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Destroyed by Drink (PDF)
Published February 1997
Phil remembers drinking heavily as a college student a few decades ago. “I rarely drank during the week,” he recalls of his college years. “But on the weekends, watch out.”
Grandparents as Parents (PDF)
Published August 1996
At a time when they thought they’d be enjoying the golden years of retirements and winding down, grandparents raising their children’s children must overcome critical financial and legal challenges as they strive to provide a balanced family atmosphere for their grandchildren. Meet three Sacramento families.
The Girls on the Bus (PDF)
Published August 1996
Susan Sward was a 23-year-old reporter with a Stanford bachelor’s in psychology, a master’s in journalism from UCLA and a prestigious Los Angeles Times internship behind her when she became one of the first women ever to cover the California State Capitol in 1971.
Follow the Leaders (PDF)
Published July 1996
Jerrie Groven grew up in Torrance, in southern California, where her two sons, now 20 and 22, were born. Troubled by the increasing congestion and pollution, she decided to pack up her kids 16 years ago and move north, settling in Placerville. She has never looked back.
One in Eight (PDF)
Published June 1996
All women know other women – a mother, a sister, a friend, even a daughter – who have been scarred, or even killed, usually slowly, by breast cancer. We recall the stories, the pain, the incredible courage of these women, and we are mostly vigilant for warning signs in our own bodies – a slight thickening, a tiny lump, an unusual discharge.
Saving Face: A Local Look at Plastic Surgery (PDF)
Published May 1996
Patricia Paul (not her real name), 68, is a longtime advocate of cosmetic surgery. Active socially, physically (she and her family often take biking vacations) and as a volunteer, she had a facelift two decades ago. “I went in to have my eyes done, and [the surgeon] said, ‘let’s do your whole face.’
Bobbie Metzger Q&A (PDF)
Published April 1996
As president of Stoorza Siegaus Metzger & Hunt, Bobbie Metzger, 47, heads the largest woman-owned independent public relations and public affairs firm in the country, with offices in Sacramento, San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Energy to Manage (PDF)
Published April 1996
Jan Schori is gazing out her office window as dusk descends and the tall trees of East Sacramento bend menacingly in a fierce storm. For Schori, it is uncomfortably reminiscent of the intense December storms that had SMUD crews working around the clock for days to restore power to hundreds of Sacramentans.
Life of Brian (PDF)
Published January/February 1996
The halls outside the ornate, high-ceilinged office of the Speaker of the California Assembly on the second floor of the State Capitol are unusually quiet on this spring-like mid-November day, and Brian Setencich has the windows open on a stunning, almost blinding view of Capitol Park.
Hormone Replacement: Miracle or Curse? (PDF)
Published December 1995
It started with the usual annoying symptoms: irregular or missed periods, night swears, insomnia – and blinding hot flashes that came out of nowhere. One woman described them, aptly, as feeling like “someone set off a blow-torch in your face.”
It’s too soon, I’m only 44!
Operative Vision (PDF)
Published November 1995
Susan Wagner has worn glasses or contact lenses since she was 10. At 27, she works on a computer all day in the finance department of the City of Davis. “It got to the point where I was helpless without my lenses,” she says.
Reno Revisited (PDF)
Published November 1995
The old T-bar ski lift at Mount Rose near Reno is permanently etched in my memory – the stark, swinging cloumns of green, with short, C-shaped seats at the base, so two people could sit, somewhat precariously, hanging on to the center bar as we inched up the mountain.
State of the Heart (PDF)
Published October 1995
The craft of writing, I’ve decided, does not encourage physical fitness – a sorry excuse, to be sure, but one with the pure ring of truth. It is inherently sedentary: hours spend hunkered in front of computers, searching for facts, words, flow.
Sisters (PDF)
Published August 1995
If the brothers are all valiant and the sisters merely virtuous – to borrow from the oft-quoted epitaph of Margaret Lucas, the Duchess of Newcastle, who died in 1673 – then the sisters too are bound by ties of guilt and duty.
