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PaliHi Grad Signs Her DEA Thriller April 14

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Lisa Sweetingham, author of
Lisa Sweetingham, author of “Chemical Cowboys: The DEA’s Secret Mission to Hunt Down a Notorious Ecstasy Kingpin.”
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer

Author Lisa Sweetingham is excited about her Village Books appearance on Tuesday, April 14 at 7:30 p.m., when she will sign copies of her first book, ‘Chemical Cowboys: The DEA’s Secret Mission to Hunt Down a Notorious Ecstasy Kingpin’ (Ballantine Books), at 1049 Swarthmore.   ’A lot of close friends from Palisades High live here,’ Sweetingham, a TruTV (formerly CourtTV) correspondent and a freelancer for the New York Times, Spin and Venice, told the Palisadian-Post. ‘It’s like going home.’ The articulate PaliHi graduate (class of ’88), who started out at Gerry Blanck’s Martial Arts Studio in 1992, once competed on the karate circuit. Perhaps the amiable writer, who holds a blackbelt, kept her self-defense chops ready as she traveled nationwide and overseas to interview underworld figures associated with a multi-million dollar Ecstasy ring. In the process, she gained the trust of hardboiled Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials and no-nonsense Israeli law enforcement agents. What she unearthed informs the nonfiction ‘Chemical Cowboys,’ a penetrating page-turner about how a pair of DEA agents took down the elusive Oded ‘Fat Man’ Tuito, master of the once-thriving, Israeli mafia-controlled Ecstasy drug trade, which flourished from 1995 to 2001. Sweetingham, 38, all but grew up in Pacific Palisades. While raised in Venice and Topanga Canyon, she attended Paul Revere Middle School and Palisades High. ‘I enjoyed my school years,’ said the erstwhile Lisa Strum, single and now living in West Los Angeles. ‘I loved it because the teachers were really good, there was a diverse student body, and you had the beach nearby.’ In fact, Sweetingham’s first brush with reporting happened at PaliHi. She admitted she didn’t care much for the journalism class run by the late Barry Tunick, who co-created the Los Angeles Times’ crossword puzzles. However, Mary RedClay’s class fired up her writing passion. ‘She was a very outspoken, intelligent hippie,’ Sweetingham said, describing PaliHi English teacher RedClay, ‘and she didn’t let anyone get away with clich’s or stereotypes in their writing.’ By Sweetingham’s recollection, ‘Drugs and alcohol were rampant at PaliHi. Ecstasy hit the campus really big in 1986. I reconnected recently with an old boyfriend who was the sole Ecstasy dealer at PaliHi. I knew because he was dealing Ecstasy to all of our friends. No one knew where Ecstasy came from. It seemed like a fun, safe thing to do.’ Not that Ecstasy was exclusively PaliHi’s problem, but ‘in the Palisades, you probably had better quality drugs.’ First synthesized by the German pharmaceutical company Merck in 1912, Ecstasy did not surface until 1976, when Alexander Shulgin, a UC Berkeley professor with a Timothy Leary-esque bent, began to take and distribute the semisynthetic psychoactive drug. ‘Shulgin was a chemist for Dow Chemical,’ Sweetingham said. ‘He called it Empathy, and he was a real pioneer in the psychedelic drug world. The thing about Shulgin that was so interesting is that he liked to try all the drugs on himself. If he liked it, he would then introduce it to his wife and his circle of friends, other professors.’ Ecstasy quickly leapt from a judiciously prescribed drug to the streets. It cost 25 cents per tablet to manufacture and sold in the clubs at $20 to $50 a pop. ‘The drug escaped the therapist’s couch and went to clubs, even grade schools. There was no more control in the taking of it,’ Sweetingham said. At first, Ecstasy was produced in Holland, ‘but the mafia in Israel started to see the millions being made,’ Sweetingham continued. ‘That’s when they began financing the pills and you started seeing a lot more warfare and a dead body showing up in the back of a Lexus SUV in Brentwood,’ alluding to an excerpt from ‘Cowboys.’ So how did ‘Cowboys’ become Sweetingham’s maiden book project? ‘When I was at journalism school at Columbia University,’ she recalled, ‘I thought this was a fascinating story, but I couldn’t penetrate that community, so I let that story go. Years later, while working for CourtTV, a source came to me and said I should take a look at it.’ Sweetingham gained the trust of the DEA and the Israel National Police to compose her remarkable account of two young undercover DEA agents”Robert Gagne and Matthew Germanowski”on the warpath to take down Tuito’s operation. ‘This wasn’t just a magazine story,’ she said. ‘It was the story of an era.’ In late 2007, Sweetingham met Israel National Police’s top official: ‘He opened up my eyes to the challenges that they faced battling the mafia there. No one in America writes about the Israeli mafia, the warfare going on between them, blowing each other up in the streets. In Israel, it’s a major part of what the police do battle with.’ Soon, Sweetingham found herself in Romania meeting a former Ecstasy dealer: ‘He knew all of the players. A lot of money had been laundered through Bucharest.’ Despite some vague threats, the young writer never felt in harm’s way: ‘Those sources who may have threatened me in the beginning ended up becoming very good sources. A lot of them were just posturing. But once people got to know me and trusted that I was writing an honest portrayal, they agreed to tell me more of the story.’ So why did criminals from Israel seize the Ecstasy market? ‘They knew that they couldn’t penetrate the cocaine, heroin and marijuana markets, controlled by brutal Mexican, Colombian organized crime,’ Sweetingham said. ‘But they saw that law enforcement was not paying attention to Ecstasy. They called it ‘kiddie dope’ and the demand was so high.’ Some ultra-Orthodox Jewish youth were manipulated into becoming ‘mules,’ obviously a conflict with their religious beliefs. ‘They didn’t know what they were carrying,’ Sweetingham said. ‘They grew up very sheltered, without television. They were told that they were smuggling ‘diamonds for the Holy Land’ [jewels sold to support Israel]. It was actually one rogue dealer, Sean Arez, a Canadian-Israeli, who roped them in. He greatly upset the Jewish community by involving ultra-Orthodox teenagers.’ By the 2000s, the Ecstasy trade evaporated ‘because law enforcement from Israel, Western Europe and DEA worked together in secretive cooperative busts’ to break the back of Tuito’s ring, Sweetingham said. ‘The way the DEA and the Israel National Police took down the Ecstasy dealers has become a model. Israel changed its laws to extradite criminals to America to be prosecuted. There’s a new kind of cooperation between law enforcement in both countries.’ Visit www.LisaSweetingham.com.

