Meeting called to order by President Mike Norcia.
 
The pledge was led by the Smith brothers.
 
Inspiration was from Dan Snyder who quoted various wise women including: Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Gabby Gifford, Sheryl Sandberg, Simone de Beauvoir, and Reba McEntire. But he spoke also about something his mother-in-law, who he admires very much, said. She recently lost her husband and he asked her how do you get through it? She told him someone once said “you survive by surviving”. You also need a community to lean on. Dan said Rotary is one of his communities and he appreciates it so much. Dan, we’re lucky to have you as part of our community. 

Guests:

  • Ron Lykins former member and president of our Rotary club
  • Alfreda Eghan San Jose Rotary
  • Raymond Hughes introduced by Tom Picraux. 
  • Marcia La Valle introduced by Lisa Cheskin. 
  • Diane Erikson introduced by Gae La Torre. 
  • Lydia Rosen
  • Karen Briones
  • Tsova Massena 
 

New Member:

Paul Johnson presented Karen Briones with her red badge.

Announcements:

  • Rise Against Hunger is April 8 at Saratoga HS. Set up is 6:30-8 a.m. and packaging begins at 8:00. Sign up for set up or one (or more) of the 2 hour shifts here: http://events.riseagainsthunger.org/SaratogaRotary2023. This is a joint project with Saratoga and Cupertino. This is a great event for children and teens too. Please join us, it will be fun and rewarding.
  • Next week is First Tuesday. It will be held at Double D’s from 5:30-7:30.
  • Great Race update from Paul Christensen. Thanks to Lisa Cheskin and Todd Taylor for getting sponsors. This is one of our biggest fundraisers of the year. Two thirds of the money raised goes to scholarships and one third to the general fund. It is an all-hands-on deck event for members. Paul sent an email earlier this week with signups. There have been a lot of signups for the start and finish lines, these are full. If you have a truck there is pre-event help that is needed. 
  • Emi Eto announced the Boy Scouts Jamboree. She shared a video and told us four scouts will be here during their spring break to sell coupons which help them pay for the event. 
  • Mike announced that Nicholas Welzenbach was named Campbell Citizen of the Year. Congratulations Nicholas, this is a well-deserved award. Nicholas said he was honored, but the best part was his parents surprising him. Mike donated $100 in his honor and Nicholas matched. 
  • Nicholas announced that Roast and Toast will be June 27 at Villa Ragusa.
  • Mike announced that the committees have all met and made decisions on the grant applications. All the information will be on the website. Nearly $135,000 was requested and $94,200 was available. This is the fastest the process has ever gone. Mike thanked Kirsten Bridges and Marty Fishman (who was head of both Charities Advisory Board and World Service committee) and their committees for getting this done so quickly. Patti van der Burg has already started getting checks out. 
  • Mike gave Paul the check for the RACHEL project.
  • Tina Orsi-Hartigan announced that the next level of the speech contest is tomorrow at the LG Morning Rotary.
  • District 5230 is fund raising for the Pajaro area. Please go to https://rotary5230.org/ to donate. 
  • Next week John Pencer will auction off a beautiful pillow embroidered with places around Los Gatos. 

 

Really Big Announcement

The Cilker Revocable Trust has given a donation of $199,000 to the Charities Foundation. 
Bill Cilker joined our club on March 12, 1963. He was president 1984-85 and Outstanding Rotarian for 1990-91. Bill was one of the four original donors to the Charities Foundation. The Cilker family has been very involved in Rotary, including his daughter Beth Smith who was club president 2008-09.  Members of the Cilker family will be honored at a later meeting. A big thank you to all the Cilkers for their generosity. 
 

30 for 30

  • Jeffrey Blum had two stories. The first he was out to dinner with friends and broke a tooth, fortunately one of his friends is a dentist and took him straight to his office to fix the tooth. The second had to do with his daughter, who is in marketing, being asked what her older sister does. She replied “She’s in prison” (she’s actually a psychologist at a prison). He donated for each story.
  • Ramon Ware gave $100 to the scholarship fund in honor of ELC. He had a great time and was so impressed by the students. Congratulations to Ramon for having the winning team!
  • Grady Jeter donated $50 for his trip to Antarctica and $50 for those who have lost their homes in Pajaro. He mentioned that there needs to be a loss of 1200 homes for FEMA to come in, they lost 975. 
  • David Wells matched Ramon’s donation, also in honor of his time at ELC, although he and Mike are little upset they didn’t win and Ramon did. 
  • Jean-Marc Blanchard donated $100 for his trip to Montreal, where the weather was better than it has been here. He said he was having trouble communicating with his Uber driver until he remembered he needed to speak French. 
 

Program:

Our speaker today was our own Sandeep Gopisetty from IBM. He gave an interesting talk about AI. This is a topic that has been in the news recently with all the controversy around ChatGPT and others. Mike has sent out the slides from the presentation. 
 
NO Lunch meeting next week. First Tuesday will be at Double D’s.