NATIVES RESTLESS: More Ventura County residents are...
NATIVES RESTLESS: More Ventura County residents are coming from out of state, and that’s a problem for the Native Daughters of the Golden West. Only native Californians can join the civic group, which has 88 mostly middle-aged or older members in Ventura County. . . . “We need some young ones,” said Dolores Attaway, 71, the chapter’s financial secretary. “We old gals are getting kind of burned out.” The group preserves California history and does good deeds, Attaway said. “It’s not a cocktail party. We work.”
JOB SAVER: By nominating Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the Supreme Court (A1), President Clinton saved former Ventura County congressional candidate Kevin Sweeney’s job as spokesman for the Department of Interior. “There was a huge sigh of relief around here,” Sweeney said, after Interior boss Bruce Babbitt was passed over for the seat. . . . Once political mastermind for Patagonia, the Ventura clothing maker, Sweeney says he “couldn’t be happier” in his $92,000-a-year job, but he fondly recalls his 3 1/2 years here. In his office: a map of Sespe Canyon.
HOT TOWN: As the summer tourism season begins (B1), the Ventura Visitors and Convention Bureau is once again cooking up business in Bakersfield. For eight years, Bakersfield has been the focus of ads promoting Ventura as the place to chill out. . . . One TV ad in this year’s $7,500 campaign features a family sweltering in front of a fan, then lounging on the beach, bureau director Russ Smith said. “We say they can sit there and sweat or come to Ventura.” The ads attract 10,000 visitors a year, he said.
DRUG WARS: If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em. That’s the thinking behind Amgen Inc.’s purchase of marketing rights for a drug being developed by a rival firm (Valley Business, Page 10). . . . Amgen--the second-largest employer in Thousand Oaks--feared that Arris Pharmaceutical would develop an orally administered version of Amgen’s top-selling intravenous drug, Epogen.
Where We Started
More than half of Ventura County’s 669,016 residents were born outside California. Birthplaces: California: 320,472 Foreign born: 114,004 Midwest U.S.: 84,994 Northeast U.S.: 53,703 Southern U.S.: 50,457 Western U.S.: 35,611 Born abroad, U.S. parents: 8,296 U.S. territories: 1,479 Source: 1990 U.S. Census
