Mira Mesa Team Newsletter

Good morning, here is the News:

Team Meeting—10 April, 6:00pm in the Senior Center. We'll do an ICS exercise, which I am just starting to plan, so more on that later. We will probably just do a paper exercise, so gear is not required.


New Assistant Team Leader— I am VERY pleased to announce that Jennifer Tang has accepted the position of Assistant Team Leader for Team Mira Mesa. Jennifer will be helping me with some team-related items that could use a little attention, like our communications plan, and she will be running some of our meetings in the near future. I am really forward to working with Jennifer as we improve the quality of our team infrastructure and our instructional meetings.


New Members— We got NINE new members from Academy 27. ZOWIE! Please welcome:

Jason Costarakis
Lisa Drayton
Susan Francis
James Howard
Jasen Koerner
Dorothy Ledesma
Robert Nunez
Carlos Nunez
Ross Slocum

As you old hands might imagine, I'm just a little excited. Let's all go out of our way to make the new people feel welcome, and share our experiences, we all know we need them.



Bone Marrow Drive—I'll have more on this in the Battalion News, but I want to take this opportunity to make a special pitch to my Team. Fireman Arsenio Ortanez, a 20-year veteran of SDF&R was diagnosed in 2007 with a very bad form of leukemia. Fireman Ortanez is now in serious need of a bone marrow transplant. A previous donor drive produced over 800 potential donors, but there is a catch; by a fickle trick of genetics, the best chance for a match is when the Donor and Recipient are of the same ethnicity. Fireman Ortanez is Filipino, a population that is very poorly represented in the National Donor Registry. So he needs a large number of Filipinos to step up.

And we all know where those are going to come from, don't we?

Fortunately so does SDF&R. A marrow drive is being organized for Saturday 28 April at Station 44 on Black Mountain Road. If we get anywhere near the crowd we need (and we will if I have anything to say about it), the Firemen will need help handing the masses, so they are asking CERT to step in to provide support for this effort. You veterans know that we normally don't do this sort of thing, but this isn't normal. The announcement will go out to all San Diego CERT, but I'm asking Team Mira Mesa to make a special effort to be there. This is our back yard, these are our neighbors. I should have a press release, fliers, backgrounders, all that good stuff in the next few days if you want to ask your friends and neighbors to go to the drive, so you should be able to give them something by early next week, or this weekend if we are lucky. For now, if you can possibly put any time in on 28 April, please sign up on the web site:

https://apps.sandiego.gov/ereg/cert/courses.php?grp=Team+Trainings/Activities

Yes, you new people can do this! Volunteer hours only for this so far, I don't know, we'll see if we can give it team meeting status. Let's show 'em something guys.


All for this week, questions, comments, drop me a note, especially you new people.


-Steve