Luke Cohen Celebrates 10th Anniversary

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Dr. Luke Cohen displays X-rays in his chiropractic office on Marquez Avenue in Pacific Palisades.
Dr. Luke Cohen displays X-rays in his chiropractic office on Marquez Avenue in Pacific Palisades.
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer

Innate Chiropractic has been around for 10 years at its Marquez Avenue location. But walk into the storefront clinic today, and you’ll experience what is virtually a brand new clinic ‘with ‘virtual’ being the operative word here. ‘We went from a traditional paper office to completely paperless almost overnight,’ said owner and founder Dr. Luke S. Cohen. Indeed, when patients check in at reception, a biometric scanner instantly identifies them and pulls up all of their records, which appear on Cohen’s computer screen in the treatment room where he will be working with his visitor. Every room has a flat-screen monitor that enables Cohen to not only view a patient’s information but educate said patient with computer-program illustrations. The dulcet sounds of Jack Johnson and Carpio waft softly into the rooms where the physical therapy takes place. An Illum Innate spine model stands in the corner of one room, opposite a flat-screen monitor offering detailed schematic explanations on spinal subluxation and degeneration. In fact, every room contains some sort of computer screen, where the multimedia format enhances the average patient’s understanding of his/her condition. Cohen has also re-invested in the equipment itself, such as top-of-line therapeutic benches and a high/low table that accommodates the wheelchair-bound. He enjoys demonstrating the hand-held Artho-light impulse device ‘for people who can’t tolerate adjustments. Kids like it a lot. I call it the Tickle Machine. Others call it the Woodpecker.’ Meanwhile, gone are the loud colors, busy posters and other wall clutter that used to adorn Innate’s walls. Every medical chamber has been repainted in softer, earthier colors, with thick wood-framed mirrors and large paintings of close-ups of tall grass and bamboo, setting a vaguely Brazilian-rainforest vibe. ‘One of our patients donated these paintings from Bali,’ Cohen explained. The overall effect: a more New Age atmosphere, with an emphasis on calm and peaceful. ‘We wanted our office to be state-of-the-art and relaxing,’ he said. Cohen, 35, originally set up shop on Marquez Avenue in 1999. He expanded his office space in 2003 after his next-door neighbor, a tailor shop, moved out. Last August, Cohen spent about two weeks completely overhauling the office, and he has since been ‘slowly finishing the final touches while maintaining a busy practice.’ At Innate Chiropractic, Cohen treats ‘a wide range of patients, from kids to the elderly,’ for a wide swath of symptoms and ailments. Contrary to popular belief, a chiropractor such as Cohen does not merely crack backs or apply reactive physical therapy to spinal injuries, such as in the aftermath of a car crash. Cohen also addresses a variety of symptoms and ailments and applies preemptive treatment to all parts of the body for neck and arm pains, migraines, sciatica and the like. ‘We identify the problems and work with the right amount of time, not just patch them up,’ Cohen said. ‘We work on ankles and knees, wrists and elbows. Most human beings, as they get older, develop symptoms in the body not normal in the neurological system. ‘Almost anyone can benefit from a chiropractor,’ Cohen added. ‘It’s similar to dentistry.’   Of South African-Jewish descent, Luke Cohen grew up the son of a contractor on the north side of Santa Monica, where he attended Santa Monica High School. Upon graduation, he matriculated into Cleveland Chiropractic College downtown, where he still lectures every two months. Since an early age, Cohen had always known that chiropractic care was his destiny, and with good reason: an expert on musculoskeletal disorders had cured him of his own debilitating childhood ailments, ‘What inspired me to become a chiropractor stemmed as a child sufferer of migraine headaches,’ Cohen said. The unbearable migraines plagued him from age seven to 17. Then a chiropractor identified the source of his problem”an imbalance in the neck”and, after a series of adjustments, Cohen was forever cured. He added that, as a teen, a chiropractor also cured him of a hip condition. ‘It took time to find the right storefront,’ Cohen said, recalling his search for Innate’s Marquez location, which he favored over, say, the Palisades business district, ‘to make it more accessible to Palisadians. It’s easier to find parking here.’ While he admits that he, like most small business owners, has been stung by the economy’s meltdown, he has his decade-long roots at Marquez Knolls to help weather the storm. ‘I’m blessed with longtime patients,’ Cohen said. And perhaps longtime patience as well: an affable, laid-back fellow, he radiates a relaxing kind of energy one would favor in a doctor of this genre. Cohen, who is single, has resided in the Palisades for seven years (his father lived here for 25 years, during which time Cohen fell in love with the area). ‘The Palisades has always been a great place to work and live,’ Cohen said. ‘It has a small-town feel. I also love living near the ocean and the mountains.’ What he called ‘a beautiful location that is healthy and family-minded’ is where he enjoys hiking, going to the beach, and spending time with family and friends. A Palisades Chamber of Commerce member, Cohen has hosted several of the Chamber’s monthly mixers over the years.     Contacts: call (310) 230-1899 or visit www.palichiro.com

