Volunteering Help Is a Way of Life for ‘Miss Red Cross’

In 1948, Ona Marie Chaidez saw a newspaper advertisement seeking volunteers and decided to contact the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Chaidez, whose nickname has become “Miss Red Cross,” began as a driver delivering blood to hospitals. Over the years, she has also worked at bloodmobile sites, served as a coordinator of volunteers and run errands for the organization.

Chaidez, 66, has always made an effort to help anyone who needed it. “I wouldn’t feel right unless I was volunteering,” she said. “It is most important to care for others in this life.”

Although she’s retired from a nursing and secretarial career, she continues to reach out to the community. Often, she visits patients at convalescent homes and veterans’ hospitals during the week as well as on weekends. She talks with them and helps feed them, which eases the load of the nursing staff.

Chaidez, who lives in Los Angeles, has no plans to slow down. “It’s in your heart knowing that someone else needs your help,” she said. “That’s what keeps me going, and (patients) know that I will come and see about them.”

Miss Malibu, Shannon Marketic, was recently crowned Miss California USA Pageant. Marketic, 20, a junior studying law at Pepperdine University, also won first place in the Pepperdine Literary Faculty Award competition for a paper on AIDS. Next year, she plans to publish a book on the generation gap between teen-agers and parents.

The Maple Center will award its 1991 Distinguished Community Service Award to Bruce McNall and the Los Angeles Kings.

McNall, who owns the Kings, and the team will be honored for their charitable contributions at a dinner Oct. 13 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

Sidney Katz has been elected a vice president of the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs at the group’s recent international convention in Loch Sheldrake, N.Y.

Katz, a resident of Brentwood, is a past president of the Sinai Temple Men’s Club in Los Angeles and of the federation’s Pacific Southwest Region.

Mayor Tom Bradley has appointed Alan Kishbaugh to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy’s Advisory Committee.

Kishbaugh, founder of Top of the Canyon Associates, has served on the boards of Lookout Mountain Associates and Laurel Canyon Associates, which have expressed concern over destruction of open space and animal habitats.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is a state agency that acquires lands for parks and trails for public recreational use in the mountains that surround the San Fernando Valley.

The Beverly Hills Women’s Network has honored Donna Ellman Garber, Marcia Israel, Ruth Lee and Susan Warner as Women of Achievement.

The honorees were recognized at a dinner Oct. 3 at the Beverly Hills Hotel for outstanding accomplishments in their professions and dedication and service to the Beverly Hills community.

--CHRISTINA V. GODBEY

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