News Scrapbook 1986

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Evening Tribune (Cir. D. 127,454)

SEP 1 51986

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Three glowing successes

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Evening Tribune (Cir. D. 127,454)

Edd_ie and Marlene Aladray received the foundation's Presi• dent's Award. Walt Zable was chairman for "An Evening ... " and executive committee members included Ken Thygerson , Jim Richardson, Rich- ard Amundson , Mark Battaglia , Don Gates, Phillip Stumpff , Linda Aldrete , Margarita Alvarez, Rob- ert Munoz and Rudy Fernandez. Josie Lopez was producer, and Elizabeth Moore and Kamar Man- sour were co-producers. T WO D.\YS earlier, ~frs. Copley, on behalf or the Copley family, accepted the annual Civic Tribute award from the Copley Family YMCA. A fund-raiser for the Y's youth programs, the dinner was chaired by 1985 honoree Pat Hyndman with '84 award winner Bruce Moore and '83's Milt Cheverton as co-chairs. Se~ in the Town and Country's Pres1d10 Room, the benefit fea- tured a performance by the Y's na- llonal gymnastic team and a docu- mentary film about Y activities. The Copley Family YMCA, estab-, lished in 1956 by James S. Copley as the Ira C. Copley Memorial YMCA, provides day care for low- 1~come, smgle-parent famihes, so- cial and health programs for the elderly, sports programs for disad- v?ntaged youth and counseling ser- vices. Jim Mulvaney was master of ceremonies, and ceremonies in- cluded a televbed message from Sen. Pete Wilson as well as brief tributes from a few of San Diego's many Copley beneficiaries. Uaiversity of San Diego presi- dent AtiThor Hughes Spoke as did St. Vincent de Paul's Father Joe Carrol~ the Old Globe Theater's Stacey Sullivan; Monsignor I. Brent Eagen from Mission San Diego de Alcala; Dr. Ed Keeney from Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation; San Diego Hall of Champions' Bob Breitbard· and Victo~ Krulak, representing the San Diego Zoological Society. "The Copleys," said chairman Hyndman, "have helped San Diego become one or the great cities of our nation." Committee members included Charles Butler, Lois Kolender, Kim Fletcher, Gordon Luce, Betty Hub- bard, Susan Butler, Mike Kurko Doug McElfresh , Stephen Milne' Carlo Succi , Alan Kidd and Copley Family YMCA director Steve Tot- ten. Dinner sponsors included the Karl ZoBells, George Gildred the Richard Adamses, Reba Br~phy, Ruth Carpenter, the Hubert Kal- tenbachs, Rolf Benirschke the Ivorde Kirbys , Susan Goiding, George Carter Jessop, the Morris Waxes, Augusta Starkey, George Scott, the John McColls, Lucy Kil- lea, the Donald Roons, the Robert Adelizzis, Phil Klauber, the Haley Rogerses, the Al Sallys and Rich- ard Atkinson.

EP 1 51986

Nancy Scott Anderson TIIIBUNE SOCIETY EDITOR dance floor filled. Carol Yorston and Judy Smith chaired the party and were helped by a crew of youngsters done out as cigarette girl. and maitre d's - Baron Charlton and Kim Sauer, Robert Burford and Melissa Sick- els, Kris D1cki son and Christie Grave , Becky Ferris and Paul Hanley, and Carolyn Day and Mandy Groom. Sally and John Thornton (they underwrote cocktails) were there, as were Martha and Geor~e Gaf- ford. the Old obe's Craig Noel and Evelyn Truitt, Jim and Tonnie Moss (she did decorations), Rich- ard and Mary Adams, Globe artis- tic director Jack O'Brien, Doug and Betsy Manchester, Charles and Sue Edwards, Ray and Emmy Cote, Darlene Davies, Carol and Mike Alessio, Nevms and Margaret McBride. Rita and Joe Neeper, D r1 n and Donald h ley, Pam and Don Allison, Ted and Audrey Geisel, Aage and Veryl Mortenson Frederik en, Luba Johnston, Ingrid and Joe Hibben, Blair and Georgia Sadler, Nancy and Henry Hester, Jim and Ruth ulvaney, Jim and Dolly Poet, Blaine and Bobbie Quick, Dick Duffy and Jeanne Jones. Hal Stephens and Barbara Mandel, Tim and Mac Canty, and Al\OTIIER TELLAR event occurred Saturday night - The MeX1can and American Lois and Donald Roon. Highlight or t e recognition ban- quet, which took place in the Con- vention and Performmg Arts Cen- ter, was presentation of Role Model awards to 12 people tapped for significant contributions to Helen K. Copley, chairman and chief executive officer of The Cop- ley Press and p1blisher of The Tri- bune and The an Diego Union- PSA's chairman Paul Barkle/ lawyer Vilma Martinez; retired Brig. Gen. Robert Cardenas; Tijua- na's Elena B. deLeyva ; San Diego businessman R~ue de la Fuente ; Alfonso Bustauante from Tijua- na's visitors' b~eau; Secretary of State March Faog Eu; Dr. Ed Za- panta ; boxer Ar•hie Moore; Gener- al Dynamics Corp.'s John McSwee- ney; and Frank Dominguez of the Nancy Rea~an and Atlantic Richfield's chief executive officer Lodwrick Cooc, were named Woman and Ma1 of the Year, and Foundation's 15 ning With the Stars." annual "An Eve- their society. Included in e honorees were Vanir Group.

