A long line of people snaked across the front of Calvary Church of Pacific Palisades Tuesday evening, waiting for dinner from an In-N-Out Burger truck. They were gathered prior to celebrating the start of a school-wide community service campaign and the school’s Soldiers’ Angels project. When the lights inside the church dimmed at 6:15 p.m., the 42nd Highlanders Band, playing drums and bagpipes, entered the sanctuary, followed by military veterans and Boy Scouts from Troop 223 with their leaders. Teresa Roberson, Head of School for Calvary Christian, opened the ceremony with a prayer and prepared remarks on the importance of community service to personal and spiritual development. ‘We are blessed, and we want to share our blessings with others through our service projects,’ she said. ‘Calvary Christian students are ready to take action!’ After the trio of Amber Johnson, Tara Morrow and Jennifer Price sang ‘God Bless America,’ Chris Rutz, the Assistant Head of School, introduced Kelly Holscher and Annie Barnes, the community service co-chairs at Calvary Christian School. They presented a slide show, coupled with inspirational music, that described each aspect of the school’s community service initiative. ‘What we do and what we say can impact lives forever,’ Barnes said. The Calvary kindergarteners will work with Samaritans Purse International Relief Mission–Operation Christmas Child. The first and second grades will work in elderly care with the Palm Court Retirement Center. The third and fourth grades will help out the Union Rescue Mission, while the fifth and sixth grades will assist at World Impact’s Los Angeles Christian School. Seventh and eighth graders will work with the Casa Hogar Sion Orphanage in Tijuana. But the major school-wide initiative, the centerpiece of the evening, was the Soldiers’ Angels program, whose motto is: ‘Let no soldier go unloved.’ Patti Patton-Bader explained how she created Soldiers’ Angels after her own son was deployed to Iraq, and she realized that soldiers there were short on supplies and love. Her organization creates care packages, mails backpacks with fresh clothing and Blankets of Love, sends letters of encouragement, publishes a newsletter, and more. Calvary students will provide their help to her now large-scale enterprise, which has mailed more than 250,000 care packages to soldiers in Iraq. When Patton-Bader completed her talk, Roberson thanked leaders in attendance, and read out the names of relatives of Calvary families that are currently serving in the military. She then introduced the Calvary Christian School choir, led by Jennifer Price, which sang ‘There Will Come a Day.’ Finally, everyone stood for the Retiring of the Colors, as the flags were put away, and Teresa Roberson closed the evening. ‘It is better to give than to receive,’ she said, before ending with a prayer.

Talk about a transformation. In the last year the venerable Canyon Service Station on Entrada Drive in Santa Monica Canyon has gone from looking grim to being “green.” Architect Scott Prentice has completely restored the original 350-sq.-ft. adobe structure which he uses as a reception and meeting area for his three-person architectural firm. With windows on three sides, the room is filled with natural light. The only furnishings are a round table and two chairs. A hallway leads to the 500-sq.-ft. addition where Prentice works with his two assistants. Soft turquoise and construction models dominate the large, open room which looks out onto a lap pool that has a fountain designed to drown out any street noise. The pool, which is solar heated, is also enjoyed by Prentice and his family, who live next door to the former gas station. Asked how he likes having an office so close to home, the architect said, “It’s sure nice to be able to walk to work” and “beats working out of the garage.” What initially attracted Prentice and his wife Glenda Rovello, a trained architect and production designer, to the single-story, ranch-style house which they bought in 2001 was “the parking for five cars,” he jests. Since then they have doubled the space of their home to accommodate their growing family: Henry, 10, and Will, 7, who attend Canyon Elementary School half a block away. Originally from San Diego, Prentice received his architectural degree from Cal State Pomona College, and then studied in Florence and Milan before returning to the U.S. His 10-year-old firm does commercial work and is currently restoring some residences in the canyon. “I have been encouraging green elements for several years now,” Prentice said. “Unfortunately, they are often the first to get cut which is regrettable given the savings in the long run.” CANYON HISTORY FOR SALE When the Marquez family, the original owners of the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica land grant, put the historic gas station up for sale in the fall of 2003 residents rallied to try and buy the lot, which at 17,000-sq.