Volunteers

When roasted at 475 degrees, coffee beans are sometimes described as rich and full-bodied. But for the full-bodied person who is not so rich, unroasted coffee beans - green as the day they were picked - may hold the key to cheap and effective weight loss, new research suggests. In a study presented Tuesday at the American Chemical Society's spring national meeting in San Diego, 16 overweight young adults took, by turns, a low dose of green coffee bean extract, a high dose of the supplement, and a placebo.

Kareen Sandoval was among the first to spot her tree, a skinny little thing about 9 feet tall with dark shimmering leaves. "Look how beautiful you are," she said, reaching for the trunk. "I want you to grow big and strong and never get knocked down. " Along 8th Street in Westlake on Saturday, volunteers planted 62 trees, but this was about more than mere beautification. Every tree honored a mother from the neighborhood, each one a woman whose volunteer work has made a difference in Westlake and Pico-Union, just west of downtown Los Angeles.

Researchers have some reassuring news for the legions of coffee drinkers who can't get through the day without a latte, cappuccino, iced mocha, double-shot of espresso or a plain old cuppa joe: That coffee habit may help you live longer. A new study that tracked the health and coffee consumption of more than 400,000 older adults for nearly 14 years found that java drinkers were less likely to die during the study than their counterparts who eschewed the brew. In fact, men and women who averaged four or five cups of coffee per day had the lowest risk of death, according to a report in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

SANFORD, Fla. - When the Rev. Al Sharpton led a rally of thousands here last month, he told city leaders that they "risked going down as the Selma or Birmingham of the 21st century" unless George Zimmerman was arrested. On Thursday, with Zimmerman behind bars, many here were wondering when they would get their reputation back. "There's not all this racialism, like everyone's saying," said Beth Rollf, who is white and owns downtown's Taste of Thyme Cafe. "There are no riots.

Residents and business managers looking for ways to make their city prettier now have their chance. The city's Beautification-Environmental Commission is launching a campaign to draw in volunteers and get them "Painting Buena Park Beautiful." Organizers hope the program, which initially is being funded through a $5,000 federal block grant, eventually will be fully funded and staffed by community volunteers. Based on similar programs in Anaheim and other cities, the group will help homeowners who are unable to paint their homes because of physical or financial problems.

SECRET SPOTS OF THE WEST We asked you to nominate your favorite vacation places in the West -- your travel touchstones, so to speak -- and you came back with a satchel full of suggestions. We sifted and sorted and chose six to explore for ourselves. Marvelous or mundane? You be the judge. -- "It's so peaceful there. It's just such a beautiful place to go," says Michele Johnson of Los Angeles, in nominating the Best Friends Animal Society's sanctuary in Utah. THE SETTING Angel Canyon, a postcard-perfect, rust-colored sandstone canyon outside of Kanab, Utah, is home to the Best Friends animal sanctuary, said to be the country's largest no-kill animal shelter.

Dear Liz: I graduated from college last summer and was lucky enough to get full-time employment. However, I have a great deal of college debt, including private and federal loans. Are there government programs that help pay back college loan debt? Do you have any suggestions? I cringe at the thought of paying double what I owe over the life of the loan because of interest and want to get this debt under control in the next few years instead of 15. Answer: Your eagerness to pay off your student loan debt is admirable and is particularly appropriate when it comes to your private student loans.

Whether you want to save a piece of rain forest, as a group of Irvine eighth-graders did, or have an abiding love of horses, as a South County teenager has, the world of volunteers has a place for you. As never before, Orange County youngsters are offering their time and energy for community service, propelled by generosity, school service requirements and the increasing clout that volunteer work carries with college admissions committees.

On Sunday morning in the Pico-Union district of Los Angeles, Father Jarlath Cunnane made the rounds. At a two-story apartment building with barred windows and peeling paint, Cunnane knocked on a door and cheerfully called out a greeting in Spanish to the Salvadoran immigrant who peered out. "Good morning," the Roman Catholic priest said. "I'm Father Jay from St. Thomas, and I'd like you to tell us about your experiences in the neighborhood." The immigrant cracked a welcoming smile.

At a Starbucks in South Los Angeles, 14-year-old Bill Kirkpatrick III sat down with his mentor, Joe Egender, to set goals for the coming year. On the teen's to-do list for 2011: maintain a 3.0 or higher grade-point average, become a better role model for his 8-year-old brother, make it as a starter for the school basketball team and be "the flower that grew from concrete" ? a reference to a poem by the late rapper Tupac Shakur. FOR THE RECORD: Big Brothers: An article in the Feb. 21 LATExtra about the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization said Joe Egender took his "little brother" Bill Kirkpatrick III to see Dr. Dre in concert.