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disputes i Christian way Mediation Service solves problems, easesJ!_!]JJrt load n, at odds over some property, reach the bittern stage in their dispute when a m ·diation service steps in and gets tt.em to settle the matter am1~ably. A landlord IS repeatedly foiled in his attempts to evict some tenants until, with he help or the same me- diation service, the problem is re- solved. Two neighbors are embroiled in a running dispute over the localion of a driveway, but, un er the pressure of going to supervised mediation. they settle it them- selves. All three are cases resolved , under the guidance growing trend toward the settlement of persona1 di pute outside the court system and under church auspices. All follow, in effect if not by de- sign, the urgmg of Chief Justice War- ren Burger that lawyers look to me- diation conciliation and arbitration mstead of courtroom litigation as a means of solving disputes. He has of en said the increase in lawsuits threatens an already overloaded court system. The San Diego Presbyterian ser- vice helps friends, neighbors, family members, landlords and tenants, 1erchants a'!d consumers - any- bod (except th se-contemplating di• ~ore ) w o need help resolving a proble ,vlthout gomgfough liti- gation that could be e pensive in Please see DISPUTES, By I~rb~ero 1 Tnbunc Re g1on Writer 10 HER and of the 8-month-old Mediation Service the San Diego Pres- bytery f the Pres- byterian Church (U.S.A.)., part of a '"' sponsored by

-ge J terms of both money and broken friendships. Paradoxically, the Mediation Ser- vice has been so successful that none of the 15-odd cases it has accepted so far has actually gone to full media- tion. "Sometimes the very threat of going to mediation gets people to re- solve their problems on their own," said Tom Fentiman of San Marcos, a Presbyterian and professional me- diator whose ideas led to the forma- tion of the Mediation Service. Fentiman, who has years of indus- trial and commercial mediation ex- perience, said the San Diego pro- gram was inspired by his experience teaching a 1964 class on negotiation at the international level he taught in 1984 at Solana Beach Presbyterian Church. The class, Fentiman said, caused many to wonder how people could hope to resolve problems at the in- ternational level if they couldn't do so at the personal level. Fentiman has long advocated me- diation and negotiation as an alter- native to litigation in the resolution or commercial, industrial and inter- national disputes. His theory that church-sponsored mediation is a less costly, wiser and more Christian way to resolve disputes than litigation was finally picked up by the Presbytery's Peacemaking Committee in early 1985 and set in motion a process that led to the formation of the Mediation Service. Fentiman said the service, avail- able to non-Presbyterians as well, is one of the few church-sponsored me- diation services in the country and is now being looked at as a possible model by Presbyterians in other cit- ies. A Christian Conciliation Service, one of 30 such ministries throughout the United States affiliated with the Christian Legal Society of Oak Park, Ill., has been operating in San Diego since 1983. rts purpose: to help settle disputes between Christians out or court. The Rev. Joseph Weiss, a former San Diego State University Lutheran campus minister, helped found the nation's first Christian Reconcilia- tion Service in 1980 while serving as a campus pastor at the University or New Mexico in Albuquerque. There are also two city-sponsored agencies: the Golden Hills Mediation Center, which opened in 1983, and the Mira Mesa-Scripps Ranch Mediation Center, which opened in 1984. Founded by the..llSQ_Law Center as the brainchild of attorney and widely respected mediation "guru" Carol Hallstrom, the centers merged July 1 with San Diego County Youth and Community Services and are now under contract to the city of San Diego. Sharon Schultze, the program's as- sistant director, said that in 1985 the centers handled more than 2,000 calls and walk-ins, made referrals on ap- proximately 1,000 cases and resolved more than 90 percent of the cases it mediated. The Mennonites have opened about 30 mediation services in various U.S. cities since 1982, among them the Victims Offenders Reconciliation Program (VORP) operated in Clovis by professional mediator Ron Claas- sen. The Clovis operation differs from the San Diego service in that it handles only criminal cases. An unusual mediation service opened by the Honolulu Catholic Diocese in 1982 handles only in- terpersonal and group disputes per- taining to non-doctrinal church mat- ters, said Kristi Dinell, director or the diocese's Parish Social Ministry. "Our purpose was to build commu- nity through dialogue and to recog- nize we can work out our differences even though we don't always agree with one another," Dinell said. Honolulu also has a Neighborhood Justice Center that handles legal and other disputes among the general