Ovarian Cysts, Do They Mean Cancer (PDF)
Published September 1995
Margery Bird had “no problems and no symptoms” when her doctor found an ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit during a routine pelvic examination.
Connie Chung Q&A (PDF)
Published June 1995
Connie Chung, co-anchor of the “CBS Evening News” and anchor of “Eye to Eye with Connie Chung,” came to town in April to anchor the evening news from the state Capitol and to moderate KOVR and SACRAMENTO magazine’s Women’s Safety and Security Forum.
Senior Entrepreneurs (PDF)
Published June 1995
Carol McNeal can barely remember a time when she didn’t read. As the youngest of 16 children in her hometown of Portsmouth, Ohio, she turned to reading “so that I could lock people out.” Now, at 63, she remained surrounded by books – at home and at Carol’s Books and Things, the Sacramento bookstore she has owned for more than a decade.
Birthing Babies (PDF)
Published May, 1995
It was just before Christmas in 1976, when I was 30 and barely three months pregnant. I was visiting my parents in Chico, going through some kind of primal mom-ritual, learning in my mother’s kitchen to make the complicated Norwegian cookies she – and my grandmother before her – had been making for decades.
Gabriele Bender Q&A (PDF)
Published May 1995
Gabriele Bender, 47, joined the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department as a clerk-typist in 1968, when women were not permitted to work on patrol. She soon became a dispatcher, graduated from the first co-ed class at the sheriff’s academy in 1973, and went on patrol in 1976.
Circles of Smoke (PDF)
Published April 1995
She came home on time, bounding in the front door shortly after 10 p.m. with her typical energy – long, tan legs quickly covering the few steps to my perch on the couch, where I was watching a movie with her father – and bent down to give me a kiss.
As her heavy auburn hair (last week it was black) brushed my face, the small struck me like a blow to the head. Cigarettes! She’s been smoking cigarettes!
Nina Boyd Krebs Q&A (PDF)
Published April 1995
Nina Boyd Krebs, Ed.D., graduated from college in her native Arizona in 1960, starting out as a high school English teacher. “I overheard somebody say, ‘Is that little girl with the ponytail a teacher?’ So I wore high heels every day.” To Krebs, this event and others like it underscored the need for women to understand that they are competent and legitimate members of the work force.
Faulty Image (PDF)
Published March 1995
It starts early, perhaps in grammar school, with children in their especially cruel and unthinking way calling other children names like “Chubby” and “Fatty” – or worse. By the time they reach junior high school, young girls are conditioned to emulate the image of Barbie and the more subtle, but no less insidious, ideals of womanhood promoted by fashion magazines and the ubiquitous tube.
Extraordinary Measures (PDF)
Published February 1995
It was two days before Halloween, and 2-year old Edward Vetsch had been nibbling on some almonds and jumping up and down on the couch in the living room of his family’s new house in Anderson (Shasta County). And then he fell. “He took a deep, scared breath when he fell,” recalls his father, Gary Vetsch, “and sucked [the almonds] right down into his lungs.”
Diversion Tactics (PDF)
Published December 1994
Three years ago, Gerald L. Bryant took four young Sacramento gang members to hear Maya Angelous speak at the Sacramento Community Center. Before that, none of the young men had known anything about the prominent writer and actress. Neither had they visited the community center, or the Hyatt Regency hotel where Bryant took them after the speech.
Lobbyists: Walking a Fine Line (PDF)
Published November 1994
Nancy Drabble worked for 10 years as a lobbyist for consumer activist Ralph Nader in Washington, D.C., and for the last eight years has been a lobbyist in California’s Capitol for one of the biggest users of lobbyist services in the state, the California Trial Lawyers Association.
Women: The New Network (PDF)
Published October 1994
Before they were admitted in any numbers to the male-dominated bastions of business, the professions and government, women did their “networking” largely at home.
