:: UCLA TODAY Home

©2004
The Regents of the University of California
 

Bruin Angels

It’s better to give than to receive” is more than just a shopworn phrase for a lot of Bruins. Often working under the radar and expecting nothing in return, many faculty and staff give of their time, talents and resources to help others. Each year during the holiday season, UCLA Today shares the stories of just a few of UCLA’s most generous employees. They are this year’s Bruin Angels.

Photo by Reed Hutchinson

GLENDA JONES

It doesn’t take a village after all.

Glenda Jones and four friends proved that this summer when they brightened the lives of more than 1,000 children in Mombasa, Kenya.

Raising more than $3,000, the graduate adviser for the Depart ment of Political Science and her buds spent 17 days there distributing more than 1,000 pounds of clothes, school supplies, infant necessities, food and life-saving information on hygiene and health.

“When I first told people what we were doing, they’d ask, ‘What’s the name of your group?’ They couldn’t understand that we were just five people who just wanted to do the right thing.”

Jones’ childhood friend, a nurse from San Jose, had worked on pro-jects in Africa previously. This year, she recruited Jones to be the school supplies coordinator. A longtime PTA member, Jones persuaded the Burbank High School PTA and students there to raise funds. People at UCLA’s African Studies Center, where she earned an M.A., helped buy clipboards — portable “desks” for children who have no school building.

The friends fed 300 to 500 people and passed out Beanie Babies to hospitalized children. They taught parenting and hygiene. For young girls, constantly targetted by molesters, the group hosted “girly-girl” parties to teach them self-defense and self-respect.

They plan to return next year to build a school dormitory for orphans. Jones is also passing out CDs she authored on the project through the PTA in the hope that well-off schools will be inspired to “adopt” poor ones in South Central, New Orleans or abroad.

“I came back with a different perspective about what I want to do with the rest of my life. I love what I do here at UCLA. It sustains my life. But this,” Jones said, “is my destiny.”

— Cynthia Lee

Photo by Rich Schmitt

ANTHONY CUBE

Imagine throwing a party and having 1,000 people show up.

That happens often to Anthony Cube, who is on the service board of the Heartfelt Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Santa Monica that assists poor and needy families in Los Angeles. This month, Cube (pronounced “KOO-bay”) is helping to organize the annual Downtown Christmas Party for hundreds of needy children, ages 3-15, in Gladys Park near Skid Row. Volunteers, like Cube, clean up the park and transform it into a winter wonderland, complete with fake snow, giant candy canes, air-filled bouncers, pony rides and Santa, who is on hand to pass out gifts.

“My favorite part is watching the kids’ faces and seeing them light up when they receive a toy,” Cube said.

Brand new to UCLA, Cube is a marketing manager for the UCLA Alumni Association and a longtime volunteer for the foundation (www.heartfelt.org), which sponsors several projects every year, including a back-to-school event in August at Santa Monica College, basket giveaways at Easter and Thanksgiving, and the Christmas party in December. This year, the group also collected and sent non-perishable food, clothes and toiletries to needy families in Louisiana affected by Hurricane Katrina.

“My Catholic upbringing has ingrained in me Jesus’ words, ‘What you do for the least of my people, you do unto me,’ ” explained Cube, who maintains a passion for homeless services. “It’s service to God, which is service to humanity.”

— Wendy Soderburg

Photo by Rich Schmitt

BARBARA JOHNSON

Clinical nurse Barbara Johnson is a self-professed kid with a big heart. How else could you explain why someone would go to work at Mattel Children’s Hospital dressed as a chicken to connect with a cancer-stricken child who wouldn’t speak?

Johnson became interested in pediatric oncology during her last year of nursing school while volunteering at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. “I always wanted to work with kids,” said the nurse. “I just kind of fell in love with the work.”

The “work” doesn’t end with her job in the acute care pediatrics unit, where she is a caregiver as well as a critical source of information for distraught families. This compassionate nurse somehow finds time, including her vacation days, to volunteer for several cancer-related activities. For example, she works on fund-raisers for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Every year, she provides nursing care at Camp Ronald McDonald so that sick children can attend. “It’s great to see them thrive in an environment where they can feel normal again and be like everyone else,” she said.

This past summer, she volunteered at a camp in Northern California, counseling patients’ siblings, kids who are often overlooked during a family health crisis. The payoff for all her work, Johnson explained, comes from the connection she makes with the patients and their families. “It’s a very rewarding feeling when a member of a family tells me: ‘We couldn’t have done this without you.’ ”

And what about that patient who wouldn’t talk? Was Johnson’s chicken a success? “He was a challenge, but he’s so talkative now,” she said. It’s all in a day’s work.

– Michael Stone

Photo by Reed Hutchinson

LYNNE THOMPSON

If you had to give up one of your senses, what would it be? For Lynne Thompson, the answer has always been clear: “Not my eyes.”

Thompson, Campus Human Resources director of Employee and Labor Relations, strongly empathizes with those who can’t read. So much so that she records audio books for the blind and dyslexic.

Once a week after work, Thompson spends two hours at the Los Angeles unit of Recording for the Blind and the Dyslexic, a nationwide nonprofit group. “I never know what I’m going to get,” she said of the books she reads. “It all depends on what they need on a particular day.” Most of the books are “kinda boring,” she candidly admitted, on topics that range from economics and electronics to photography and the solar system.

But Thompson finds textbooks very useful. An avid reader and poet, she’s “always looking for information that I can use as metaphors.” Occasionally, she’s pleasantly surprised by what she finds in the obscurest of texts. Recording a chapter on the wine market recently, she learned how different the American palate is from the Japanese.

At a time when many volunteers are engaged in big causes like hurricane and tsunami relief, “there are all these small things, and someone has to do them — our society unfortunately makes it easy to forget the blind,” said Thompson of her volunteer work. “It’s a challenge, it’s fun and you know you’re doing a really useful thing for somebody.” Her next goal: Learning sign language for the deaf.

— Ajay Singh

Photo by Stan Paul

JACK ROTHMAN

So this old guy walks into the lobby of a Red Cross building, and a woman approaches him. “I’m sorry, sir. We’re handling all the disasters we can manage right now.”

Just kidding. Jack Rothman, a professor emeritus, delivered that line during a recent performance at a dinner for Red Cross volunteers. At 78, Rothman is spending his golden years, microphone in hand, spreading laughter among service organizations and nonprofits as part of the comedy trio Baby Boomers Plus.

Always wearing his trademark cap, Rothman pokes fun at the indignities of old age: “I didn’t lose my sex drive, I just can’t find my equipment!” “Senior citizens. People say they don’t know how to drive. You think it’s easy to maneuver a car on the sidewalk?”

Retired since the mid-1990s, Rothman started doing stand-up after his kids gave him a gift certificate for a comedy class for his 75th birthday. He later joined actress Carole Gordon and entrepreneur Wes Martens, and the trio got gigs at the Improv and Ice House. Turned off by the raunch that passes for comedy in nightclubs these days, they now perform for public-service groups in exchange for a small fee to cover expenses. This new direction is a good fit for Rothman, who taught community service for many years in what is now the School of Public Affairs.

Do-gooders from groups like the American Red Cross get a kick out of the trio’s routine, but Rothman’s most appreciative audience remains his wife, Judy, who is still laughing at his jokes after 52 years of marriage.

“She’ll crack up and say, ‘Write that down! Write that down!’ ”

— Anne Burke