HELPING HANDS: A Ventura firm has shipped...
HELPING HANDS: A Ventura firm has shipped off 1,200 pairs of heavy-duty gloves to outfit rescue workers in Oklahoma City. The $40 gloves normally are used by police officers during searches, said a spokeswoman for Hatch Gloves and Accessories. . . . The company donated the gloves after getting a call from a customer in Oklahoma who knew that the workers needed hand coverings. Said Pete Miller of Tuxall Uniforms in Oklahoma City, “Hatch said, ‘How many do you need? One thousand or 2,000?’ We said, ‘Wow!’ ”
GROWING PAINS: April was a bumpy month for Xircom Inc., which pioneered a specialized plug-in adapter for portable PCs. Just days before Fortune magazine named the Thousand Oaks firm one of the 100 fastest-growing small companies in the nation, it had to lay off 10% of its work force because of declining profits. (Valley Business, Page 4) . . . But CEO Dirk Gates isn’t despairing. “It’s not to the point where we are going to send out disaster flags,” he said. “We are still the market leader. It’s just that our share is not of the size that we enjoyed in previous markets.”
BRAVE OPERATOR: Ventura brain surgeon Melvin Cheatham has received the 1995 Humanitarian Award from the American Assn. of Neurological Surgeons. . . . Cheatham--along with his wife, Sylvia--has visited troubled areas such as Bosnia, Africa and Russia more than 20 times since 1985, at times performing emergency neurosurgery in makeshift facilities while shells exploded nearby.
BIRTHDAY BASH: Do you have plans yet for Christmas, 1999? Some people do. (E1) . . . Pope John Paul II, for instance, already has released his agenda, and a multimedia stadium show about Jesus is being assembled by an Anaheim Hills impresario for a world tour. . . . In Ventura County, Father Robert Biroschak of Assumption Catholic Church knows of no big plans yet, but expects them to materialize. After all, he said, “we’ll have to wait another thousand years to do it again.”
