AGE FACTOR: What happens when a town’s...

AGE FACTOR: What happens when a town’s median age is close to 40, as it is in Ojai? Services are geared toward the elderly. Help of Ojai, a nonprofit agency based at City Hall, operates six dial-a-ride minivans for seniors on the go. Simi Valley, with four times more people than the Ojai Valley, operates two. . . . In younger-than-average Port Hueneme, kids wield more clout: A spring T-ball program enrolled 300 children under age 7. . . . Camarillo’s retirement communities skewed its median age upward, Assistant City Manager Larry Davis said. No problem: “They put fewer demands on city government than other groups.”

CASH PREFERRED: More than 30 people have called the Ventura County chapter of the American Red Cross, asking how they can help Midwest flood victims. Director Brian Bolton’s answer: Send money. . . . “People want to send clothes and food, and it becomes a second disaster,” he said. “There’s nobody to receive and deal with it.”. . . The situation in Des Moines, Iowa, he said, “is comparable to Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo being without drinking water.” The chapter is sending its disaster coordinator to help relief efforts. It also can help local residents contact relatives in the flood zone.

NEW SKATES: For years, Steve Bogeyevac of Newbury Park sought to be taken seriously as an ice hockey player from Southern California. Now he has traded in his ice skates to become captain of the Los Angeles Blades roller hockey team (C8). First he had to learn how to roller skate.

HIGH DIVE: They’ll be jumping from five stories up at a Simi Valley mortgage company Thursday, but not out of despair at the plunging real estate market. New Freedom Financial is staging a bungee-jumping promotional event on Los Angeles Avenue . . . Jumpers attached to a rubber-band-like cord will leap from a crane and, it is hoped, be snapped back up before hitting the ground. . . . For less adventurous souls, the company will offer hot-air balloon rides.

Middle Ages

Median age of residents in Ventura County cities. Ojai: 38.2 Camarillo: 36.1 Thousand Oaks: 34.6 Ventura: 33.7 Simi Valley: 31.0 Santa Paula: 29.4 Moorpark: 29.2 Port Hueneme: 28.8 Fillmore: 28.5 Oxnard: 28.3 County Median: 31.7 Source: California Cities, Towns & Counties