Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 3, No. 2 - January 14, 2021
Inside
This Issue
Certified & Licensed
Professionals.......................7
Classifieds............................2
Entertainment......................2
Food.......................................7
Hawthorne............................3
Huber’s Hiccups..................3
Lawndale..............................4
Inglewood.............................5
Legals............................. 4,5,6
Pets........................................8
Weekend
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Saturday
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Sunday
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Lawndale Tribune
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Featuring the Weekly Newspapers of Hawthorne, Inglewood and Lawndale
Farewell to the Legendary
Baseball Icon Tommy Lasorda
For more than eight decades, he has been the face of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Tommy Lasorda will always remain the embodiment of Dodger Blue. Lasorda, who managed the Los Angeles Dodgers from
1976-1996, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997 following a career where he won 1,599 games, two World Series and two more National League pennants – all with the Dodgers. He passed away
on January 7, 2021. Tommy will be greatly missed. Photo courtesy City of Inglewood.
Walk With Sally to Celebrate
National Mentorship Month
By Kiersten Vannest
Despite bionic advancements, surgical discoveries,
and even record-breaking vaccine
development, as we’ve seen over the last year,
illnesses like cancer continue to affect every
community in every corner of the world. El
Segundo is no exception.
Located on the southeast end of the city is a
nonprofit organization called Walk With Sally.
It’s a mentorship program, pairing children
who are dealing with the illness of a parent
or sibling with an adult who’s been through
a similar experience. With a multitude of
programs and events, the core of their mission
is to “just have fun,” says program director
Julie Cegelski.
Sally is the name of founder Nick Arquette’s
mother, whose battle with cancer affected him
in his teen years. Though he had his brother,
Nick felt a lack of communion with his peers
and adults who hadn’t experienced the difficulty
of cancer in their lives. So in 2005, working
as an entrepreneur in the film industry, Nick
sought to give an opportunity to kids dealing
with their own family cancer stories. He started
Walk With Sally to give back to the community
and provide an experience he feels would have
helped him as a young adult.
In its early years, it was a labor of love.
It started purely as a volunteer program and
a passion project on the side. Over time, it’s
grown into a fully nonprofit organization garnering
the support of companies like Chevron
and comprising over a hundred mentor/mentee
pairings, helping thousands of kids over its
fifteen-year history connect with someone who
understands their struggle.
At Walk With Sally, they call these mentorships
“Friendships.” Volunteers from all
over the south bay and Los Angeles County
who’ve dealt with a parent or close family
member having cancer get paired with a
child who is currently experiencing it. Together,
they do activities like surfing, art projects,
obstacle courses, and more recently, virtual
gingerbread house making. These Friendships
transcend the program, as Arquette describes
the story of one girl who lost her single parent
to cancer, but whose mentor showed up
to help her settle into her new college dorm.
“It’s really a community,” says Cegelski.
As she describes it, everyone involved in the
program is more like a big group of family
and friends. While the children get the chance
to create a bond, vent, sympathize, distract
themselves, and meet a community full of
people who have been through similar trauma,
the mentors also get the chance to make friends
with other adults who understand their trials.
In one case, she even says two mentors in
the program met their match and got married.
Often, she says, the mentors tell her that they
are getting more out of the program than the
kids. It’s a way for both parties to work through
their trauma and gain a lasting relationship
out of it. Walk With Sally doesn’t just stop
at mentorships. They also provide resources
and guidance, such as helping families get
emergency financial assistance and kids get
scholarships.
Pre-pandemic, the staff was going into
families’ homes, getting to know new community
members in person and speak with
kids about the program and evaluate how to
best help. With Covid, Cegelski describes the
mental health of kids declining in the absence
of their mentors’ physical presence and the
difficulty of switching everything to a virtual
platform. Though things are different, she says
that their events and Friendship programs are
still running.
Every year, Walk With Sally holds a fundraiser
called the Friendship Bowl, where mentors and
their mentees take over a bowling alley to raise
money to support more Friendships. Obviously,
with the health barriers blocking the way this
See Walk With Sally, page 7