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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 17, 2016)
10A THE DAILY ASTORIAN THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2016 Awards: Kleczek accepted award for La Luna Loca Continued from Page 1A Business awards Kevin Leahy, executive director of CEDR and the Small Business Development Center, announced the winners. Kathy Kleczek, owner of La Luna Loca accepted the award for small business entrepreneurship. “This award is also a repre- sentation of the people behind our success, the people that work with me and the people that spend their hard-earned dollars in our store for things that may not be the cheapest, but are made the best way possible,” Kleczek said. Owners of ice cream and french fry shop Frite & Scoop, Kevin and Lisa Malcom, were given the award for outstand- ing customer service for a small business. The business won a similar award recently in the Coast Weekend Readers’ Choice Awards. Lisa took over the acceptance speech after Kevin got choked up, thanking their staff and the community for supporting the business. Kelly Truax, owner of Bruce’s Candy Kitchen, took the award for business service to the community for a small busi- ness. The more than 50-year-old Cannon Beach and Seaside sta- ple was granted the award for its efforts in the community, includ- ing donating candy for events, such as Easter egg hunts. “We just give because we can, and it’s a blessing that we’re able to do that,” Truax said. Accepting the award for tech- nological and manufacturing advancement were the owners of Airport Crabpot Co., Vern and Lisa Lamping. Their company previously got about 50 orders a year, Leahy said, but got an order for 800 units from Costco last year, thanks to a patented design. The owners then devel- oped a new method for protect- ing the pots to meet the increased demand. The award for entrepreneur- ship in a medium business went to Micha and Jennifer Camer- on-Lattek, owners of Street 14 Cafe in downtown Astoria. The cafe has expanded and now has dinner offerings. “We did start with just … a handful of employees and now we have three or four handfuls of employees, and it’s been really an exciting journey for us,” Jen- nifer Cameron-Lattek said. Outstanding customer ser- vice for a large business went to The Ocean Lodge in Cannon Beach. Wendy Higgins accepted the award for the hotel, which has consistently been ranked as the top hotel in Cannon Beach, she said. Dale Brechlin, manager of the Astoria-Warrenton KOA accepted the business service to the community for a large busi- ness on behalf of the camp- ground. Brechlin emphasized the KOA site’s focus on the com- Photos by Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian Kathy Kleczek, of La Luna Loca, walks up to the stage to accept the entrepreneurship award in the small business category during the CEDR Awards banquet at The Loft in Astoria on Wednesday. AWARD WINNERS Entrepreneurship - Small Business: La Luna Loca Customer Service - Small Business: Frite & Scoop Business Service to the Community - Small Business: Bruce’s Candy Kitchen Technology/Manufacturing Advancement: Airport Crabpot Co. Entrepreneurship - Medium Business: Street 14 Cafe Customer Service - Large Business: The Ocean Lodge in Cannon Beach Business Service to the Community - Large Business: Astoria-Warrenton KOA Entrepreneurship - Large Business: Hampton Lumber Mill Job Creation - P&L Johnson Mechanical Inc. Economic Impact - Bornstein Seafoods Cliff Tuttle speaks after ac- cepting the award for en- trepreneurship in the large business category for Hamp- ton Lumber Millat the CEDR Awards banquet at The Loft in Astoria on Wednesday. food business has an estimated local impact of at least $105 mil- lion, Leahy said. Andrew Born- stein, accepting the award, com- mented that the diversity of product has allowed it to thrive. CEDR leader honored munity, with programs for youth groups and elderly patrons at the campground. Entrepreneurship for a large business was given to the Hamp- ton Lumber Mill, with Manager Cliff Tuttle accepting the award. The mill, which can produce 200 million board-feet annually, employs 149 full-time employees. The night’s penultimate award went to P&L Johnson Mechanical for job creation. The company’s co-owner Paul Radu accepted the award, and empha- sized the company’s commit- ment to educating its workers as part of its success. Lastly, economic impact went to Bornstein Seafoods. The sea- Skip Hauke, CEDR co-founder and past president, was honored for his contributions to CEDR and Clatsop County. State Sen. Betsy Johnson hailed Hauke’s vision in creat- ing CEDR and his leadership of the Astoria-Warrenton Chamber of Commerce, which has grown signi¿cantly under his leader- ship, she said. Accepting the award, Hauke said about the award, “I think the best thing about it is it rec- ognizes CEDR and what CEDR has accomplished, and we have … become a model for the state … and our numbers prove that we’re doing the right thing,” he said. ABOVE: Kevin Leahy, executive director at CEDR, gives opening remarks during the CEDR Awards banquet at The Loft in Astoria on Wednesday. ABOVE LEFT: People mingle and eat dinner during the CEDR Awards banquet at The Loft in Astoria on Wednesday. Warming center: It ‘shows care and hope. It shows