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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.