of a 28-bed shelter. By the time COVID hit, Good Sam had morphed into a $10 million-a-year operation with 100 employees serving 3,000 unique clients out of multiple shelters and detox centers. Today, Good Sam boasts 400 workers who serve 5,000 people a year. It used to be that 10 percent of Good Sam’s clients were chronically homeless; now it’s 45 percent. People coming in from encampments tend to be more addicted and more mentally ill, less amendable to the rules Good Sam insists upon. But Barnard is excited that Good Sam just got approval for an eight-bed detox facility in Lompoc, and she’s still working on a plan to launch a Good Sam food truck, selling food prepared by clients in Good Sam kitchens using produce grown on a Good Sam farm. The question is no longer what Good Sam does. It’s what it doesn’t do. 

Tavis Boise

Powering the Paddles

Today, Tavis Boise provides strength to families facing terminal illness, but when he was 12 years old, he needed, and found, that same support from the Friendship Paddle. That year, 2006, his mother, Ellen McLaughlin, was the fourth annual honoree of the nonprofit. As she battled cancer, the Paddle raised emotional and financial support for the family, all culminating in an arduous paddle through the Santa Barbara Channel. 

She passed away a month later, but Boise never left the Friendship Paddle. While still a teen, he helped launch the kid-focused Keiki Paddle in 2008 and then joined the Friendship Paddle board in 2015, where today he serves as president. “I grew up raised by all the Paddle people,” said Boise. “Having all these vulnerable adults who are willing to cry in front of you and talk about how they feel about death is powerful.”

Boise’s parents founded Island Seed & Feed in Old Town Goleta, where dog-food bags served as his playpen, and he was raised on Hollister Ranch, where the outdoors and ocean became his playground. He was the lead lifeguard for Santa Barbara County from 2012 to 2019, managing beach safety from Jalama to Goleta to Hendry’s and substantially building up the junior lifeguard program. “We grew the program from the lucky 13 to 180 a session, which was close to 400 kids each summer,” said Boise, who also ran for City Council on a climate change platform in 2019. 

A formidable fundraiser of both money and goodwill, the recent Friendship Paddle raised $240,000 for honoree Courtney Brewer’s family as 160 paddlers and 30 boats made the human-powered voyage. Under Boise’s direction, that impact will only expand.

“The Friendship Paddle helps people who are going through such traumatic experiences see the bigger picture and be surrounded by people who care about them,” said Boise. “For the rest of us, it gives us an annual dose of catharsis where we are able to grieve our own losses in our own ways. That’s a really powerful thing.”

Terease Chin

Telling the Asian American Story

Fitting into a community takes time, and Terease Chin found her stride in Santa Barbara when she joined the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation. She formed the Asian American Affinity Group and made their first task working on Jimmy’s Oriental Gardens in the Presidio neighborhood when the Trust acquired it. She began to educate the community on Asian culture and its deep ties to California history, particularly here in Santa Barbara, where a large Chinese and Japanese community lived in and around Canon Perdido. “We needed to do something that connects, so people see and believe that we are a very diversified community,” Chin said. 

Though much of the buildings from that time are now gone, replaced by the reconstruction of the El Presidio de Santa Bárbara State Historic Park, Chin’s goal is to bring the memory of that history back to the neighborhood. She started a film series, screening movies made by and starring Asian Americans. This also sparked a Neighborhood Festival to showcase traditional and contemporary art and culture, including the Indonesian gamelan, Chinese lion dancers, and the Japanese taiko as well as UCSB’s breakdancing and K-pop clubs. These events bring in vendors from the community and activities for kids. 

In her spare time, Chin teaches a free English as a second language (ESL) class at Santa Barbara City College at night. She also serves as the president of the Asian American Association of Santa Barbara County, a social group that plans a Chinese New Year potluck and other cultural events and get-togethers. Her goal has always been to “have resources and connections” for the Asian American community in Santa Barbara.