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Stories by Elizabeth Salaam

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Parkour Park to Be Built in Miramar

Sweaty boys aged between 7 and 27 filled the gymnasium at San Diego United Training Center on Sunday, February 13. The boys jumped and flipped over mats and off walls to the sound of thumping ...

What's Your Brand?

The importance of personal branding.

Jacqueline Schneider, founder of The Mint Collective, a San Diego-based creative consulting agency, explains the importance of personal branding. What is personal branding? Branding is what draws someone to a company or individual. It’s about ...

All I Want Is My Birth Story

The emotional trajectories of adoption.

For 23 years, my life story began at four months, when I landed in my mother’s arms wrapped in a thin blanket and bearing a handwritten letter that read, “Congratulations to you both, the new ...

How to Make a Living as a Ghost Writer

Helen Chang explains how she makes a living as a ghostwriter. Let’s start with a little information about your background. Schooling, work history, and all that. I have always loved writing. I started writing poems ...

Documentarian in San Diego to Cover Young Marines

Oakland-based filmmakers Carl D. Brown and Sean Donnelly arrived in San Diego on Wednesday, January 19, to film footage for a documentary on the Young Marines, a training program for children aged 8 to 18. ...

A School Principal’s Reflections on Race

"We Still Have a Long Way to Go"

At 10:25 a.m. on the last Wednesday in October, the auditorium at Adams Elementary School in Normal Heights buzzes with the voices of parents and children waiting for the student-recognition assembly to begin. The parents ...

His Hobby Became a Second Job

John Galasan turned his hobby into a second job that pays. First, tell me about your day job. I work for Union Bank in Mutual Funds. I like it because it’s stable, and because I ...

Illegal Street Vending Crackdown in City Heights

At the sound of a dinging bicycle bell, the children at Lulu’s Montessori in City Heights run to the screen door overlooking Van Dyke Avenue and shout, “Bolis! Bolis!” For some of the tiny tots ...

How to Build a Business as a Hairstylist

Think you want to be a hairstylist? Thu Nguyen explains what it takes. First, tell me how you’ve been in this line of work. I’ve been doing it for 12 years. What kind of schooling ...

Christmas Is Magic for So Many Reasons

The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants

A LITTLE OLD-SCHOOL GLAMOUR “What does he do, this man you seek?…He covets…And how do we begin to covet, Clarice?…We begin by coveting what we see every day.” — Dr. Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of ...

Career Coach Debbie Lousberg Helps Laid-Off Workers Get Back Into the Workforce

Update not only your job, but how you find it.

Please tell me briefly what you do for job seekers. What kinds of services do you provide? I help job seekers make sense of that daunting task of looking for a job. I help them ...

Public School Food Service: What Are You Kids Eating?

Children wound up from the morning’s thunder and lightning crowd under the lunch arbor at Chesterton Elementary in Linda Vista. Their voices echo under the tin roof that protects them from the light, misty rain. ...

City Heights Leader Lobbies for Safe Corner

José Lopez, president of the Fox Canyon Neighborhood Association in City Heights, started a letter-writing campaign to lobby city-council members to support a grant proposal that would address a problem corner at 50th Street and ...

I’ve Regained My Confidence

Sherry Luft is a participant and founding member of the Job Seekers Club at South Metro Career Center. Let’s start with what line of work you’re in. How and when did you become unemployed? I ...

Extra-Special Education

He Honestly Believes He's Smarter Than Everyone, Including the Teacher

Sammy Gonzales didn’t speak until she was four years old. In her first two years of school, she was considered “slow,” often completing assignments long after all the other children had finished. Sometimes she drifted ...

A Fast-Paced Job Working with Kids and Food

Shirley Cabri-Rumrill, Food Service Labor Supervisor for San Diego Unified School District, explains what to expect as a part-time substitute for school lunch service. First, let me ask, are you really hiring, or just accepting ...

The Chargers Don't Wear Pink

Ten minutes into the second quarter of the Chargers’ second preseason game, a crowd in the end-zone View section of Qualcomm Stadium stands up to shout, “Raiders suck! Raiders suck!” But the Chargers are playing ...

Two Weeks on the Pavement at Liberty Station

Tayari Howard, late-night radio personality on Smooth Jazz 98.1 FM, recently slept in a tent at Liberty Station for two weeks. Every evening, from October 9 through October 22, he left the radio station at ...

John Cage Is Realized at Palomar College

Bonnie Whiting Smith begins the Palomar College afternoon “concert hour” with a three-minute John Cage piece entitled “A Flower.” The piece consists of melodic singing and the sound of Smith’s knuckles and fingertips tapping on ...

Fortify Yourself During Hard Times

Mark Erwin, founder of Erwin Financial in La Jolla, offers advice on the do’s and don’ts of spending money during hard times. Please tell me a little bit about your company. We do customized, client-focused, ...

My Goodness, It’s Free!

…and Other Reasons to Look Into Continuing Education.

Ranessa Ashton, public information officer for San Diego Continuing Education, explains with the program has to offer. First, please tell me about the Continuing Education program. Are the classes really free? We’re the adult education ...