William Fritzsche, 78; Volunteer, Family Man

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William Baker Fritzsche, a longtime resident of Pacific Palisades and devoted family man, died at home on April 6. He was 78.   The oldest child of Margaret (McBarron) and William N. Fritzsche, Bill was born on May 11, 1930 in Cleveland, Ohio. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1935 when his father went to work for Technicolor. He graduated from Loyola High School and Loyola University of Los Angeles, now known as Loyola Marymount University. Fritzsche served in the U.S. Army as a high-speed radio operator and married Dolores Jones in 1953. He started a Rayne Water Conditioning franchise in Santa Monica in 1960. His business grew to include Malibu, West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Long Beach and Palos Verdes. He was very active in the water-conditioning industry, serving on the boards of the Pacific Water Quality Association and the National Water Quality Association. During his career, he was a member of the Santa Monica Jaycees and the Santa Monica Rotary Club, serving as president of both. He was a member of the Santa Monica College Associates, and served on the board of directors of Santa Monica Bank. Upon retiring from Rayne, Fritzsche was involved with a number of philanthropic organizations, including the board of The Tidings (the Los Angeles Catholic diocesan newspaper), the audit and finance committees of St. John’s Hospital, the Santa Monica Rotary Foundation, and the financial committees of the Sisters of St. Louis and the Sisters of Social Service. He was a faithful member of Corpus Christi Parish for 53 years. Besides his wife of 55 years, Fritzsche is survived by seven children, William (married to Jennifer), James (Teresa), Caroline Dooley (Paul), Elizabeth McNamara (Neal), Maria Molloy (David), Thomas (Faye) and Vincent (Jennifer); 16 grandchildren; brother Henry (Kathleen), and sisters Clare Newell (Paul, deceased) and Ann Felando (August). The family requests that any donations be made to Medicine for Humanity (medicineforhumanity.org). A funeral Mass will be held this morning at 10 a.m. at Corpus Christi Church. William Baker Fritzsche, a longtime resident of Pacific Palisades and devoted family man, died at home on April 6. He was 78.   The oldest child of Margaret (McBarron) and William N. Fritzsche, Bill was born on May 11, 1930 in Cleveland, Ohio. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1935 when his father went to work for Technicolor. He graduated from Loyola High School and Loyola University of Los Angeles, now known as Loyola Marymount University. Fritzsche served in the U.S. Army as a high-speed radio operator and married Dolores Jones in 1953. He started a Rayne Water Conditioning franchise in Santa Monica in 1960. His business grew to include Malibu, West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Long Beach and Palos Verdes. He was very active in the water-conditioning industry, serving on the boards of the Pacific Water Quality Association and the National Water Quality Association. During his career, he was a member of the Santa Monica Jaycees and the Santa Monica Rotary Club, serving as president of both. He was a member of the Santa Monica College Associates, and served on the board of directors of Santa Monica Bank. Upon retiring from Rayne, Fritzsche was involved with a number of philanthropic organizations, including the board of The Tidings (the Los Angeles Catholic diocesan newspaper), the audit and finance committees of St. John’s Hospital, the Santa Monica Rotary Foundation, and the financial committees of the Sisters of St. Louis and the Sisters of Social Service. He was a faithful member of Corpus Christi Parish for 53 years. Besides his wife of 55 years, Fritzsche is survived by seven children, William (married to Jennifer), James (Teresa), Caroline Dooley (Paul), Elizabeth McNamara (Neal), Maria Molloy (David), Thomas (Faye) and Vincent (Jennifer); 16 grandchildren; brother Henry (Kathleen), and sisters Clare Newell (Paul, deceased) and Ann Felando (August). The family requests that any donations be made to Medicine for Humanity (medicineforhumanity.org). A funeral Mass will be held this morning at 10 a.m. at Corpus Christi Church.

