Yolanda Hernandez
Yolanda Hernandez, through her efforts in nurturing young people, helping the Hispanic community and encouraging the sharing of Latino/Hispanic culture, has earned a place in our community as one of Humboldt County's outstanding women. She is showing us what a woman who came from a non-English speaking country, Mexico, had to leave high school after 10th grade and has Dyslexia, can accomplish in her life. She is an inspiration for the rest of us.
While raising two children and owning and managing her restaurant, Jalisco's, she has managed to find time to be an active force for good in the community.
She was instrumental in getting the local cable company to add not one, but two Spanish language stations.
She was the co-founder and director of the non-profit Center of Information Bilingual and Cultural (CIBYC) which provides legal information and information for social services and cultural events. Yolanda brought this group, along with Main Street, the Humboldt Arts Council, of which she is also a director, and the Latino/Hispanic Division of the Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce, together to organize the first Cinco de Mayo celebration in Old Town. She also co-chaired the second celebration in 1994.
In 1992, she created the Latino/Hispanic Division of the Greater Chamber of Commerce and is still chairperson. Within this organization she has recently organized monthly workshops of different topics aimed at providing information and guidance particularly to the Latino/Hispanic community. The social dancer, which she organized through this group, has provided college scholarships for young people and a stage for the Veteran's Building, valued at $3000. In 1994, she became an Executive Vice-President of the Chamber. In January 1995, she received a Certificate of Appreciation from the chamber for her efforts.
She has served as advisor and co-chair for the Dia de los Muertos Cultural Festival which has raised funds for college scholarships for students.
Other efforts have included adopting the state highway through Eureka as part of the State Adopt-a-Highway Program. This in turn led her to encouragement of the Latino/Hispanic Division scholarship of the Jefferson Area Neighborhood (JAN) project to spruce up the area near the school.
Her efforts through the Eureka Parks and Recreation Tree Committee have resulted in beautification of our community, part of which can be seen where Henderson Street and Broadway meet. Before and after the 1994 elections, as co-chair of the north coast Ad-Hoc Committee against Prop. 187, she has thrown much of her energy into the defeat of this proposition and efforts of keep the community informed of its status.
Yolanda has also found time to raise and encourage a large extended family of young people, having as many as sixteen living with her at once. They have gone on to be successful members of communities throughout California further encouraging other young people.
Through several organizations and a wide network of contacts, she is working to build a bridge of understanding among the different cultures and ethnic groups in our community. We are just beginning to see some of the fruits of her labors and expect to see more in the years to come.
"I've come a long way since my, Miss Crisco, Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year, award," says Lynn Parker-Smith.
Lynn Parker-Smith was born at Stanford Hospital and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended college at San Jose State University where she warned a B.A. in home economics and history and a teaching credential.
After student teacher, Lynn decided being a teacher was not the right career choice for her. With no business experience, but a great love for bicycling, she and her husband, Vince, moved to Humboldt County in 1974 and began their bicycle business, Life Cycle. As a small business entrepreneur, Lynn "learned by doing" everything from bicycle repair to bookkeeping and clothing design to sales when Life Cycle first opened. Now a successful small business owner, she could not imagine doing anything else.
Lynn Parker-Smith's achievements as a bicyclist are very impressive. In addition to casual rides from Canada to Los Angeles and another from Colorado to the East Coast, and after the birth of her second child, she was one of the first two women to ever ride the Tour of the Unknown Coast. Lynn has completed numerous other 100 mile, century, rides as well as the Davis Double Century and the Ram Rod, a 150 mile ride around Mt. Ranier.
According to Parker-smith, "Not many women do those 150 mile plus rides. It is a special kind of recognition that reinforces to other people that we can do it." Her ultimate bicycling goal is to ride along the Great Wall of China.
Lynn Parker-Smith is a generous participant in some unique community activities. She works with the Humboldt Tri-Kids, preparing kids from Humboldt County for competition in Triathlons. Lynn is a parent volunteer rider with the Cyco Biko Cycling Club at Sunny Brae Middle School, going on the club's weekly rides after school. Parker-Smith rides each week with the Machettes, a group of women cyclists who began riding several years ago. The group does allow men to ride with them. Most importantly, Lynn Parker-Smith has been a blood donor for a number of years, looking forward to the day when she can say she has given 100 pints of blood, and is investigating the process of becoming a bone marrow donor.
In her spare time, Parker-Smith enjoys gardening, cross-country skiing, and playing the piano.
June Moxon was born in Eureka and grew up on a dairy ranch in Arcata, California. She attended the public schools in Arcata and participated in many school activities, including: cheerleading, madrigal choir, and the rally club. June also spent a great deal of time, ages eleven to eighteen years, working with show horses. This hobby earned her a number of awards, but she gave it up when it became too serious to be fun. After high school, June attended College of the Redwoods (C.R.) and was one of their first cheerleaders. After one year at C.R., June began an amazing series of adventures of a lifetime.
