HELPING HANDS: The seventh-grade class at Ojai’s...

HELPING HANDS: The seventh-grade class at Ojai’s Oak Grove School needed a community service project. AIDS Care needed a garden at its new headquarters in downtown Ventura. The two hooked up and the result is beautiful, says Doug Green, executive director of AIDS Care. . . . The day the class turned out was wet, Green said. Despite that--or maybe because of it--”we had so much fun, and I think the kids felt great about doing it.”

SECOND STAGE: Until now, dance recitals and theatrical productions at Moorpark College were performed in a converted classroom on a makeshift stage (B1). But life is changing for the actors and dancers. . . . Those who will be using the college’s new Performing Arts Center, which boasts a stage three times the size of the old one, are thrilled. Kristin Henry, a theater major from Thousand Oaks, says the ambience will inspire the audience. “It will look professional even if it’s not, because of the place.”

HAPPY ENDING: If Joshua Isaacs had to do it all over again, “I probably would have gone to bed with a motorcycle helmet on.” . . . Joshua is the Ojai teenager who was attacked by a bear while in his sleeping bag near Big Bear 2 1/2 years ago. He was reunited recently with the camp counselor who saved him, and their story will be told at 9 p.m. Thursday on CBS’ “The World’s Most Dangerous Animals.” . . . Joshua, who ended up with 150 stitches after the attack, still loves to camp.

SHARK ATTACK: Also on the program will be Joe Thomson, who lived for several years in Ventura before moving to Hawaii in the late 1970s. Thomson, now a graphic illustrator in Santa Barbara, lost his right hand to a shark on the north coast of Kauai in 1985. . . . Thomson, who was boogie-boarding, had little warning of the attack: “All of a sudden, this 55-gallon drum of teeth popped out of the water.” . . . Thomson still spends lots of time in the water in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. “I’m not that nervous here. There’s less sea life.”