Seniors at Mission View Health Center team with Food Bank Coalition

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• For teens in need: Nonprofit dream becomes a reality

  For teens in need: Nonprofit dream becomes a reality

  You may have seen her — the long-haired, energetic Lisa Ray — handing out Halloween costumes to children of migrant workers or scooping up bags of donations in her Pismo Beach driveway.

  She works 10- to-12-hour days running a home-grown nonprofit that in two years has gone from helping one single mom’s children to outfitting more than 3,000 homeless and other youth from Lompoc to Cambria.

  Now, what was formerly known as Lisa Ray’s Donation Group has a new name — Children’s Resource Network of the Central Coast — and a new venue where teens can pick out free clothing.

• Letters to the Editor 12/11

  Letters to the Editor 12/11

  Make your voice heard

  Reading headlines like “Wal-Mart’s ballot-box tactics are shameful” (Dec. 5) in your newspaper used to make my blood pressure rise. I would complain — at length — about how corporations are taking over our democracy, how the whole world is going down the tubes. Then my wife suggested I stop complaining and do something — anything — to change this world of ours. And I did. And I feel great.

  I joined the California Clean Money Campaign and am helping to pass AB 1148, the California DISCLOSE Act. This bill, if passed, would help to reveal who is really paying for TV ads, print ads, radio spots and printed mailers. (See more at www.YesFairElections.org  )

• Letters to the Editor 1/30

  Letters to the Editor 1/30

  Streets not dog-safe

  I read with interest Bill Morem’s Jan. 19 column in The Tribune. Patti Toews’ dog was attacked recently by two dogs off-leash on a trail in Los Osos. Her dog suffered substantial damage (a $1,900 vet bill), but what caught my eye was her comment at the end of the article: She said she’ll “stick to the streets … hopefully it will be more safe for the little guy.”

  I know from personal experience that even the streets are not safe for dogs. In August 2010, a woman in Los Osos was walking her two very large dogs on Bayview Heights and Covey Lane. Her dogs attacked one small dog, which recovered, and shortly thereafter attacked and killed my neighbor’s small dog on his own property.

• A push for family input to detect dementia earlier

  A push for family input to detect dementia earlier

  Alexis McKenzie's mother had mild dementia, but things sounded OK when she phoned home: Dad was with her, finishing his wife's sentences as they talked about puttering through the day and a drive to the store.

• Atascadero Iraq vet is a lean, mean logistical machine

  Atascadero Iraq vet is a lean, mean logistical machine

  Some columns take longer to gestate than others. This one, for example, had its genesis about a year ago when I first talked with Lt. Col. Nicole Balliet while she was the garrison commander of Contingency Base Adder in Iraq.

  She was the virtual mayor of the facility, an 8,000-acre air base of some 15,000 soldiers, with Ugandans contracted as the facility’s security forces (yes, Ugandans).

  She had just turned over sections of the sprawling facility to the Iraqi Air Force in preparation for U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011. She was looking forward to returning in June to her home in Atascadero and resuming her role as garrison commander of Camp San Luis Obispo, a job she’d held since 2007.