-ft. was one of the largest in the canyon. Included in the sale was a 2-bedroom, 100-year-old clapboard house with a big fenced-in yard, as well as the vintage station which had been in operation since 1922. Because the property was zoned R-1, the gas station needed a conditional use permit to operate in this residential neighborhood. Brian Clark, who was leasing the station from the Marquez family at the time, spearheaded the campaign with local realtor and canyon resident Frank Langen. Fearing the station would be torn down or relocated, they proposed having the structure declared a historical landmark and maybe turning the house into a history museum featuring archival photos of the area. However, in a surprise move, the Marquez family chose to sell the lot to neighbor Chris Hoffman, an attorney who lives on Amalfi Court for close to the $2.3-million asking price. Shortly before the sale closed in May 2005 the station itself–the original adobe structure–was declared a historic cultural monument. Like everyone else who lives in the canyon, Prentice said he followed the unfolding drama over the future of the gas station. Then when the opportunity came to purchase it he pounced. He paid Hoffman, who tripled the size of his own yard in the deal, $500,000 to acquire 4,000-sq.-ft. which, luckily, abutted Prentice’s lot. Technically, all the transfer in ownership required was a simple lot- line adjustment. “The fact that I already owned the property next door put me in a unique position to acquire the lot,” explained Prentice, who said he had no real concern about the land being contaminated as he had already studied soil reports before purchasing his home at 521 Entrada. Rehabilitation Efforts Prentice’s restoration of the original adobe structure and adaptive reuse efforts apparently more than meets the standards of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program (known as “LEED’). There is radiant heating in the floors and a computer-controlled lighting system. The architect is particularly proud of the reuse of the concrete which once covered most of the service station lot. A ton of it was recycled and used to build a retaining wall. He has also planted a dozen trees and drought tolerant plants. His new office is expected to soon receive its official “green” certification. “Since the station is designated a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, we had to adhere to the strict guidelines laid out by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s standards for the rehabilitation of historic structures, with additional oversight by the city’s Historic Preservation office,” Prentice explained. “Our goal was to restore the structure to its original 1924 state, as mandated by the guidelines. It took about a year to get the various approvals and then four months to build. This project has turned out as lovely as I thought it would.’

Everyone knows that the Super Bowl is about more than tackles and touchdowns. Many viewers stay glued to the screen between plays so they don’t miss the million-dollar commercials that often are better looking or funnier than the average ad. This year, Palisadian Kristin Dehnert will be watching closely for her own 30-second spot, “Check Out Girl,” which she wrote and directed for the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” challenge, a first-time contest that invited consumers to create their own commercials. Dehnert is one of five finalists–and the only female–selected by Doritos judges from more than 1,000 entries. Viewers determine the winner by voting online (www.crashthesuperbowl.com) through January 19. The winning ad will be unveiled on national television during the first quarter of Super Bowl XLI on February 4. “I was pretty blown away at the opportunity because it’s the mack daddy of all stages,” says Dehnert, a location manager and scout for commercials with a passion for writing and directing. “If you are going to direct, act in a commercial, produce it’whatever’it doesn’t get any bigger than the Super Bowl.” Dehnert learned about the competition last fall and created four no-budget commercials with her producer friend, Leann Emmert. “Check Out Girl” features a spicy grocery store cashier checking-out a customer who is buying bags of various flavors of Doritos corn chips. Their shared passion for Doritos unfolds in a comical and flirtatious dialogue. “I got quite a kick out of the fact that Doritos had so many flavors with so many great names like Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch and Salsa Verde,” says Dehnert, playfully rolling the ‘r’ of ‘Verde’ off her tongue the way the check out girl does in her commercial. “So I thought it would be great to play off all these flavors. And I thought a grocery store would be a great place to showcase the product and have this interaction between two total strangers.” The two leads are played by George Reddick, an aspiring actor and friend of Dehnert’s whom she calls “naturally hilarious,” and Stephanie Lesh-Farrell, one of about 20 people who answered a casting call for the commercial. Dehnert’s friend and casting director Carol Rosenthal volunteered her time to hold the mini casting session. “Stephanie came in and she had her pigtails and she had on an apron and a name tag upside down,” Dehnert says. “She completely knocked it out of the park. We were rolling, we were laughing so hard. She was so funny.” Dehnert and her small cast and crew, all of whom worked without pay, shot the footage for “Check Out Girl” during an all-night (11 p.m. to 5 a.m.) shoot at Super A Foods in Eagle Rock. James West was the cinematographer and Kindra Marra edited the commercial. Dehnert says that while all four spots received good responses, “the one that was the touchdown was ‘Check Out Girl.’ I think what was so neat about it was that it appealed–and it appeals–to a range of ages. Little kids who have seen it are running around yelling ‘Giddy up!’, high school students think it’s a riot and people my parents’ age think it’s hilarious.” A Chicago native who graduated from the University of Illinois in 1991, Dehnert says she was also inspired by her friends’ humor. “I think my friends are, by far, the funniest people in the world. They’re the best people to bounce ideas off of. They’re like my mini audience, so I know if I’m doing it right.” Besides being “pretty darn funny,” Dehnert believes her commercial stands out because of clever product placement. “We purposefully put Doritos and Pepsi [under the same umbrella as Frito-Lay] in the background. You couldn’t swap out the product because the commercial is all about the flavors and the product you see.” Just for making it into the top five, finalists are each awarded $10,000 and a trip to Miami to attend the Doritos Super Bowl party. The national publicity has already opened doors for Dehnert, who has meetings set up with production houses about the possibility of her directing some commercials. “Location managing and scouting is my day job,” Dehnert says. “I’d love for writing and directing to become my new day job.” Dehnert broke into the film business as a non-paid location-scout intern on the 1994 movie “Blue Chips,’ starring Nick Nolte. She continued doing location work on films in Chicago until about 1996, when she moved to Los Angeles to work on “Contact.’ Dehnert, who has lived here for about 10 years, says her favorite day of the year is the Fourth of July in the Palisades. “My friends joke that, one day, I’m going to be the honorary mayor of the Palisades.” Dehnert made her writing/directing debut with an award-winning short film, “Underground,” a political thriller that screened in over 60 international film festivals and won 11 top prizes. She then tried her hand at writing/directing a series of no-budget TV commercials for a car dealership in Oregon. Two of the spots won the Gold and Silver Awards for “Best Use of Humor” at the 2006 Summit Creative Awards. The Doritos contest is Dehnert’s first commercial competition. “Another cool thing about the competition is that it’s so ‘childhood’ to me,” she says. “And it’s so all-American–Doritos and the Super Bowl. Everybody has had orange fingers from Doritos.” ——————- Reporting by Associate Editor Alyson Sena. To contact, e-mail: newsdesk@palipost.com

New roles mean more power for Waxman, Kuehl and Brownley

Spurred by Democratic victories in the November election, the elected leaders representing Pacific Palisades began this year with big ideas to transform state and federal policymaking’and key leadership positions to realize them. A Democratic takeover of the House this January means chairmanship of the powerful Oversight and Government Reform Committee for longtime Westside Congressman Henry Waxman. The party’s gains in state politics and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reinvention as a moderate have meant greater positions of influence for State Senator Sheila Kuehl and recently elected Assemblymember Julia Brownley, both Santa Monica residents. Waxman has represented West L.A., including the Palisades, since 1972. His influence on policy took a hit when the Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994. But a Democratic resurgence last November coupled with his work to fortify a weakened committee has made him one of the nation’s most powerful Democratic legislators. The committee that Waxman now chairs is officially charged with overseeing nearly every branch of the federal government, including the presidency. When Republicans chaired the committee during the Clinton Administration, they spent more than 10 days in hearings on the use of the White House Christmas card list. In an interview with the Palisadian-Post in his Westside office in October, Waxman said that if were elected chair, he would be no less zealous when he investigates the ‘waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayers’ dollars’ by the Bush administration. Now, armed with subpoena power and a larger staff of full-time investigators, Waxman could be a nightmare for the administration, political analysts say. A Time article in late November was probably only half joking when it dubbed him ‘the scariest guy in Washington.’ He announced last week that he would begin to hold hearings beginning on February 5, and it is expected that he’ll investigate the Administration’s awarding of no-bid contracts to civilian contractors like Halliburton in Iraq, Afghanistan and post-Katrina New Orleans. While Waxman’s has become a ‘lightning rod’ for conservative criticism, the congressman is also under pressure within his own party. ‘I’m very excited about him heading the Government Reform Committee because he has a background of conducting very thorough investigations,’ said Marcy Winograd, a Palisades resident and president of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, who ran unsuccessfully against Congresswoman Jane Harman in last year’s primary. ‘At the same time, however, I and other peace activists want him to vote to stop the funding for the Iraq war, and at this point he said he can’t pledge that he’ll do that.’ Winograd and other anti-war activists marched outside Waxman’s office in December, calling on him to oppose any ‘surge’ in U.S. troop levels to Iraq. She also wants Waxman to subpoena President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the use of faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq War. State Senator Sheila Kuehl’s recent election to the chair of the Health Committee places her at the forefront of California’s healthcare debate. She has represented eastern Ventura County and western Los Angeles County, including the Palisades, in the Senate and the Assembly since 2000. During that period, the senator has sought to revolutionize state healthcare. Healthcare costs in California exceed almost every other state and nearly one in five residents lack insurance. Last year, Kuehl’s bill SB 840 sought to replace private health insurance in California with a single, government-managed insurance fund. The bill promised to guarantee access to affordable healthcare to all California residents by cutting high administrative costs and using the state’s purchasing power to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies. Both houses of the state legislature approved the bill, but Schwarzenegger vetoed it in September, citing the high costs of creating a ‘new bureaucracy.’ Since his reelection in November, the governor has aggressively touted his intent to extend health insurance to millions of the state’s uninsured. And many political observers credit the success of Kuehl’s bill in the legislature with motivating the governor’s vocal embrace of healthcare reform this week. Kuehl plans to use her new position as Health Committee chair to shape any future healthcare plan. There are currently three other competing healthcare plans proposed by Schwarzenegger, State Senate Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles). ‘The governor wants everyone to buy into insurance whether they’re working or not,’ Kuehl told the Post by telephone on Tuesday. ‘The two Democrats want to work toward establishing that working people have insurance. My job is to bring together these plans and make them work for California. We can’t have a barebones plan with $5,000 deductibles. ‘I will continue to develop the single-payer plan that I wrote because it’s the only universal plan,’ Kuehl said. Assemblymember Julia Brownley’s new position as chair of the Education Finance sub-committee will help her to fulfill her campaign promise of increasing public education funding, she said. The former president of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District was first elected to the Assembly in November. Brownley’s committee exams the fiscal impact of all state law on all public education, including the Cal State and UC systems. Few pieces of legislation come from the committee, but it does help to direct the priority of education spending. ‘My job is to articulate what the Assembly’s fiscal priorities are for education,’ Brownley told the Post on Monday. ‘My priority is for the schools with the greatest need to receive the most financial support. I also want to have a razor-sharp focus on closing the achievement gap.’ The governor presented his budget proposal for the 2007-2008 fiscal year on Wednesday, and Brownley said that she and her staff will ‘rip that budget apart to understand every nuance of that budget.’ —————– Reporting by Staff Writer Max Taves. To contact, e-mail: reporter@palipost.com

Caden Ezralow, born on January 3, is the First Baby of 2007 in Pacific Palisades, continuing a tradition started by the Palisadian-Post in 1954. He and his parents, Marc and Gayle, will receive more than 70 gifts from local merchants and business owners, including toys, an engraved sterling silver baby spoon, clothes, free haircuts, flowers, dry cleaning, restaurant certificates, and a $50 savings bond. Gayle Ezralow’s due date was January 11, but a month earlier her obstetrician, Dr. Toni Long, told her she had started to dilate, which meant the baby would probably come sooner. In late December, Gayle had contractions and her husband drove her to St. John’s Hospital, but labor didn’t progress and they went home. On New Year’s Day, they went to the hospital again. ‘I had contractions and I didn’t feel well,’ Gayle says. Once again the contractions stopped and the Ezralows returned to the Palisades. On January 2, their 8-year-old son Bryce had a play date with a friend. ‘I was worried because I didn’t feel the baby moving,’ Gayle says. When the friend’s mom, Ryoko Nadeau, came to pick up her son, Gayle told her, ‘I need to go to the hospital.’ Gayle called her husband and told him that she was going to St. John’s, but told him ‘Don’t worry, I don’t think it’s anything.’ He asked her if it was okay if he went to the gym. ‘Sure,’ she said. This week he said, ‘We’d already been to the hospital twice and I thought it was another false alarm.’ Nadeau drove Gayle to the hospital, and when they arrived, Gayle said, ‘Let me just sit for 10 minutes.’ Then she went inside and the nurses told her that she was in labor. Marc had just parked his car in the gym parking lot when he received another call to come to the hospital. At 4 p.m., as soon as Gayle lay down in her bed, the contractions started. ‘We’ll have this baby by nine,’ said Dr. Long, whose estimate was off by a bit: Caden Marc Ezralow entered the world at 12:58 a.m., weighing 8 lbs. 3 oz. The couple, who also have a six-year-old daughter, Riley, agreed that they didn’t want to know the baby’s sex before the child was born. ‘It was the hardest thing in the world not to find out,’ Marc says, ‘but we accomplished it. As it was being delivered, I knew it was a boy by the little face. Caden looks like a mixture of my son and daughter.’ The couple had picked out two girls names, Avery or Elle, but hadn’t decided on a boy’s name, so for two days the baby didn’t have a name. Marc searched on a Web site for prospective names. Since he and Gayle both liked Irish and Celtic names, he specified that name origin and got a list of names. ‘The name Caden just jumped out at us,’ Marc says. The couple decided to give Caden his father’s name as a middle name, but were worried that their older son might feel slighted, so they told Bryce that they would change his middle name, Nathan, to his grandpa’s middle name, Marshall. Grandpa and the parents were thrilled with the idea, and then Bryce weighed in. ‘Don’t you think that’s kind of silly to change my name after eight years?’ Bryce asked. His name will stay the same. The siblings are thrilled about the new baby. ‘When Bryce found out I was going to have a baby, he said, ‘Thank you so much!” Gayle says. ‘Now that Caden’s at home, all they want to do is hold him.’ Gayle says that having a third baby is already a different experience from her first two, who were born 21 months apart. ‘I’m enjoying it and I don’t take it for granted. I feel like this is such a treat for me to have this baby. He’s a lucky little guy because he has a lot of love to come home to.’ Marc has lived in the Palisades for 15 years and Gayle has been here for 10 years. Two years ago, Gayle and the two children lived in Park City, where Bryce trained with the U.S. Ski School, while Marc commuted back and forth every weekend from the Palisades. They decided it was too tough for the family and moved back to the Palisades. Both children attend Village School and mom keeps busy with volunteer work. Marc is a managing partner in his family’s real estate investment firm, Ezralow Company. He also co-produces feature films under the banner of Revolution Films, which has produced ‘Sleep With Me,’ One Tough Cop’ and ‘Locust.’ ‘I can’t tell you how many people called to tell me about the Post’s contest and told me to call,’ Gayle says. Fortunately for the Ezralows, their baby was born 12 hours earlier than Sawyer Liam Karish, the son of Jeff and Erin Karish.

After meetings with managers of Gonzales Construction, Inc. this Tuesday, County officials expect that its contractor will not complete the repaving of its eastern parking lot at Will Rogers State Beach by the end of the month, as previously scheduled. County officials do expect that its pre-February deadline will hold for its two other projects, including the renovation of the L.A. County Lifeguard’s Headquarters. Having rebuilt its exterior, construction crews are installing the electrical system as well as finishing its interior. The adjacent public restrooms have been redesigned and largely reconstructed. The barebones interior is nearly complete and crews are laying tile on its roof. Construction began in December 2005 with the expectation that the County’s $12-million project would be complete by May 2007. But the discovery of a city-owned sewer main in the beach’s eastern parking lot delayed construction for four months there and has continued to slow work on the lot, said Mike Patel, one of the County’s project managers overseeing construction. Although County crews fortified the sewer main to prevent damage during construction, crews are not using regular-size equipment to grade the eastern parking lot because they could damage the main. Final grading of the lot began this week, prior to paving. Refurbishment of the County parking lot west of Gladstone’s hit a snag in mid-December. Ground water was discovered at a higher level than expected, which delayed construction until this week. The parking lot there is expected to be completed by the end of February, one month later than scheduled, Patel said. ————– Reporting by Staff Writer Max Taves. To contact, e-mail: reporter@palipost.com