PaliHi’s Budding Artists

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Senior Tosha Sherman created this sculpture of a shoe taking root.
Senior Tosha Sherman created this sculpture of a shoe taking root.

A group of gifted Palisades Charter High School students will display their artistic talents on Thursday, April 23 at 6:30 p.m., in Mercer Hall on campus. The school’s annual art showcase will feature ceramics, drawings, paintings, photographs and films. Theater, choir and band students will also perform throughout the evening. The community is invited to attend, and the showcase will be open for one week. ‘It’s an opportunity for them to show off their work beyond the classroom to a bigger audience,’ PaliHi art teacher Angelica Pereyra said. ‘That is empowering for them, and they get a sense of accomplishment.’ Pereyra and the other PaliHi art teachers have chosen the students’ best work. ‘We try to get as much work up as possible and as many students represented as we can,’ Pereyra said. Photography teacher Rick Steil, who joined PaliHi’s staff this school year after traveling the world as a freelance photographer for 25 years, said his students will exhibit photos of fashion, sports, gender roles, relationships and more. ‘I have been amazed by their ability to put what’s going on in their mind on paper,’ Steil said of the students.

Wyn Win Situation

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2009’s Mr. Palisades Is an In-Demand Actor/Singer

Wyn Delano at the Chamber of Commerce's Mr. and Miss Palisades contest on March 18.
Wyn Delano at the Chamber of Commerce’s Mr. and Miss Palisades contest on March 18.
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer

April finds Wyn Delano hitting a high note. Since March 13, the teenager has performed in Morgan-Wixson’s musical, ‘The Secret Garden.’ On March 18, Delano was crowned Mr. Palisades by a panel of judges at the Chamber of Commerce-sponsored teen contest. The song he performed, which helped land him the title, proved a double-audition, as an American Cancer Society (ACS) chairperson caught his performance. Delano will reprise his rendition of ‘The Impossible Dream’ on April 18, during the opening ceremonies of ACS’ Relay For Life event at Palisades High, where he is a junior. Delano, 16, is still glowing from his Pierson Playhouse victory, where he dazzled the Chamber’s judges with one of his favorite tunes, from ‘The Man From La Mancha.’ ‘The story of Don Quixote has always had a place in my heart,’ Delano says. ‘The whole concept of this crazy guy reading books and thinking himself a knight was so brilliant.’ Forget steroids. ‘Impossible Dream’ provided the perfect performance-enhancer.   ’You can sing it alone without context and it’s still powerful,’ Delano says. ‘The evening went fantastic. Occasionally, I find myself in a groove when everything seems to go right, when the thought process clicks off and it becomes instinct. As soon as I finished ‘Impossible Dream,’ I smiled to myself because it clicked.’ On March 26, the new Mr. Palisades, boasting a blazer and a Spandau Ballet-style haircut, appeared at Affinity Bank for his first Chamber of Commerce mixer. Standing alongside Miss Palisades (PaliHi sophomore Sabrina Giglio), the winning, witty Delano quickly dashed any doubts that he might struggle to follow in the footsteps of his popular predecessor, Chris Alexakis. The ease with which Delano worked the party evinced his comfort with Pacific Palisades. Delano and his brother Hero, 14, grew up in the Edgewater Towers near Sunset Boulevard and PCH. Their father, Rick Delano, works as a movie executive. Mother Shari Nathan is a professional birthday clown. Those under the age of 10 know her as Whirlie. Raised Jewish and Catholic, Delano says his grandmother was a modern artist while his grandfather worked for the U.S. Defense Department. ‘It’s a very interesting family,’ he says. ‘Holidays are fun.’ (Scenes from Theatre Palisades’ ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ spring to mind.) Delano says he developed his passion for acting and singing at Marquez Elementary, where he participated in teacher Jeff Lantos’ three U.S. history musicals. After a Theatre Palisades youth group role, ‘a friend of mine told me about a theater in Santa Monica that has amazing youth productions,’ Delano says. Every September, Morgan-Wixson stages a youth musical. For four years, Delano has not missed a beat, playing in productions directed by Anne Gesling. In 2005, at 13, Delano portrayed con man Ali Hakim in ‘Oklahoma.’ The following year saw his turn as Lazar Wolf in ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ When Gesling brought ‘Guys and Dolls’ to Paul Revere, Delano played Benny Southstreet. But it was 2007’s ’42nd Street’ which proved pivotal. ‘Until then, I played supporting roles, usually comic relief,’ Delano says. ‘But I got the lead, Julian Marsh. It was fantastic. It was a tough rehearsal process because the character, an anti-hero, was a difficult one to grasp. It was very complex.’ Last year, he played ‘Bye Bye Birdie”s Elvis role, which required dancing. He now takes vocal lessons with operatic baritone Vladimir Chernov and credits the UCLA professor for embellishing his ‘Impossible Dream.’ ‘Every role has helped the next one,’ Delano says. ‘Not only do I get better at acting, but everything I learn in the theater makes me a more rounded personality.’ While cozy with the Morgan-Wixson gang, Delano has been absent from PaliHi’s plays. ‘When I was a ninth-grader,’ he says, ‘I was very involved with the drama program.’ That year, he took part in the senior show, a stage adaptation of Mel Brooks’ ‘Robin Hood: Men in Tights,’ and his Richard III won him the 2006 Shakespearean Drama Festival’s Southland crown. But then he participated in ‘Once On This Island,’ a production of ‘questionable taste’ about black islanders in Haiti in which ‘no black people were cast. It just didn’t work.’ While impressed with ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ (he was too busy with choir to audition), Delano found the recent spring musical selection dubious. Delano recalls his excitement when ‘Sweeney Todd’ and ‘Carousel’ were bandied about. ‘But when they announced ‘Honk!,’ the story of the Ugly Duckling, my heart just sank. I had the option to do ‘Secret Garden.’ I thought it was the better show.’ Saturday marks the final performance of Morgan-Wixson’s adaptation of the popular children’s book. Delano recalls how Gesling, whom he affectionately describes as ‘Stanislavski mixed with a drill sergeant,’ ‘drafted’ him into the cast. ‘Three guys had dropped out,’ says Delano, who plays a military general. ‘So technically, I was drafted into the army.’ For tickets, visit www.morgan-wixson.org.

