Altadena Junction: Chamber names best of the year

The Altadena Chamber of Commerce has named a very deserving Citizen and Business of the Year for 2012.

Citizen of the Year is Michele Zack. An Altadena resident since 1986, Zack was a journalist in Thailand in the 1990s before coming back home and immersing herself in the community, helping to preserve watershed and prevent development.

She also is the author of the definitive 2004 history, “Altadena: Between Wilderness and City,” commissioned by the Altadena Historical Society. The book received several awards, and on the strength of it she was commissioned by the Sierra Madre Historical Preservation Society to write “Southern California Story: Seeking the Better Life in Sierra Madre.” That book was honored by the American Assn. of State and Local History in 2010.

In 2011, she joined the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West as a senior advisor, following several years working with the Huntington to educate K-12 teachers on local history.

Zack not only writes local history, she makes it, too. An avid gardener and environmentalist, she’s helped create the Marengo Avenue Pocket Park, worked to establish oak trees along Fair Oaks Avenue and is pushing to plant more trees along Woodbury Road. Most recently, she was a key organizer of the Altadena 125th Birthday Bash at Farnsworth Park.

Zack is on the board of Altadena Heritage, the platform for much of her activism. Her husband Mark Goldschmidt is chairman. “We really are a team,” she said.

Business of the Year went to Altadena Hardware. More than 80 years old, the store had been owned by the same family for three generations when Jim Orlandini and his family purchased it in 2010.

Orlandini comes from a hardware store background. In the late 1960s, his father bought Newland Hardware in El Sereno and he brought his children into the business as they came of age. Jim made a career of it: in the 1970s, he took over the store, and his wife Paula worked there for more than 30 years.

The Orlandinis moved to Altadena in 1985. When Altadena Hardware owners Don Thomas and his sister Shirley Harrington were looking to retire, Jim Orlandini stepped up and bought the store.

Today, Jim still runs Newland Hardware, son Jimmy manages the Altadena store and Paula serves as bookkeeper. The Orlandinis have expanded Altadena Hardware’s inventory and updated the displays, but Jimmy said they’re determined to keep the vintage small-town hardware store look and feel.

Altadena Hardware and the Orlandinis also give back to the community, helping the American Cancer Society Relay for Life, the Sheriff’s Support Group of Altadena and other local causes. And, Paula said, “We are always willing to help Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.”

Michele Zack and Altadena Hardware will be honored by the chamber at the Altadena Country Club on Jan. 24.

While we’re at it

The Dec. 9 column was about county inspectors refusing to recertify Altadena Hardware’s 97-year-old but still accurate scale for weighing bulk nails. After a weekend of adverse publicity and some pressure from Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, Jimmy Orlandini told us that a supervisor called apologetically and said the scale would be recertified.

TIMOTHY RUTT is the publisher and editor of Altadenablog.com.