June began working at Insight Footwear in Eureka within one month of leaving college. This allowed her to pursue what she terms her "shoe fetish", which she attributes of her mother. This passion for footwear began when her mother allowed her to purchase a pair of purple patent leather shoes with white polka-dots up one toe and down one heel. This followed, years later, with purple, high-heeled, lace-up, granny boots and a variety of fabulous one-of-a-kind designs of her own creation. Any shoe design that "couldn't be sold" was the type June purchased and turned into fashion.
Her talent of unique design has not kept June limited to only shoes. She also worked as a successful window designer in San Francisco for the Joe Femolare store. Indeed, her window creations were the "talk of the town" in the word of the manager of Macy's across the street from Femolare.
Joe Fermolare was the first sponsor of June's work in the World Championship Arcata to Ferndale Kinetic Sculpture Race (KSR). Her first sculpture was a shoe. This first sculpture was built entire by women, with some engineering assistance from Ken Bidelman. The success of the first shoe led to many other KSR triumphs, including: being the first woman ever to win the KSR, various sculpture designs, most recently "The Hammer", and a cross-country journey of twenty-eight months on a kinetic sculpture. This journey showed June sights she never thought she would see and encouraged her to continue this kind of travel. June's next kinetic sculpture achievement will be a crossing of the English Channel, where she will buy shoes in Paris, and a trek across Southern Australia.
June is quick to say that she is, "One of those women who don't mind getting dirty." She is also one who inspires all of us to take a chance with our creativity, something wondrous just might happen if we do.
Frederica Aalto is an outstanding advocate for reproductive choice and women's health and one of the Six Rivers Planned Parenthood most dedicated and creative volunteers.
A twenty year resident of Humboldt County, Frederica is well known as an advocate for reproductive health and as an inspirational and knowledgeable public speaker on world population issues. She received her BA in sociology and anthropology from Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and an MA in psychology from Humboldt State University. She and her husband, Kenneth R. Aalto, currently reside in Trinidad and are the parents of three grown sons.
In response to a community need, Frederica, one of the founders of the library at Big Lagoon Union Elementary School, was the school's first librarian. She has also been a lecturer in psychology at HSU. She has served Six Rivers Planned Parenthood as a volunteer and board member for many years and is currently vice president of the board and a volunteer counselor at Planned Parenthood's Teen Clinic. As one of Planned Parenthood's most versatile volunteers, she has organized conferences for parents and teens and was one of the early advocate for the highly successful teen clinics. She also chairs the organization's information and education committee and is their international advocate. In this capacity, she took it upon herself to become educated about world population issues and in 1994, she was selected to represent the Planned Parenthood Federation of America as a delegate to the United Nations Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt. Since her return from Cairo, she has been inspiring community organizations as a public speaker on world population issues. This year over thirty local groups have had the privilege of sharing Frederica's excellent presentations and she has attracted local and national attention with her ability to speak for those who advocate for reproductive choice. In addition to her work with Planned Parenthood, Frederica volunteers as a counselor for local American Field Service families who are hosting exchange students from abroad.
In 1995, Frederica was honored by local the local Choices Coalition with their "Maggie Award." This award, named for Margaret Sanger, recognizes one local resident each year who has made an outstanding contribution to reproductive health.
Annette Makino moved to Humboldt County in 1986 for the quality of life. She had recently completed her degree in international relations with an emphasis on East-West and North-South relations from Stanford University. While at Stanford she studied at their overseas campus in Vienna, which gave her a chance to become more fluent in German. As a child she lived in her mother's native Switzerland and learned some German as well as some French. Since coming to Humboldt County, she has studied art at HSU; helped start and manage a small business, Northcoast Quality Compost; been the owner of The Paper Project, a company dedicated to marketing and selling recycled paper; and been first an administrative assistant and then administrative director of Internews Network.
Since 1991, Annette has been the administrative director of Internews, an international nonprofit organization which supports media development in emerging democracies, with a particular emphasis on the former Soviet Union. She has served as part of the top management team responsible for managing a multi-million dollar annual budget, helping to write grants to governmental agencies and private foundations to obtain funding, and helping to design and oversee their international projects.
Based in Arcata, Internews, goal is to enhance tolerance and understanding among people by supporting non-governmental television, radio, and print media in emerging democracies. Their aim is to build politically independent networks of communication. They currently have offices in six countries: the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, Palestine, the Czech Republic, and France. The International Media Center in Kiev is the largest independent media center in the country and attracts the best and brightest journalists in Ukraine. Internews, Moscow office helps to support about 200 local television stations and produces a weekly news show, Local Time, which is broadcast to an estimated 60 million viewers in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.
Internews Network has won an Emmy and a DuPont Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. They have contributed to news programming on international issues for ABC, PBS, CNN, the BBC, and other broadcasters. In addition, to their work in broadcast media, they manage FSUMedia, an Internet mailing list dedicated to discussion about the former Soviet Union; maintain an electronic bulletin board and email system, the Balkin Media net, which links media organizations and people from the former Yugoslavia to the rest of the world; and have created a World Wide Web site at the URL, www.internews.org.
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Last Updated 3/10/97