Brian Eule Chronicles First Year for Three New Doctors

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Former Palisadian Brian Eule lives with his physician wife, Stephanie Chao, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Former Palisadian Brian Eule lives with his physician wife, Stephanie Chao, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In delving into the lives of three young doctors”their chase for the right residency and the personal costs of following the acknowledged challenge of the career”author Brian Eule has produced an informative and exciting book. The former Palisadian will be talking about ‘Match Day’ (St. Martin’s Press) on Friday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore. Journalist Eule follows the course of three young women, newly minted physicians, from the nail-biting drama that surrounds ‘The Match’ ‘when the hospital chooses its first-year residents”to the pressures and demands of the first intern year. In doing so, Eule has created a nonfiction book that offers as much intense emotion, joy and pain as the most stirring TV medical drama. ‘I always feel comfortable in the narrative nonfiction genre,’ Eule says. ‘For me, as a reader and writer, the form has more power than fiction while incorporating the elements of fiction’character development, plot and tension.’   The book’s topic was a natural for Eule, 30, who lived through the highly stressful year that his girlfriend (now wife) Stephanie spent securing her preferred residency. After graduating from Stanford Medical School, she began the interview process with various hospitals around the country in hopes that her first choice would mesh with the hospital’s offer.   Eule was encouraged that this could be a book while pursuing his MFA in writing at Columbia in 2005. He was introduced to a group of students who were in their final year at New York Medical College and preparing, along with the estimated 15,000 medical school graduates, for the important next step.   The reader gets to know Michele and Ted, both medical students, who must deal with the possibility that they will find residencies on opposite sides of the country. We learn about tension between medical student Rakhi and her husband Scott, who is also pursuing acceptance to a Ph.D. program. Stephanie and Brian, too, begin to realize the exigencies of maintaining an intimate relationship in view of the seven-to-eight-year surgery residency Stephanie wants to complete. Through the course of researching the book and grappling with his own feelings of being the ‘supportive’ partner, Eule began to understand more clearly things that he had taken for granted, such as the excruciatingly long hours interns work and the changing face of medicine. ‘This big debate about how many hours these interns work is not a black or white issue,’ he says. ‘There are major concerns on both sides: continuity of care and concern that you want a doctor who has been with the patient from the time he or she was admitted to the hospital, versus the dangers of exhausted residents to patients, and to themselves. ‘The other thing I learned is that there needs to be more flexibility in residency programs,’ Eule says. ‘This is a program where these interns are put in charge of other people’s health and lives, which often precludes the flexibility to take care of their own lives. With more and more women in medicine (50 percent of medical students are female), there needs to be more flexibility, especially if the woman wants children. While Eule recognizes the pressures on the intern, he has also learned to navigate his part in the relationship. ‘A little bit of extra patience and a sense of humor helps, but in the end, everyone has to learn how it can work in their own relationship.’ Both Brian and Stephanie share the importance of family and anticipate children of their own some day. ‘My own father showed me the priority of family,’ says Eule, who lost his father to cancer when he was a junior at Palisades High. ‘Dad was a very successful lawyer, but after he had cancer the first time [he lived 15 years on borrowed time], he reshaped his schedule to have more time with me and my sister Lisa. ‘I am not living in a bubble and understand that we all have a limited amount of time.’ Eule, who is currently working in communications for a nonprofit organization and living happily with a doctor in the house, hopes that his book will be relevant for a number of reasons. ‘I hope this book exposes the balancing act and the complexity of that balancing act that starts with ‘The Match.’ The intern is relinquishing control over her life, but at the same time doing very important work. I hope this brings a little bit of attention to the changing face of medicine. Seventy-two percent of practicing physicians are male, but that is changing. I hope that readers will learn about the process and culture of the medical world and also hope a lot of people going into medicine can use this and share it with their loved ones.’