"There's no question about that. We here in San Diego just happen to be on the leading edge, but it's commg and the only question is who will lead it. "It'll either be the Chnstian church or government, but there's so much litigation, we just can't go on this way." The Presbyterian Mediation Ser- vice technique is twofold: an "intake" stage, during which the issues are ex- plored and the parties commit them- selves to resolving the dispute; and the actual mediation itself. "The first thing we do in the intake process is to get the parties to agree they want the dispute resolved. That's probably the biggest thing," said Art Phelps, Mediation Service chairman and himself a mediator. Initial contacts and arrangements for meetings are handled by media- tors Betty Imlay and Fentiman, who are known as "intake persons." The sessions, often held at the Presbytery office at 8825 Aero Drive, usually take only a few days, with volunli>ers following up on each case about two weeks later. Each case is handled separately. "You have complete privacy on any mediation we do," he said. "The information stays within the media- tion process." Phelps said mediators "simply add a structure to a discussion between the two people in which they are re- ally forced to come to grips with the other person and often arrive at a written agreement." He said mediators don't so much resolve problems brought to them as to steer participants in the direction of a resolution. Imlay said the Presyterian service "is so brand new it'll take a while to get off the ground, but I definitely think it's something our society needs." So far, however, no case has ad- vanced to the second stage or the me- diation process. Once people cool off and begin talking in earnest, said Phelps, the problem is virtually solved. "That's the whole purpose of the thing, anyway, to get the two people talking," said Imlay "If they can re- solve it without a third party, that's even better." Attorney Sharon Peterson, also a mediator, said this demonstrates what communication can do. "It shows me that almost always when people start taking the respon- sibility and recognizing that they have a dispute, that opens up doors of communication and that many times people can resolve their own disputes and don't need to go to a mediator," she said. The threat of mediation has a way of focusing the mind along construc- tive channels, suggests another me- diator, Palomar College psychology teacher Barbara Williams. "When people get to the point where they really begin thinking about th" dispute, it sort of causes a shift in the way they look at things and they begin working things out," Williams said. As an example she cites the case of the neighbors squabbling over the driveway. One, a Presbyterian, took literature about the Mediation Ser- vice to his neighbor, who at first would have none of it, but who that same afternoon was ready to negoti- ate. "They resolved t!Je dispute on the spot," Williams said. She said this was a typical case in which the parties ll'ish to resolve a dispute while remaining friends. Their goal is "to preserve a relation- ship by engaging iJ a problem-solv- ing task rather tha1 a win-lose situa- tion," she said. Fentiman said people should un- derstand the servre offers media- tion, not counselirg, the difference being that mediatim helps people re- solve property, htsiness and other disputes while cou~seling helps peo- ple with their emoional problems.

