A Real Angelino

I am now a member of the Los Angeles Conservancy and couldn't be more excited. With a donation of just $40, you can also join. I've already signed up to volunteer for a couple of the Last Remaining Seats (LRS) movies as an usher. If you ask me, its the best of both worlds: I get to volunteer and spend hours in historic buildings!!!

My goal is to become a docent for walking tours. My kind of Saturday is donating my time, talking about old buildings, architectural periods & styles and spending the day outside. For now, I will be scheduling several over the summer months to get to know the area and see how the current docents do it.



Volunteer Year - March

For March, I had the pleasure of helping the North Central Animal Shelter for a day. It came together after speaking to a former neighbor, Alicia about wanting to help out wherever and whenever possible. She is a dog walker and has a huge heart for all animals in need. She connected me with a woman that takes photos and writes bios for pets to get adopted. This center rescues, boards, helps and adopts out all kinds of animals to new homes.

I had been emailed about what I would be doing prior to going to the shelter so I prepped myself by viewing some social media outlets they use.  The day started at 8:30AM and was a whirlwind out of the gate! Our task at hand was to get images and videos of large dogs online so people could view available dogs to adopt. Because there is a timeline for how long a dog can be at the shelter, there is a sense of urgency to prevent any of them from being euthanized. Large dogs are added to the website once a month and the process takes a team of 6-10 people to complete the process including handlers, a photographer, a videographer, bio writers. It was chaotic but the system worked really well. Two to three dogs were brought out at a time with name cards to be photographed and videoed. I rotated between the two other bio writers and was responsible for writing down details about the dogs' personalities to make them more personal. It would include things like: young, great personality, volunteer favorite, would make a good hiking partner... Unfortunately most of the dogs were pit bulls but they were all well behaved and just want to be loved. Half the work is viewing and meeting the dogs to take notes, the second half is actually putting all the notes together and sending them in to post online. It took me two days to leisurely complete 10 bios.

It was a lot of fun and I am so grateful to be a part of such a helpful organization. I have committed myself to help out monthly and look forward to meeting more precious dogs like I did last weekend. If you are interested in a new pet, consider adopting from a shelter like North Central.

North Central Facebook page

North Central YouTube page

Find a pet in your area, Petfinder

I love the 110 freeway

Afterward, I decided to explore the area near the shelter and ended up in Highland Park/Eagle Rock. I found a cafe that makes vegan granola bars, looked at used stuff and drove over to Occidental College to explore their campus. Of course I ended up watching part of a baseball game. The weather was beautiful and it was a great day!