Their Legacy Spikes On

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Local Legends Relive Glory at Palisades’ First-Ever Volleyball Alumni Fundraiser

Randy Stoklos displays the indoor skills he used to win two City titles at Palisades High long before he became a superstar on the beach volleyball tour.
Randy Stoklos displays the indoor skills he used to win two City titles at Palisades High long before he became a superstar on the beach volleyball tour.
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer

Over the past five decades Palisades High has been synonymous with volleyball and when current coach Chris Forrest was considering ways to raise money for the boys’ program he looked to the past to build for the future. “When you think of the guys who have played here you’re talking about some of the best players of all time,” he said. “I thought it would be the chance of a lifetime for our team to play them. I honestly can’t take much credit, though. So many people helped make this a reality.” With the tireless help of team moms, who set about contacting former players, Forrest organized the school’s first “Alumni Volleyball Night” and ex-Dolphins showed up in droves to prove they can still pound the pill. Announcer Sam Lagana needed 22 minutes to read the accomplishments of the 30+ alumni who packed the campus gym Saturday night to take on the reigning City champion varsity squad and celebrate the accomplishments of Howard Enstedt, who coached Palisades to nine section titles in his 30 years on the bench. Asked to name his best players, he said: “Well, you’ll see them tonight.” When asked to pick his best team the legendary coach couldn’t say. “Each team was good in its own right,” said Enstedt, who guided the Dolphins to titles in 1974, ’76, ’77, ’78, ’82, ’86, ’88, ’91 and ’93 before retiring in 1994. “The game has changed so much since I started coaching. I’m not a big fan of rally scoring nor am I crazy about the ‘libero’ concept.” Enstedt attended Palisades’ City finals match last May and noted how different the game is now: “I don’t see the back row being played defensively the way it used to be. Also, receiving serve overhand has eliminated the skill of passing with two arms together below the waist. Of course, the jump serve is probably the biggest innovation.” The evening brought together generation upon generation of Palisades players, from Rich Wilken (Class of ’64), who was a member of the Dolphins’ very first team, to Scott Vegas, a freshman at UCLA who led the Dolphins to their 11th City title before graduating last spring. “When I got here, volleyball wasn’t a sanctioned sport yet but there was an Open championship,” Wilken recollected. “We won it from University and didn’t lose it for a long time.” Asked what position he played, Wilken joked: “I was a bench warmer.” NCAA rules prevented Vegas from playing on Saturday but he showed up nonetheless to gaze at the championship banners hanging on the wall, mingle with his predecessors and soak up some of the storied history he is a part of. “Being here brings back good memories,” said Vegas, who won the Palisadian-Post Cup Award as the school’s outstanding senior athlete in 2008. Put on the spot about which side he was rooting for, Vegas was diplomatic: “It’s a tough call but I have to root for my old teammates. I mean, we won a City championship together.” Perhaps the most celebrated player in school history is Randy Stoklos, who remembered barely making the Dolphins’ junior team his first year: “I’d only been playing for a short time and they kept me around because I could set in warm-ups. I practiced as hard as I could and started my last two years [1977 and 1978] when we beat Taft and Westchester in the finals.” While most of the alumni played in the era of side-out scoring, current rules applied for Saturday’s match and the varsity got all it could handle, rallying from a 9-4 deficit in the third game to prevail 26-24, 16-25, 15-13. “Believe it or not I felt very comfortable and they made us feel that way,” said Dolphins’ outside hitter Kene Izuchukwu, who wowed the crowd with his thunderous spikes and 40-inch vertical leap. “After that first team we figured it can’t get any better than that but we were wrong.” Three of the Dolphins’ five Olympic gold medalists–Steve Salmons, Dave Saunders and Kent Steffes–took the court for the alumni along with household names like Stoklos (a lifelong Palisadian inducted into the Volleyball Hall of Fame last year) and Wally Goodrick (captain and MVP of Palisades’ 1981 squad and winner of three NCAA titles at UCLA). Steffes, who lives