goes on in mediation you really need that'' Fentiman and Imlay said the ser- vice gets more mediator applicants than it can handle. "We have all sorts of fabulous peo- ple," Imlay said. "We have a radiolo- gist and a chiropractor and a lawyer, a couple of retired gentlemen and all kinds of people willing to give of their time. They all signed on for a year - we figured it would take about six hours a month for a year but these people have given more time than that." Peterson said most mediators are so enthusiastic they could be called "overcommitted," but that their en- thusiasm says as much about the court system as it does about the me- diators. "I think we're sick and tired of the inadequacies of the court system and that we're finally beginning to real- ize it's not the court system's fault as much as the fact that we've turned everything over to them," she said. "It's still basically a human system and it has its limitations. "I think people, too, like to think that in a church context people will be real concerned, maybe more so than others." Peterson said she became a me- diator both because she believes in mediation professionally and also be- cause she thinks it's something the church should be doing. "I think it's real important that in- stitutions like the church and the schools start taking back some of re- sponsibility we turned over to courts and attorneys," she said. "ln the his- tory of our country we took care of a lot of our disputes within the context out of which they arose and taking them back into the church, I think, is a really healthy move. "I think it's a good, positive social move and I wanted to be part of that." Phelps said he became a mediator as the result of his commitment to the peacemaking committee at his church, Fletcher Hills Presbyterian. "Conflict may be healthy, but only in a controlled way," said Phelps, who with mediators Williams and Fentiman is writing a book about the center. Williams said she came to the Me- diation Service through her part in the development of a volunteer crisis intervention project working with the El Cajon Police Department. Said Peterson: "I think there are a lot of people out there that, if they have the skills, could be mediators not only in this kind of capacity, but within the family, within the work- place and elsewhere. I see myself going in that kind of direction." . Phelps said some people are skep- tical that such a mediaticn service works. "On the surface it almost seems overly simplified and people tend to say it won't work," he said. "They don't realize we make all the ar- rangements, including contacting the other party, arranging for a conven- ient time and even a convenient loca- tion." Fentiman said he'd also like to see the service develop a program to im- prove communication between par- ents and children and train high school students to mediate disputes among their peers. lmlay said one case handled by the service concerned a woman who had died and willed her house to her three daughters. One daughter lived in the house and didn't want to move but her two sisters wanted to sell the house and divide the money. With the help of the Mediation Ser- vice, the sisters agreed to sell the house, but more importantly it brought together two of the sisters who hadn't been speaking to one an- other, Imlay said. "It made me realize that it really was something important," she said. "Everybody felt good about it. They had a big family reunion and that family was brought back together again." Fentiman and Imlay said it's not difficult to find a Scriptural basis for such a mediation service. "I guess you could say Jesus was/ the original mediator," Imlay said/

Want to see 350 of 8an Diego's rich and famou go gaga? Hand them bundle of Ji ht sticks to play with. building Guest.s could wander through the concrete and glas · at will, marveling over fount,un and pools, plantmgs and room Favorite pot was the ource of the light toy, the huge gallery dom- mated by a wax auto model where designers create cars for the fu- ture. It must have been the atmos- phere, for the black-tied and be- jeweled immediately set to fash- ioning eyeglasses, bracelets coroncts, fanny wraps and neck- They wore them, too. All night long. The effect in the white can- - done up like Copacabana West Glitz and palms created the ap- propriately dramatic background for the night's pecial offering - a stellar music revue performed by theater stars lichael Byers, Harry Groener, Linda Hart, Bob James and Amanda McBroom. The curtam on this spectacular tnbute to the benefit's theme - "Stars Around The Globe' - came after the theatric dessert presenta- t10n featuring costumed waiters assembling a dacquoise into the shape of the 01~ Globe Theater. Tunes by a group of renowned mu ic1ans assembled for the night and named the Bob Haggart Rain- bow Room Orchestra kept the - was startling. log lace· out of the neon vas dinner tent "Club Galaxy"

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San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Clalremont Linda Vista

Star News (Cir. 2xW.)

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Slif1 B1986

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Bo{derline problems n d~ered at the Unive · of an Diego last week, De o P i

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Sixteen part-tine volunteers were trained beginning n October 1985 by mediation experts at the USO Law Center. Fentiman iaid a good media- tor has to be "a airly emotionally stable person with 1 good self-image. To withstand som1 of the flak that

population. Fentiman said mediation services ,.are the wave of the future. "It's relatively new, but there's a trend all over the country and gain- ing momentum," Fentiman said.