Fund Raising

Several community organizations that help youth and disabled people got a boost this summer from nearly $12,000 in donations from the Garden Grove Host Lions Club. The club raised the money by operating food booths at the annual Strawberry Festival, a golf tournament and other special events. The largest gift, $2,500, was given to the Garden Grove Boys and Girls Club.

Kathy Betz, a 28-year-old cyclist from Baltimore, is expected to receive a hero's welcome Monday when she arrives in Orange County after a 30-day, 3,000-mile bicycle journey to raise money for breast cancer research and awareness of the disease. Her coast-to-coast ride has been sponsored by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, which is hosting the fifth annual Race for the Cure run in Newport Beach Sept. 22.

Vietnam veteran Bob Kakuk is working to raise money for a Civic Center memorial that would recognize local veterans killed or missing in all U.S. wars this century. He recently made a plea for donations at a City Council meeting, saying he is $15,000 short of the goal. Kakuk said that so far, he has collected about $5,000 in donations, which he used for a down payment on a piece of black granite being shipped from India.

Once a month, Lou Burrola and many of his co-workers indulge themselves in a workplace treat--and we're not talking about that insidious microwave popcorn, the Pied Piper of office workers everywhere. For a donation to a charity chosen by an employee committee, Burrola and his colleagues get a casual-dress day.

At the height of the battle over earthquake insurance, in the waning days of the 1996 legislative session, it was going to be a true Sacramento political evening Wednesday night. Both party leaderships were holding big fund-raisers, and both were anticipating heavy participation by the insurance industry. But threatened by protests, the Republicans postponed their event and the Democrats came under some fire for theirs.

The San Fernando Valley Opportunity Through Education Scholarship Fund will hold a carwash Saturday to raise money for scholarships. The scholarship fund was started last year by Patricia Franco, a parole agent with the California Youth Authority. Franco received a $500 award from the American Justice Institute in recognition of her community work. She decided to use the prize as seed money for a scholarship to encourage average kids to strive for a better education.

When Cal State Fullerton's celebrated baseball coach, Augie Garrido, quit last month, he left for a bigger school and a greater challenge. Most of all, though, he left for money. The University of Texas offered Garrido $1.68 million over six years, a deal that his beloved Fullerton could only dream of offering. "We just couldn't match something like that," said Harry Gianneschi, Cal State Fullerton's vice president for university advancement.

Private fund-raising efforts produced banner results for UCLA during the fiscal year that ended in June, bringing in $191 million in donations and grants, the most ever for a University of California campus, officials said. Nearly a quarter of the record-setting total came from the largest donation ever to the university from an individual--$45 million, given anonymously, that will be used to build a 120,000-square-foot research building for the UCLA School of Medicine.

Here is the tally for two men on the world's longest contiguous bike ride: 6,000 miles behind them, 24 days of pouring rain, six tire blowouts. And 10,000 miles to go. (Add to the tally: one caribou herd sighting, one badly scraped elbow, one 3-inch leg gash.) Boston-area cyclists Spike Ramsden, 31, and Wayne Ross, 30, spent the night at a friend's house in Newport Beach on Wednesday on their "Cycle the Americas for Multiple Sclerosis" fund-raising trip through 14 countries.

When last heard of, auto dealer Joe McPherson had closed down his school donation program after his chain of dealerships forked over a total of $362,350 to hundreds of Orange County public and private schools. But McPherson, whose Tustin and Irvine dealerships were ponying up $50 for each new car sold and letting car buyers designate the school and even the specific program to receive the money, has had second thoughts.