compassion’ Continued from Page 1A “We can’t do much more on an all-volunteer basis. We’ve got no professional staff. We’ve got no paid staff,” he said. “We just can’t push ourselves to do more.” As an emergency shelter, the warming center exists to serve the homeless population when the temperature drops below 40 or the forecast is particularly nasty. Similar warming centers in St. Helens and Long Beach, Washington, closed late last month. No other place Volunteers dealt with more homeless people with untreated mental illness this year, Her- zig said. “We were getting more people who were having various mental breakdowns in process,” he said. Some of them behaved errat- ically, talked to themselves, slipped into hallucinations and had trouble settling down. “As long as they weren’t a danger to themselves or oth- ers, we were able to accommo- date them, even though, some- times, some of the other guests got pretty annoyed that their sleep was being disrupted. But there’s no place else for them,” he said. “If and when the respite center (in Warrenton) opens, that might be a place for some of these people to go. But, in the meantime, there is no place.” Katherine Rusk, the 38-year- old woman who died in an apparent hit-and-run in Boring earlier this month, was one of them. “It was really sad to read about that because we had heard that somehow she got into Port- land hoping to get better care there,” Herzig said. Though the center never had to call the police, volun- teers did call Medix a few times when some guests showed up so drunk they couldn’t stand. “There have been a few complicated times where peo- ple get a little bit out of hand, and the staff’s right on it,” Hoss Spot treatment Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian City Councilor Drew Herzig serves up soup in the kitchen of the warming center in November. White, a 67-year-old warming center repeat guest, said. “I can’t express how good I think these people do.” Despite the occasional out- burst, the center hasn’t had rea- son to permanently remove a person. And, in any event, “for the most part, they’re pretty respectful,” Ami Lizarraga Hirsch, a center volunteer from Astoria, said. “I think the staff is remark- able,” White said. “To see some of the things they went through, and they still got a smile on their face...” White — who now plans to camp outside of town, something he’s used to doing — is grateful for the cen- ter, whose existence, he said, “shows care and hope. It shows compassion.” The volunteers are climbing a learning curve, Herzig said. “Our guests teach us what they need.” They taught the volunteers, for instance, that they need large lockers so they don’t have to carry everything they own at all times, so they need not hide their backpacks under bushes, so they don’t have to risk their belong- ings getting stolen, so they can avoid endlessly pushing a shop- ping cart and subjecting them- selves to mockery. “It seems like an easy ¿x,” Herzig said, “but we’d have to ¿nd a place who’d be willing to put that in, we’d have to fund it and we’d have to make sure we keep it managed.” The center volunteers also learned that, though warm clothing donations are nice and appreciated, the guests could also use waterproof clothing, for even the warmest of coats is use- less when wet. The church board struck an agreement with the warming center to provide showers once a week for the homeless com- munity through the year, though the ¿ner points — including the timing and staf¿ng — have yet to be arranged. But the center, and all it can do for those in need, amounts to spot treatment on the larger homeless problem on the North Coast. The volunteers would prefer that the center simply went out of business for lack of need. Hirsch said she has a younger brother now living in Los Ange- les who is an addict. “He generally has a place to stay,” she said, “but I’ve often thought, if he didn’t, it would be nice to have people like this around here.” “First you have to treat the homelessness, then you can treat the mental illness and the alcoholism and the diabetes and the this-and-that,” Herzig said. “How can you possibly treat any other issues when they’re hav- ing to deal with the daily trauma of surviving on the street?” Seaside: Many affected employees will continue working with hospital’s af¿liate Continued from Page 1A “To support a seamless transition for the patients, Providence home health nurses and therapists will be going to the scheduled appointments with the CMH caregivers until the program ends,” said Mary French-Pe- terson, a manager for Provi- dence Home Health Services on the North Coast. James Arp, chief execu- tive of Providence Home and Community Services in Ore- gon, said the organization’s scale allows it to more easily absorb additional patients. Paulette McCoy, a spokeswoman for Provi- dence Seaside, said it typi- cally serves about 100 home health patients on the North Coast, but has had as many as 115. Thorsen said the loss of jobs from ending the pro- gram at Columbia Memo- rial Hospital will be mini- mal because of growth at the hospital. “We are doing our best to find positions within other CMH departments for all the impacted CMH employees,” he said. Many of the affected employees will continue working with the hospital’s affiliate, Lower Columbia Hospice.