The Highs and Lows of Commission Work

You Really Have to Perform Every Single Day

Interior designer Nina Dayton discusses the pros and cons of working for commission. First, tell me how long you’ve worked in the field of sales and interior design. It’s been about five years now. How ...

They’ll Know You’re Determined to Succeed

Why One Local Waitress Went Back to School

Sandra Martinez, a 30-year-old mother of two, is back in school. Tell me what you were doing for work two years ago. I was waiting tables at a café in Normal Heights, and I was ...

They should not display their beauty

Over the phone, Maureen Slater sounds like a soccer mom. She uses words like “jammies” instead of pajamas and laughs at her own jokes (“I’m smarter than my husband, ha-ha-ha”), some of which aren’t really ...

Eat at Home

...and stay away from movie theaters.

Samuel Johnson has re-entered the workforce – and it’s taking some adjustment. Tell me about your previous work life. What did you do, for how long, and how much did you make? I’ve been a ...

The Biggest Mistake People Make on Their Résumés…

Advice from a Professional Résumé Writer

Kim Mohiuddin is a nationally certified résumé writer, president of both MovinOnUpResumes.com and Authentic Executive Careers, and Certification Chair for the National Résumé Writers’ Association. Why don’t you start by telling me exactly what you ...

Look of Death

Carol Williams — San Diego civic organist and artistic director of the Spreckels Organ Society — hates the heat. She also hates it when the wind blows her hair in her eyes and when June ...

Get Out of the House

Sitting at Home on the Computer is Depressing

After a year and a half of layoff, Reggie Vaughn has finally found work. Tell me about your layoff? I was a truck driver for a large freight company. I’d been working there since 2005. ...

What have you done for us lately?

Every May, after the tasseled hats have fallen to the ground and the graduation parties have died down, hundreds of thousands of new graduates enter the workforce. Or at least that’s the plan. Late last ...

Get Your Foot in the Door by Working as a Temp

Amber Elrod is the regional manager for Kelly Services, a human resources provider with three locations in San Diego County. Is temp work picking up or slowing down in the current economy? In San Diego, ...

Tale of Two Corners

“There’s no reason our neighborhood can’t look like Hillcrest or North Park,” says Fox Canyon Neighborhood Association president José Lopez. During the association’s monthly meeting on July 13, some of the members voiced their desire ...

A Positive Outlook Opens Doors

Shauna Riisoe works at the South Metro Career Center, one of several one-stop centers operated by the San Diego Workforce Partnership. What’s your role at the center? In terms of daily assignments, we all switch ...

Beethovenus Interruptus

Jung-Ho Pak and Orchestra Novaban keep St. Paul’s Cathedral on their list of venues (along with Sherwood and Qualcomm auditoriums) despite a multitude of problems that the venue presents. For starters, the lack of parking ...

Daddy's home. Now what?

On Halloween 2009, around 7:00 p.m., a sugar-crazed group of costumed children and their adult chaperones works its way through one of those North County neighborhoods where the rows of prim two-story homes are painted ...

Four and Sixty

“The world is so strange,” says Lauren Kinhan, the “new girl” of New York Voices who has been with the quartet for 18 of its 22 years. Kinhan and the other three members have almost ...

I do love him, but I won't say it

Afra Khan, a grad student who recently emigrated from Hyderabad, India, wears jeans and a long-sleeved gray T-shirt that says SDSU across the front. Before I spend an afternoon with her in a tiny two-bedroom ...

Africans, Asians, Hispanics...and Hipsters: Changes in City Heights

From the Killing Fields to the Noodle House When Mark Lau was ten years old, he couldn’t add one plus one. On the day he began the fourth grade at Adams Elementary School in City ...

Screen-Glow Soundscapes

“I went rock climbing this morning,” says Daniel Shapira of the Bitwise Operators, a “laptop ensemble” from the University of California San Diego. “I went skiing last weekend,” says Cooper Baker, another member. Here’s the ...

Watch the Guitarists Breathe

“Everybody wants to play in a group that has an international career,” says Luiz Mantovani of the Brazilian Guitar Quartet. “Some people think, ‘Wow, you go everywhere in the world. It must be great.’ But ...

A Trusted Guide

When Marc-André Hamelin walked onstage at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Sherwood Auditorium on December 18, only the high shine of his shoes looked the part of a world-renowned, super-virtuoso pianist. His rumpled black suit ...

I Never Thought I'd Become a Welfare Queen

Poverty does not become me. I’m sure it doesn’t become anyone, but it really doesn’t become me. I was supposed to be somebody by now, and by that I mean somebody other than this woman ...

The Spontaneous Quartet

The origins of Quartetto Sorrento date back to the latter half of 2008, when Paula Simmons — violist, concert conductor, and co-owner of the Violin Shop in Sorrento Valley — received an email from Warren ...

Diverted

On Friday, September 25, the San Diego Police Department conducted a curfew sweep in the Mid-City area. Forty-three juveniles under the age of 18 who violated the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew were picked ...