SANFORD, Fla. - For weeks, protesters around the nation have demanded the arrest of George Zimmerman. A Florida special prosecutor made that happen Wednesday. She announced that Zimmerman - the neighborhood watch volunteer who admitted to fatally shooting an unarmed black teenager on a rainy night here in February - had turned himself in and would be charged with second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. "We did not come to this decision lightly," said Florida State Atty.

MORGAN HILL, Calif. - Fliers bearing an image of the wide-eyed, smiling teen are taped to every box that leaves Dutchman's Pizza, a high school hangout. Pink and yellow ribbons adorn every tree on the median strip of this quaint downtown. A local elementary school serves as a command center, where more than 600 volunteers gathered beneath clearing skies Friday to continue the search for Sierra LaMar. The 15-year-old Northern California cheerleader, law enforcement officials believe, was abducted outside her home the morning of March 16. Santa Clara County officers and FBI agents have interviewed dozens of Sierra's friends and family members.

SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers donned hoodies Thursday to protest the killing of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed Florida teenager who was shot to death last month by a neighborhood watch volunteer. At a Capitol news conference, members of the black, Latino and Asian Pacific Islander caucuses called on the federal government to intervene in the investigation and used the case to highlight the problem of racial profiling in America. One by one, lawmakers spoke from a podium draped with a hoodie and holding a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles –- items Martin was carrying when he was shot.

It has been called "obscene," "stupid" and the "right-to-commit-murder law. " It has also been credited with protecting people like Sarah McKinley, a young widow who killed a knife-wielding man after he broke into her Oklahoma home. Opinions about so-called "stand your ground" legislation - at the center of the Trayvon Martin killing in Sanford, Fla. - are as vastly different as the cases in which it has been invoked since Florida in 2005 became the first state to adopt such a statute.

If Sanford city officials thought the police chief's departure would calm tempers arising from the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, Thursday night's rally in the teenager's honor proved them wrong. As speaker after speaker took the stage at a downtown park, they made one thing clear: They want George Zimmerman, the man who said he shot the 17-year-old, arrested, and they won't settle for anything less. "I pledge I will not let my son die in vain!" Martin's father, Tracy Martin, told a cheering crowd of several thousand after being introduced by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

  In an apartment on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, an opposition activist retrieves stashes of medicine and bandages from hiding places. "What we need most right now are empty blood bags, oxygen masks and tetanus shots - and also a heart defibrillator," says the medical volunteer, tallying packages of antibiotics soon to be channeled out to protest strongholds. The trick is to move the supplies quickly so no evidence remains if security forces raid the premises, says the activist, who, like others interviewed, declined to be named for security reasons.

When Laurie Greenquist volunteered to help out at the California State Railroad Museum here, she thought she'd probably just be showing visitors around, or maybe lending a hand with the paperwork. "Then they said I could work on the train," the 38-year-old government purchasing agent recalled with a grin. "It suddenly hit me: 'Wow! I can work on a real steam locomotive! I can learn to run that thing!'

MORGAN HILL, Calif. - Fliers bearing an image of the wide-eyed, smiling teen are taped to every box that leaves Dutchman's Pizza, a high school hangout. Pink and yellow ribbons adorn every tree on the median strip of this quaint downtown. A local elementary school serves as a command center, where more than 600 volunteers gathered beneath clearing skies Friday to continue the search for Sierra LaMar. The 15-year-old Northern California cheerleader, law enforcement officials believe, was abducted outside her home the morning of March 16. Santa Clara County officers and FBI agents have interviewed dozens of Sierra's friends and family members.

Twitter now comes in 28 languages. The newest ones -- Hebrew, Farsi, Arabic and Urdu -- were added just this week. Those four languages posed a particular problem to Twitter's team of translation volunteers because they are read from right to left, rather than left to right. Therefore the translation required not just word challenges, but technical and design challenges too. For example, before Monday, Twitter couldn't support hashtags in right-to-left (RTL) languages.  Wrap your brain around that!

For almost a decade, Aeolian Elementary School did not have a library. So when parents decided to open one on the campus near Whittier, they decided not to wait for the cash-strapped school district to fund it. Instead, they built it themselves. Literally. The Parent-Teacher Committee dug into its piggy bank, went to a Borders bookstore close-out sale and purchased every bookshelf, sign and lighting fixture in the place. Over the next seven months, volunteers worked weekends and evenings to transform an empty bungalow into a brightly colored reading haven adorned with thousands of books.