“Nobody knows what it’s like to come here with no family, no footing, no money,” SDRT co-founder and Executive Director Melissa Phillips says. “These families need support.”

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While teaching at Ibarra 16 years ago, Phillips noticed that refugee kids were being thrown into a school system ill-equipped to cater to their unique needs. They frequently spoke multiple languages but were considered behind in their classes because of a lack of exposure to English, and their parents—many of whom were still experiencing trauma from violence and displacement—often didn’t know English, either. So, she brought together a handful of her refugee students to be tutored by a small group of high school students. Things scaled dramatically from there. Now, the program is offered two nights per week, with some 150 kids, from elementary through high school, receiving individualized attention from 150 volunteers.

One of those volunteers is Sopyda Yin, a 24-year-old research assistant at UCSD who began tutoring with SDRT more than a year ago. Tonight, she’s working with Juliet Moo, a second grader whose family fled from Burma.

Yin’s parents and grandparents came to the US as refugees, which is one reason she feels called to volunteer. “In school, there was a lack of cultural awareness toward kids from immigrant households,” she says. “I see the setbacks in my own education, and I want more opportunities for these kids.”

Phillips, too, dreams of offering more resources for the students. “This neighborhood is dense with refugee kids,” she says. “We could run a program for 400 kids if we had the volunteers to support it. It could be five nights a week because the kids are so eager. One-on-one attention is hard to come by, especially for an hour and a half.”

The post In City Heights, a Tutoring Org Changes Refugee Lives appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

The Big Picture

13,172

Number of nonprofits (registered 501(c)(3) charities) in San Diego in 2022

$28.1B

Total combined revenue of all nonprofits

$47.6B

Total combined assets of all nonprofits

106,178

Total number of San Diego nonprofit employees in 2023

$7B

Total combined wages earned by nonprofit employees

How San Diegans Gave Back

44%

Percentage of households that donated (Q2 2024)

41%

Percentage of households that volunteered (Q2 2024)

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Top Causes San Diegans Donated To

38%

Food Banks/Pantries

29%

Animal-Related Zoos & Wildlife

29%

Religious Organizations

21%

Veteran Support

16%

Housing & Shelter

15%

Health Clinics & Hospitals

14%

Medical Research

13%

Arts & Culture

12%

Environment

12%

Neighborhood Associations

Public Confidence

San Diegans rank nonprofits higher than other sectors for addressing community needs:

81%

Nonprofits

67%

Corporations

56%

Government

Source: 2024 State Of Nonprofits And Philanthropy Report, University Of San Diego

The post By the Numbers: What San Diegans Donated in 2024 appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Fidel’s opened in 1960, and the original owner, Fidel Montanez, runs it to this day. The restaurant’s famous, gloriously bulging smothered burritos taste the same today as they did last week as they did last year as they did in the ’60s. My son eats the same tacos I gobbled down as a teen. Nostalgia is one potent emotion, and, for me, Fidel’s provides it in spades. In an age when the average restaurant lifespan ranges from eight to 10 years, it’s managed to last. How?

Places like Fidel’s don’t have Instagram accounts or weekly email newsletters carefully curated by a public relations firm. They’re the joints you drive by every day on your commute until one day, during a commercial break on 91X, it occurs to you to wonder, “How long has that place been there?” and, then, “How on earth does it stay open?” Maybe it makes you intrigued enough that, on your way home, you take that exit, and you step inside.

Such curiosity recently got the better of me. Sandwiched between a fishing supply shop and a smog inspection garage is Volare Italian Dining, a family-owned eatery open since 1978. I’ve passed the unassuming building in Point Loma dozens—if not hundreds— of times on my way to Pechanga Arena and Liberty Station, and I’ve long wondered what garlicky treasures lie inside the walls that so badly need a fresh paint job. One night, family in tow, I decided it was time to find out.

After wedging my car into a spot in the very crowded parking lot at Squidco bait shop next door, I walked into a time capsule—clearly, interior design is not a priority at Volare, but it works.

“People don’t go here because they want to have a five-star dining experience,” laughs owner Antonella Pascucci, née Sanfilippo. “But that’s the charm of it. It’s a fine line between ