Thanks for the Bighearted

In the true spirit of Thanksgiving Day, many will sit down to dinner this evening with gratitude for the good things that have happened among friends and family. But all around us in Southern California are those who deserve the region’s collective thanks.

Some, like Nina Varkel of Irvine, responded to a single emergency. Others, like Inglewood resident Cecilia Freeman, saw a continuing need and decided to dedicate their lives to it. Still another humanitarian was Flora Chavez, who simply refused to stop giving even when the money dried up and her community center was forced to shut down.

Varkel pulled a 2-year-old from the bottom of a pool spa in July and revived him. Freeman oversees a private school with 40 kids who have been kicked out of public schools for behavioral problems. She also runs five foster homes located throughout South-Central Los Angeles. Chavez’s West Los Angeles Community Service Organization shut down this year, but the 81-year-old still finds time to counsel families on immigration matters, notarize documents, dig out information on jobs and offer tomatoes to the needy from her vegetable garden.

There are many more just like them.

Anaheim firefighter Richard Chavez provides food, clothing, cash and an occasional stuffed bear to people in the poorest neighborhoods. Anaheim Police Officers Bill Moss and Jeff Hemerson gave countless hours of their off-duty time to perform such services as taking an unemployed father to a job interview and feeding and sheltering a homeless man.

Ventura County rancher Jack Broome wanted no acclaim for the $5 million he gave to Cal State Channel Islands but was persuaded to go public in order to encourage other big-bucks donations to Ventura County’s fledgling public university. Oxnard’s Harriet Weigel, 65, is a one-woman volunteer army, giving her time to the Bread of Life Ministries, the Alzheimer’s Assn., Ventura College’s adult education program, the American Cancer Society and Livingston Memorial Nurses, as well as being a director at ARC-Ventura County, which provides services for people with developmental disabilities.

Maritza Artan, director of Casa Esperanza, or House of Hope, a Panorama City social service agency, along with neighborhood mothers and employees from a nearby Home Depot, transformed a glass- and needle-littered lot on one of the San Fernando Valley’s most notorious streets into a playground with grass and flowers.

At 80, Rosa Broadous, or “Mother Broadous,” co-founder of Calvary Baptist Church in Pacoima, stills runs the literacy class she has taught every week for more than 20 years.

Don’t forget UCLA professor of medicine Glenn Langer, who dipped into his savings in 1996 to create scholarships for junior high school students in one of Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods. Langer is still financing 20 scholarships for Lennox Middle School students.

And for those who think that today’s youths are interested only in themselves, consider Irma Monarrez, a 19-year-old Cal State Northridge student who serves as a rape crisis advocate for the Valley Trauma Center and is on call at least once a week to accompany sexual assault survivors to hospital examinations, police interviews or court. An example was a date-rape victim who was in shock and wouldn’t talk until Monarrez arrived on the scene.

Every one of these heroes touched someone’s life for the better and, in so doing, made life better for the rest of us as well.