up the road in Brentwood, recalled the day in his senior year when his 1986 squad–maybe the Dolphins’ most talented ever–beat Chatsworth to win the City title. “It was prom night and right after the match we had to shower, change into our tuxedos and hop on a bus to downtown L.A.,” he reminisced. “What I remember most about those days is the gym being full everyday. Howard [Enstedt] ran a great program.” Steffes, who was born in the Palisades and won Olympic gold with beach partner Karch Kiraly at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, said his strategy was simple: “If the body holds up we have a chance. That’s the key to any alumni game.” Though the match was all in fun, both sides were playing to win and Palisades resident Sinjin Smith, an all-time great himself, volunteered to referee the contest. Smith and Stoklos formed the winningest tandem in pro beach volleyball history. Since retiring they have coached summer camps at Will Rogers State Beach. The evening began with a reception at which yearbook pictures of every Palisades team were posted. DJ “Funky Fresh” (aka Warner Hiatt), a PaliHi freshman, played 1970s, ’80s and ’90s music as the alumni practiced. Kids and adults were invited to serve for prizes spread across the floor. Twelve-year-old Cory Nasch, whose brother plays on Palisades’ JV squad, was the first to win when his ball bounced smack dab on a t-shirt. Lagana took the microphone and provided colorful commentary from the scorer’s table with his fellow 1980 graduate Tom Feuer, who runs Fox Sports West Prime Ticket. “These young [varsity] bucks must be intimidated beyond belief,” Feur claimed, when not heckling Smith to call “lifts” against the varsity. “There’s the alumni showing that old-school campfire defense,” Lagana quipped after the “Legendary Lineup” of Stoklos, Salmons, Steffes, Roger Clark, Jeff Kilgore and Goodrick showed a little rust by letting a ball drop in the first game, which the varsity won after a clutch dig by Taylor Savage. Before Game 2 Enstedt was named the first inductee to the school’s Hall of Honor, followed by Salmons, Saunders, Steffes, Stoklos and Palisades’ other two Olympians, Ricci Luyties (Class of ’80) and Chris Marlowe (’69), who were unable to attend. For the second game the alumni unleashed their “New Wave” unit, with setters Matt Unger and Ryan O’Hara running a 6-2 attack for hitters like Erik Pichel (Class of ’91). “Those guys were really good,” Palisades senior Jordan Cohen admitted. “They took us by surprise.” “He put a whole new shingle on that house!” Feuer exclaimed after one of Izuchukwu’s emphatic roofs. “Yeah, I’ve still got the competitive fire,” said Unger (Class of ’88), who won City his senior year before embarking on a stellar collegiate career at nearby Cal State Northridge. “In fact, I was teammates with [current Palisades boys’ soccer coach] Dave Suarez.” In the third game it was the alumni’s unheralded “No-Name” lineup that gave the varsity a genuine scare, racing to an early lead before captain Matt Hanley came to the Dolphins’ rescue. “I was here during a rebuilding phase so I’d say this team would’ve beaten my teams,” said Joey Sarafian (Class of ’06), now in his third year at USC, where he plays club volleyball. “We had no game plan today and I wasn’t even sure how much playing time I’d get but it was fun.” The biggest thrill for Forrest, who recently played for his alma mater [Dos Pueblos High] in its alumni game, was seeing the legends in action once again. “I was blown away by Stoklos’ hands,” Forrest marveled. “You can see the wisdom of the game still oozing out of his pores. Salmons’ blocking was unbelievable and Goodrick did a great job setting. I’m hoping we can make this an annual thing.” Other notable alumni at the fundraiser included Charlie Stennett (Class of ’72), who heads the Pacific Palisades Volleyball Club; Dane Selznick (’73), who coached Kerri Walsh and Misty May to an Olympic gold; Fred Sturm (’72), who went on to win three NCAA titles at UCLA before surpassing 300 coaching victories at Stanford; 1982 City Player of the Year Rob Mitchell, who later starred at USC; and current USC Coach Bill Ferguson (’88), who grew up in Huntington Palisades.

Boys’ Lacrosse Keeps Rolling

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Molly Meek takes a shot for the Dolphins against Huntington Park. She scored two goals but Palisades lost 14-9 at Stadium by the Sea.
Molly Meek takes a shot for the Dolphins against Huntington Park. She scored two goals but Palisades lost 14-9 at Stadium by the Sea.
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer

Goals ripped the net by the bucketful last Friday as Palisades’ boys and girls varsity lacrosse squads hosted Huntington Park in their final games before this week’s vacation. In the afternoon tilt center Emma Carter scored six times, attacker Molly Meek added two goals and freshman midfielder Ashli Marino added one in the girls’ 14-9 defeat at the hands of the Spartans. That set the stage for the Dolphins’ 14-0 thrashing in the night game. Palisades had beaten Huntington Park 11-1 on its home field one week earlier and the rematch was even more lopsided. Kevin Mann scored twice in the first 10 minutes and Warren Satz added a goal right before the first quarter ended. Satz, Shane Centkowski, Max Grove, Charlie Bailey, Sean Yazdi each scored in the second quarter to give the Dolphins a 8-0 lead. “This game gave us a chance to get everyone playing time,” Coach Scott Hylen said. “The offense was really clicking,” Stephen Callas, James Bourne and Satz scored in the third quarter, Mann scored early in the fourth quarter and Bailey added two late goals on long-range shots. Baseball Spring Break might be the only thing that can slow down Palisades High’s baseball team, which continues to cruise through Western League play unchallenged. The Dolphins (9-5-1 overall, 8-0 in league) swept both games against second-place Venice last week to pad their lead in the standings. It was the ease with which Palisades won, however, that makes the wins even more significant as right-handers Jonathan Moscot and Julian Achez pitched back-to-back shutouts. “We’re doing the little things you need to do to win ballgames,” Coach Mike Voelkel said. “We’re limiting our mistakes, taking advantage of our scoring opportunities and we’re not giving the other teams any confidence.” Palisades’ six-game winning streak was finally snapped on Monday when they lost to perennial West Valley League power El Camino Real 7-2 in the San Diego Lyons Tournament. Softball Palisades made its first night home game one to remember, throttling LACES 13-2 last Wednesday at Stadium by the Sea. After recording their first 1-2-3 inning to start a game this season the Dolphins scored five runs in their half of the frame to build a commanding lead. Emily Noel pitched a complete game and hit a home run, Noelle Joy went three for four with a homer, a walk and four runs, senior Aarica King had four walks and three runs and freshman Selma Cortez had a hit, two walks and scored a run. The Dolphins will play under the lights again May 4 against Malibu on Senior Night. Track & Field The Dolphins’ varsity squads split last Wednesday’s dual meet with Westchester as the girls prevailed 60-51 and the boys were outscored 67-50. Pali girls dominated the field events, with Maria Fischer clearing 4′ 8″ to win the high jump and Lauren Gustafson winning both the long jump (14′ 8 ‘”) and triple jump (30′). Palisades’ Tiffany Falk (5:56.92), Melissa Tallis (5:57.16) and Michelle Colato (5:57.48) swept the top three spots in the 1600 and Deborah Abber won the 800 in 2:37.47. Mike Fujimoto won the boys’ 1600 in 4:51.13, followed by Grant Stromberg (5:07.57), who also won the 3200 in 11:27.52. Take Ikuno cleared 5′ 6′ to win the high jump and Brock Earnest (40′ 5″) and Kolmus Iheanacho (39′ 4″) finished first and second in the shot put.

Cook “K’s” at Pepperdine

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Cole Cook had a career-best 10 strikeouts for Pepperdine last Saturday. Photo: Jeff Golden
Cole Cook had a career-best 10 strikeouts for Pepperdine last Saturday. Photo: Jeff Golden

Former Palisades High pitcher Cole Cook has taken his talent up the road to Malibu, where he is a redshirt freshman at Pepperdine. Just as he did a few years ago at George Robert Field, the Waves’ flame-throwing right-hander is developing into a strikeout machine. An example was Saturday’s game against Gonzaga when he fanned a career-high 10 batters despite a 4-1 hard luck loss to the Bulldogs. Cook (4-2) threw 107 pitches, scattering five hits (only one for extra bases) and one walk in seven and one-third innings for his third consecutive quality start. Cook dominated the Western League when he played for Palisades and he is becoming a force now in the West Coast Conference. At 6′ 6″ and 209 pounds he is an intimidator on the hill. In his previous start he tossed a complete game two-hitter March 28 at San Diego. After leading Palisades to the league championship in each of his three seasons Cook was drafted in the 36th round of the 2007 MLB First-Year Player draft by the Seattle Mariners. He enjoyed a stellar senior season for the Dolphins, posting a 10-2 record with 113 strikeouts and earning All-City honors. Cook’s collegiate career has only just begun and scorekeepers had best make room in the record books for this ex-Dolphins ace. * * * * Leslie Baker, a freshman on the Archer School for Girls basketball team, was named All-League in the Gold Coast Athletic Conference’one of five Panthers to be so honored this past season.

Green Machine Wins Flag Title

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Green Machine players celebrate with the championship trophy after their 28-7 victory over Team White at Brentwood Science Magnet. Photo: Gabriel Soufo.
Green Machine players celebrate with the championship trophy after their 28-7 victory over Team White at Brentwood Science Magnet. Photo: Gabriel Soufo.

Green Machine players celebrate winning the Palisades-Malibu YMCA’s first adult flag football league championship. The Green Machine went undefeated, beating Team White, 28-7, in the championship game Saturday at Brentwood Science Magnet. Team members are Tim Wilson, Greg Sinaiko, Anthony Deptula, Rahim Muhammad, Sergio Siderman, Tharen Todd, Cliff Lyon, James Reach and Stephen Hale, Ryan Hilterbran and Steve Hoshimi. Registration is underway for the spring season, which kicks off April 25. Call 310-454-5591.

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