Pumping a New Well--and Some Pockets

To the heavens, we hear the daily cry: Where Are the Leaders?

The television commentators, the talk-show savants, the politicos manque , the academics, all agree that the nation’s wellspring of leadership has gone as dry as Borrego Springs in August.

Well, listen up, pilgrims, leadership is on its way. You may need to wait a few years for it to flower, but at least the date has been set for the seed to be planted, in the deep rich earth of the San Diego Convention Center.

A new San Diego group, R Future Leaders, has scheduled a two-day seminar to develop leadership in the young: ages 8 to 18, $445 per child ($225 for each additional child from the same family).

The goal is to rev up the self-esteem and latent leadership talents of children through lectures, skits, discussions and a “mystery guest.”

There may be a follow-up Power Rally in six months and maybe an 800 number for young leaders to commune with other young leaders.

“I believe I can bring out the best in children,” says Victoria Herrera, 28, president and co-founder of R Future Leaders. “The difference between a winner and a loser is not that one fails more than another. The difference is that the winner continues to try.”

Herrera says 58 children have already been signed up for the Jan. 4-5 seminar. An $85 deposit will hold a spot for your future President and/or corporate tycoon.

Herrera and other R Future Leaders facilitators do not have the usual type of degrees and tickets you might figure for people working with children: teaching degrees, psychology credentials, etc.

One of them, however was a “master trainer” for Del Mar’s Anthony Robbins, the firewalker and can-do guru.

I caught up with R Future Leaders in a quarter-page advertisement in San Diego Parent Magazine.

But what happens if R Future Leaders is successful and, as Herrera hopes, spreads to Washington, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix and Las Vegas? Will there be a glut of leaders but a paucity of followers?

I couldn’t find a single ad for classes in teaching followship to children. R Future Followers, maybe?

A problem for another day, I guess.

Sticker Shock

Here’s a small tale about the big cost of medical care.

Mollie Lavin of San Diego was doing the laundry a few nights ago. She cut her finger on the dryer.

Lavin and her husband, Paul, drove to the emergency room at Alvarado Hospital Medical Center in the State College area. Three stitches, no anesthesia, the whole episode took but 90 minutes.

Now comes the bill: $408.67.

As an optometrist, Paul Lavin knows something about medical costs. Still, he finds $408.67 excessive.

Tom Berger, director of marketing at the hospital, says it all pencils out, including $250 for use of the emergency room and $157 for the stitch-sewing doctor.

“Our customers often experience sticker shock,” he says.

If anything, Berger says, Mollie Lavin’s bill was light. The hospital has seven levels of billing for emergency care, and hers was the second-lowest.

People don’t realize that an emergency room (because of its 24-hour high-tech overhead) costs more than seeing your family doctor, Berger notes.

“When you’re bleeding, you go to the nearest place that’s open,” says Paul Lavin.

Exit Coughing

Little noted.

* Lyle Parido, a State Farm insurance agent in Vista, reports seeing the bumper sticker: “Be Nice to Us Smokers. We Don’t Have Long to Live.”

* Look for a floor fight as the Center for the American Woman and Politics ends its convention today at the Hotel del Coronado.

The issue: Whether the group should continue taking financial support from R.J. Reynolds and Phillip Morris, the cigarette makers.

* Anita Hill, who spoke Friday to the conference, travels alone but makes her airplane and hotel accommodations under an assumed name.

* Lionel C. Meeker of Temecula swears he overheard this conversation at the checkout counter:

“Do you want this wine in a bag?”

“No, I’m going to drink it all myself.”