THOUSAND OAKS : Cable Show to Focus on the Community

What motivates a senior citizen to volunteer to raise funds for social service groups? What compels a city councilman to spend hours poring over dense paperwork? What encourages an entrepreneur to sink her life savings into a start-up business?

Hoping to answer such questions, Thousand Oaks resident Skip Lewerentz will launch a cable television show on the public access channel later this month. The weekly one-hour program will be called “Up Close and Personal.”

Guests will include elected officials, business people and volunteers with various nonprofit community groups. After interviewing the guests, Lewerentz will invite call-in questions--the more personal, the better.

“I want to show (viewers) that, hey, these people are real,” he said. “When you start seeing them on TV all the time (at City Council meetings), you get a different impression. Until I got to know them personally, I didn’t like any of them.”

Lewerentz, a projects manager at a local construction firm, said he hopes his call-in program will provide role models. He also wants to use the forum to publicly praise volunteers who “work their tails off for years and never get recognition.”

The first show will air within three weeks, though Lewerentz has not settled on a firm date. He said “Up Close and Personal” will be broadcast on Channel 8 from 4 to 5 p.m. Sundays.

Already, Lewerentz has lined up one potential viewer--Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski, who said she would appreciate more publicity for the volunteers who do vital work behind the scenes.