Ona Wilsey (JPEG)
Published September 1994
The children of the Happy Owl pass through the doors and greet their teacher as if they had never left, though many “graduated” 20 years before. Aged 2 to 23, they enjoy a shared legacy as Ona Wilsey’s students in an unusual and much-beloved preschool on a shady Carmichael street.
The Child Care Challenge (PDF)
Published September 1994
Ruth Pritchard was a single, divorced mother of two when she worked in the office of then-Governor Ronald Reagan as a policy researched and writer in the early 1970s. Among her many duties was to do a study of child care resources available to working parents in California.
Terry Grier: Swimming Upstream (PDF)
Published August 1994
In his first high school teaching job more than two decades ago, Terry Grier taught five subjects and coached the baseball team to unexpected victories in the tiny North Carolina river community of Hertford, perhaps best known as the home of famed Oakland A’s pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter.
Look, Mom’s on TV! (PDF)
Published May 1994
Shelly Monahan anchors the weather reports for KCRA-TV five days and evening each week, starting each workday at 1:30 p.m. and ending at 11:30. It’s a grueling schedule under the best of circumstances – if you’re also the nursing mother of an infant, it’s especially daunting.
Glen Craig, Sacramento County’s Popular Top Cop (PDF)
Published April 1994
Alex Magness, one of the first female deputy sheriffs in Sacramento County, recently retired as a chief deputy – the highest civil service rank for deputies – after working closely with Sheriff Glen Craig for several years. “We spent two weeks with him and his wife, and when you’re in close quarters like that, if someone is a jerk, you’d know it,” Magness says.
Driving (PDF)
Published December 1993
It’s after 6 on a Friday evening when my daughter and I arrive on the outskirts of Chico. As I survey the familiar terrain off Highway 99 south of town, I’m thinking that although we have made this drive countless times before, on this occasion the scene seems almost surreal.
Where Women Are (PDF)
Published October 1993
The Rev. Jean Shaw-Connelley recalls that :one of the unquestioned highlights” of her ministry occurred when the mother of a 5-year-old girl came up to her after church “and told me that at the dinner table when [the child] was asked what she wanted to be, she said she wanted to be a minister. The mother said I was her role model.”
D.A. Steve White (PDF)
Published September 1990
“It is the day after the June 5 primary election, and Sacramento County District Attorney Steve White has been home for more than a week. Not complaining, not hitting the rubber-chicken political-dinner-circuit, but home with his wife, Laurel, and their first child, Dylan White, born May 27. He stays in touch with the office by phone, and daily packages for review and signature are couriered by his longtime secretary, Terry Yoshikawa.
What’s A Mother to Do (PDF)
Published February 1989
The cartoon shows a stereotypical family, reminiscent of the 1950s, with Mom in her apron, three kids, a dog, a cat – even a fish in a bowl and a bird in its cage – assembled cheerfully to greet dad, briefcase in hand, as he comes in the door. “I’ve had a rough day, honey,” says Dad. “Tell me everybody’s name again.”
City Lights (PDF)
Published December 1988
As the homeless population continues to soar and stretch existing services, the federal government has stepped in to help. In Sacramento, a 12th Street motel – condemned last year as unfit for human habitation – has become the unlikely site of a model program designed to help the homeless become self-sufficient.
Learning the System (PDF)
Caught in the crunch of explosive population growth in the Sacramento area – one of the fastest growing regions in the country – the county’s schools are scrambling to expand facilities while at the same time meet the needs of a rapidly changing school population.
Dollars for Design (PDF)
Published September 1988
When Joan and Craig Carbrey bought a stunning, oak studded lot overlooking Folsom’s Lake Natoma in the American River Canyon two years ago and began construction on their 3,600-square-foot custom home, they knew there would be some rough times.
Trashed Out (PDF)
Published August 1987
The scene is almost surreal, here just beyond the dead-end rise of 28th and A Street – a scene reminiscent of a desert set for Mad Max or Star Wars. Huge machines move over the barren landscape, dust swirling, gears grinding, as workers go about the endless business of compacting, burying, and obliterating the sight of the accumulated garbage of Sacramento’s citizenry.
