Council Honors Andy Frew for His Three Volunteer Roles

Andrew Frew, who works behind the scenes at Theatre Palisades, Movies in the Park and the Chamber of Commerce Teen Pageant, will receive a Community Service Award from the Pacific Palisades Community Council on December 9.   The Council’s annual award recognizes Pacific Palisades residents who have made important contributions to the community through their longtime volunteer efforts. This year’s other winners are Arnold and Sigrid Hofer.   Frew, a neuroscientist at UCLA, said he was surprised he won because he calls himself ‘the geeky guy.’   At Theatre Palisades, Frew has been a volunteer in the Pierson Playhouse control booth since 1994, running the sound and light cues for TP productions.   A co-founder of Movies in the Park in 2004, Frew’s role has been to ensure that sound, screening and projection occurs without a hitch every Saturday night in August at the Recreation Center.   He has worked the teen pageant at Pierson Playhouse for eight years, handling the technical aspects of production. ‘Arnie would pay me, even though I asked him not to,’ said Frew, referring to Arnie Wishnick, the Chamber’s executive director. ‘I joined the pageant committee three years ago because I figured if I was on the committee, he couldn’t pay me.’   Frew’s numerous volunteer commitments are actually a break from his serious professional life at UCLA, where he uses a software program called BrainLAB to map brain tumors after a person has undergone magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).   Using the 3-D ‘maps,’ Frew works with surgeons to guide brain-tumor operations, allowing doctors to cut away the tumor and leave areas of the brain responsible for speech, vision, memory and movement intact.   When not mapping, Frew uses a high-field small-bore MRI machine to examine brain tumor tissue with the hopes of improving imaging. ‘I have no aspiration of curing cancer, but if I can do one little step that leads someone else to maybe discover an enzyme, then I’ve done something,’ he said.   Born in Phoenix, Frew graduated from the University of Arizona with an engineering degree in 1982, and moved to Los Angeles to work for the L.A. Department of Water and Power.   In 1989, he purchased a condominium on Via de la Paz, within walking distance to all his eventual off-hour ‘jobs.’    ‘I really didn’t take advantage of the community in the beginning, just some weekend hiking,’ Frew said. But after reading a blurb in the Palisadian-Post in 1994 that Theatre Palisades was looking for volunteers, he offered his services. ‘I’ve never left. It’s like family.’   Although his initial position at the DWP was water plant structural designs, Frew eventually transitioned to waste-minimization recycling, which meant working with City Council members and the Mayor’s office. The experience was frustrating.   ’If there was a city furniture auction, a councilman might want it for his office, so we had to cart it over to him to look at and if he didn’t want it, then we had to move it again,’ Frew said, noting that with all the manpower and effort used, ‘We might as well have set fire to it’ and bought new furniture.   Frew’s life took a turn when a close friend, Steve DePesa, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 1996 and underwent surgery. Frew spent time investigating the disease and the prognosis. He also helped his divorced friend obtain MediCal funds, and moved him in his spare bedroom. The two wrote an informational Internet guide about the disease, treatments and contacts.   ’I decided engineering was pointless and started volunteering at UCLA,’ Frew said.   After DePesa died in Frew’s arms in July 1998, Frew quit his job and took time off. Fluent in Portuguese, he went to Brazil for two months to visit his ‘other’ family, which he had known since spending a college semester in Rio de Janeiro.   When Frew returned to the United States, he was accepted into a Ph.D. program in biomedical physics at UCLA, which included CT scans and MRI imaging, neuroanatomy, the effects of radiation, and health. He completed his degree in 2005.’   ’Everything I do [in Pacific Palisades] is all about feel good, have fun,’ said Frew, who has worked in the Pierson Playhouse booth for every production except one musical since joining the crew.   As a Community Service Award winner, Frew plans to ride in the Fourth of July parade with his long-time girlfriend, Paula DeSano, although this presents a dilemma.   ’I’ll have to find someone to drive the Theatre Palisades float,’ said Frew, who has driven it for 16 years and professes it is great fun. ‘I get to run every signal on Sunset, even if it’s at two miles an hour.’