The trajectory of Micky Powell’s career path was lovingly set over 40 years ago by her mother, a professional ballet and Armenian folk dancer. When Ruth Jevarian retired in 1974, she turned her Inner Sunset District school, Star Dance Studio, over to her daughter. “It was a natural thing; the studio was in the basement,” ...
Sue Horst believes everyone has a North Star — hers was her mother, who showed her that age is no barrier to creating a new life. Her mother had been a homemaker, raising Horst and her older brother. She volunteered but never had a paid job. Yet at age 61, she studied to become a ...
Hunger is something Lavern Simon is familiar with. Not for food but for learning. Born into a segregated Washington D.C., her education was less than inspiring. Her school had few resources. You had to bring your own pencil to school or pay for one, she said. Children went home for lunch each day. Reading lessons ...
The knowledge was hard-won, but over the years Valorie Villela discovered the link between nutrition, health and survival. Villela struggled with bulimia from her teens to her 20s. Painful as it was, her conquest of the disorder put her on a path of service and adventure that took her from her native Oregon to the ...
Wayne Fung visited the doctor twice a week when he was 10. Intravenous injections kept his asthma under control. He warmed to the office nurse, whom he called “Ducky,” because she was the best at hitting the arm vein in his thin torso. Watching these events, his mother proclaimed, “I think one day YOU will ...
The year was 1963 in Sacramento, Calif. Irving Rothstein was pushing, shredding and pushing more paper in a job he didn’t find very interesting. But, as he recalls, “sometimes out of boredom comes birth.” He followed an ad and nailed a tutoring position. That was the incubator from which he realized his life’s work — ...
