Whatever you do, don’t call Dave Stampfli or Karen Bouse “victims.”
“We’ve never considered ourselves victims,” says Stampfli. “That’s the wrong term. You choose to make yourself a victim. We don’t choose to do that.”
These survivors of the Paradise fire had their home on the Lake Wohlford Resort swept away by flames the first day of the week long conflagration.
Theirs was the first home in the resort to burn. On Monday they became the first of over 20 residents of the resort who lost their homes to get a new house.
“We were insured,” explained Stampfli. For the past nearly three months since the fire they have been living in what he calls “a little bit more than a camper shell with a toilet.”
The place is so small that Stampfli, who is a musician, usually had to step outside to play his guitar.
They rent the space and own the house.
Why did they stay?
“It’s the two million dollar view,” says Stampfli, pointing to the vista of Lake Wohlford that they can see from the end of the land they rent. “And we get it for $500 a month to rent the space.”
Soon a musical studio will arrive and so will Bouse’s kiln. She’s an artist, whose clay sculptures continue to decorate the spaces around the trailer and the new house.
They look on the works wrought by the fire philosophically.
“It’s timing,” he says. “You can choose to look on it as a disaster or you can choose to look on it as a fork in the road.”
The 2004 Miss Valley Center pageant will be held Saturday, March 6th at the VC Middle School with a traditional Spanish theme of, “La Noche Bella.”
This year’s contestants are Tanya Cottrell, Lindsey Turner, Clarissa Auxter, Elizabeth Nolan, Lyssa Mueller, Liana Hill, Christine Rea, Stevie Hill, Kaytee Hayes, Cierra Graham, Cheslea Wright, and Amy Weeda.
Tickets are $10 pre-sale from any of the contestants or VC Pageant Assn. members.
Contestants will also be looking for sponsors to advertise in the program. Questions? Call Director, Karen Greene at 749-1863.
Gina’s Hair Salon is moving to larger digs, starting Feb. 2.
After five years in operation, Gina’s is moving for the second time because of the need for more space.
There will be no interruption of salon hours as Gina Mitchell and her associates move from their current 600 sq. foot salon in the Courtyard to three times the space at the building directly behind Pepperoni’s restaurant.
A grand opening is planned for Feb. 21, 4 p.m.
The look of the salon will change dramatically from what it is today, says Mitchell.
“We’re going more for the Mediterranean, Tuscany look. It will be very relaxing, elegant atmosphere.”
The fireplace in the reception area “will give the warm feeling that you’re not in an ordinary hair salon. We want to give something very relaxing and ornate to our clients.”
The outside will also be totally changed with an eight foot awning hanging over the front door. “We are totally landscaping the whole outside, bringing in queen palms and a pond. We’re angling to get a civic beautification award someday,” Mitchell told The Roadrunner.
They will offer facials, body treatments, acrylic nails, manicures and pedicures and, of course, hair.
Mitchell says they plan to add associates and they will open with a new receptionist, Leigh Gallagher. Esthetician Lisa Jokinen, joins the staff that includes Mitchell, associate Jamie White and Yvonne Narog, who has been with her from the beginning. All are trained in European color techniques.
Obviously business must be booming, or else the salon wouldn’t need more room.
Mitchell confirms that. “Business is wonderful! I feel so blessed to have such a thriving business! All the clients are wonderful. Everybody who comes through that door is wonderful.
“The atmosphere in the salon is like a whole bunch of friends getting together and doing hair. It’s a really warm atmosphere and I think that has been one of the primary elements in our success.” says Mitchell. “I want people who haven’t tried us yet to come in. I can’t wait until our salon clients come to the new place and see that we can totally pamper them now.”
Also new at the salon will be a boutique called “A Bit of TLC.” Proprietor Theresa Coelho will carry a unique line of purses, belts, earrings, watches, necklaces and bracelets. The boutique will be open the same hours as the salon.
The salon will have the same phone number as before, 749-2344. Its hours will be Monday-Saturday by appointment.
