Weight Loser Turns Weight Lifter

Three years ago Gretchen Buerki powered her way through an arduous diet to lose 35 pounds, dropping her to 130 pounds.

Then she turned around and deliberately put it all back on. And more.

“I started my weight loss program with aerobics and a little weightlifting to tone my body,” the Fullerton High School teacher said. “I didn’t know it would take me to weight-lifting competition.”

She currently is in heavy training to compete in her age and weight division in the 1990 International Power Lifting Competition on July 22 in Leningrad and July 24 in Moscow.

Deciding to put the weight back on in order to compete was difficult.

“When I was thin, I liked it,” said Buerki, a graduate of Scripps College in Claremont.

But the 47-year-old Fullerton resident, who stands 5 feet, 7 1/2 inches, decided she liked power lifting better. Now her trainer wants to see her at 180 pounds in order to help her lift heavier weights.

“I love it today as much as I did when I started three years ago,” said Buerki, who didn’t take weight lifting seriously until 1987, when she entered her first competition.

There were nine women competing in that contest.

“I ended up ninth, but it showed me I could do it and I liked that,” she said.

Buerki said people at the La Mirada Athletic Club, where she lifted weights as part of her diet training, were impressed and urged her to enter competitions.

“But I told them I was too old and there was no way I wanted to do that,” she said.

However, while lifting weights with other women in the gym, “I found I was very strong and could lift weights very well.”

Buerki, a resource specialist who teaches children with learning disabilities in reading, writing and spelling, entered some contests and then started setting weight-lifting goals for herself.

Her first goal was 100 pounds and now her goal is to break the dead-lift record of 165 pounds for women ages 45 to 49.

“Most of all, I always want to do my personal best, because if you break the record there will always be someone who can outlift you,” she said. “I don’t want to compare myself with others.”

No matter what she does in weight lifting, Buerki has a big group of supporters, especially the students at her school.

“The kids at school really love it,” she said. “They ooh and aah and like to feel my biceps, and they really seem to respect what I do.”

Of her weight lifter’s physique, she said: “I don’t feel any less feminine. I’m still a very feminine person.”

She is married to Robert Buerki, 48, a business consultant, and has a daughter, Noel, 19. “She’s my biggest fan and my husband is my biggest booster,” Buerki said.

Weight lifting may lead to other pursuits, she said.

“I feel someday that power lifting will open other thoughts in my mind, including helping others as their personal trainer or something,” she said. “It’s kind of a whole new world opening up for me and I don’t know where it will take me.”

Neil Maken repairs antique phonographs and collects Thomas Edison artifacts in his Huntington Beach home business called Yesterday Once Again.

So when Phillip B. Peterson, 68, a former Stanford University professor, wanted to sell him some extremely rare Edison autographs, Maken became suspicious and called the FBI.

It was later discovered that the Edison autographs and other items were stolen from the Thomas A. Edison National History Site in West Orange, N.J., and Peterson was sentenced to three months in prison.

The FBI had wired Maken to record a meeting with Peterson.

“It was a lot of fun working with the FBI,” Maken said. “It’s an experience most of us never have.”

But, he said, it was a bittersweet experience.

“I’m bitter and disappointed that he was given a light sentence, but it was sweet for the museum to recover these valuable documents,” he said.

Acknowledgments--Evelyn and Douglas Metzger of Costa Mesa recently graduated from Cal State Long Beach, she with a master’s degree and he with a bachelor’s degree. They are mother and son.