Tom Bumgardner, Valley Center’s “man in black” will be honored this Saturday night at the Valley Center Chamber of Commerce’s installation dinner.
The Installation/Awards banquet will be Jan. 17 at Escondido Country Club, 1800 Country Club Lane, in Escondido. The cost of $30 per person, includes no host bar, 6 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at California Bank & Trust, Chamber office and The Roadrunner office.
The Citizen of the Year committee credited Bumgardner with being “always there to help, anyone, everywhere. His community involvement includes the Chamber of Commerce, board of the Deer Springs Fire Protection District, board of the VC Parks & Rec. District, Western Days for 20 years, including two as chairman and Valley Center Fire Relief. He is an all around town volunteer.”
Bumgardner, who has been a VC resident since the mid-70s, was originally from Pennsylvania. He moved to Southern California in 1953 and worked his way from L.A. County, to Orange County and finally to San Diego.
He was a truck driver for 30 years. At first he drove short lines on the West Coast, but when he came to San Diego he got into construction, where he drove 100 ton trucks. Bumgardner has also owned security companies and sold real estate.
Today he’s “retired and working harder than every before.”
Bumgardner started volunteering when he first moved to Valley Center.
“It kind of came with raising my kids with 4-H and Pop Warner,” he says. “Then I started helping Jack Vosberg, who got me into to the Optimists for a while.”
He started working on Western Days back in the 1980s, when the 4-H clubs were in the charge of it.
Then the Optimists and the Chamber became involved and it become more formally organized, he says.
Once the Chamber took over organizing the event, Bumgardner joined the Chamber.
“I used to be called a ‘roustabout’ because people called me whenever they needed something done. I do as much as I can until the helpers get there. That’s what’s volunteering is all about, I think.”
He adds, “For the last five or six years I’ve been pretty much involved in putting it all together and making it come off,” says Bumgardner, who was Chairman of Western Days the last two times.
A year ago Bumgardner was elected to the Deer Springs Fire Protection District board, and is the current vice chairman. He’s also been on the parks and rec board for a year.
Those two jobs have kept Bumgardner out of the Western Days planning for this year.
“I’ve got so much work with the parks and rec and the fire district that I don’t have time for Western Days.”
He also wants to build a house for himself and Sherry. “It usually takes eight months out of the year to do Western Days. They’ll take care of it. They’ve got lots of young kids in there now.”
When the disastrous Paradise fire hit Valley Center nearly three months ago, Bumgardner “jump into that and I don’t regret it.”
He attended the first community meeting after the fires and handed his card to Supervisor Bill Horn and said to call him if he needed any help.
Then he contacted Bob Leonard of the Fallbrook Chamber, which administered fire relief funds for VC the first few weeks after the fire.
He worked the next month, seven days a week, 12 hours a day. “Probably seventy-five percent of the people I helped, I knew. It was a privilege. I felt like I was doing something worthwhile, something worth my own weight in gold,” he says.
Shortly after the fire burned itself out he took a helicopter trip over the scorched areas.
“You really see how much burned and how much country there is through here,” he says.
He estimates that he must have written out about 600 relief checks during that time, and in the time since when the fund’s administration moved to the Valley Center Chamber office. The last checks will be written at the end of January, he says.
“You don’t realize how close this town is until you start dealing with something like this.”
“I enjoy helping the town. This is the town I live in and I enjoy the fact that I can help, says Bumgardner. “You get a lot of static, but a guy has to go where he feels right. You should give more than you get. I enjoy it. I’ve got a lot of good friends.”
Lots of people are curious about the black outfit.
“It just became a habit,” he says. “It kind of fit me and it only took a short time for people to say, ‘That’s the guy in black. It doesn’t have anything to do with Johnny Cash or anything else. My wife, Sherry says that she’s going to start wearing another color as long as it’s darker than black.”
Bumgardner was surprised to hear that he had been selected to be Citizen of the Year.
“It was a surprise, especially when I read the list of people who had gotten it before. Some of them were my idols, like Jack Vosberg and Hank Weldon, people who do and do and do and do.”
An organization that will act as a clearing house for long term relief efforts for survivors of the Paradise fire will have its first meeting Tuesday, Jan. 20, 7 p.m. in VC Community Hall.
The organization, called Valley Center Fire Recovery, will, according to coordinator/organizer Diane Conaway, “be a way to bring everybody together to continue doing what they are doing now: clean up, fund-raising etc. This will allow us to extend our efforts so that people and groups outside our community can come in, roll up their sleeves and get to work! As a volunteer myself, I hope to spread the work around for the recovery efforts so that no one has too big of a job.”
It will also fill the gap that may be created when the Local Assistance Center closes before the end of the month.
The purpose of the meeting will be to start planning, dividing up tasks and moving forward on recovering.
“We have a lot of resources in this town and a lot of people who want to help. I want to bring them together and put them all on the same page. We can make more progress that way,” says Conaway. “A lot of people in other communities have stepped up to the plate and assumed a leadership role to help their town.”
According to Conaway, who has been volunteering on fire relief efforts from the beginning, and serves on the board of directors of the Valley Center Fire Relief Fund, the idea for this new organization first came up when she attended a meeting that was held by Senator Dennis Hollingsworth’s office for Paradise fire relief organizations.
“We had a day long meeting in Poway last week that Senator Hollingsworth's office organized for all of the communities. There was a tremendous amount of sharing of information. It was at this meeting that I saw the need for overall coordination.
“Hearing from other communities and where they are made me feel better. We have raised a lot of money in Valley Center and our clean up0 efforts are light years ahead of everyone else’s.
“It’s confusing for the outside volunteers who want to come here and help us? Who do they call? Where do they start?”
She add,s “This community has been wonderful about sharing. Every time I ask for help i get it. Now we need to organize ourselves and work with these agencies.”
She envisions the new group will help eliminate duplication of efforts.
“It came to my attention going to all of these meetings that we need to look at long term recovery and all of the things that entails.”
“We are forming a new group of volunteers, asking people who want to assist victims with insurance, rebuild issues, long term housing, people who would like to assist with publicity and help us handle all of the people and their various assorted needs, to volunteer,” said Conaway.
The group’s focus will differ from the VC Fire Relief Fund. “That fund is focused solely on fire recovery efforts,” said Conaway. “That will continue beyond that.”
The new organization itself won’t be involved in any way in disbursing funds.
The organization is being funded initially by a grant that will allow it to open an office in VC. The point person, who will work with local residents is Michelle Scheid.
She will be assisted by representatives from the Disaster Recovery Coalition, a community organization that pools resources to meet the unmet needs of local citizens over the long haul. It works closely with Lutheran Disaster Response and Lutheran Family Services. They will, in effect, become the case workers for the relief effort.
The Disaster Recovery Coalition often comes in behind FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), which closed its office in VC on Friday.
Conaway describes her own function as organizer/facilitator. I just bring together all the interested people etc. and give it the organization to run itself.”
Conaway has been busy the last few months writing fire relief grants and expects to get more funding to keep an office open in Valley Center.
“The need is there and it will be for a long time. People think that while we are approaching 90 days after the fire that we should all be all right. But for the people who directly lost everything it’s going to take a long time to recover.”
People will have a central phone number to call if they are having trouble with their insurance company, for example.
“We have a couple of people who were in that business and know how to troubleshoot.”
Many people give up after running the paperwork gantlet with FEMA or the Small Business Administration. Some of these have gotten assistance from people familiar with the process and been able to go back and get help, said Conaway.
“Michelle is really good with FEMA,” she said.
Scheid will continue to operate out of an office at the LAC at least until the end of the month. You can reach her at 749-9584 and 749-7927.
You can reach Conaway to volunteer or make a donation at 749-2888.
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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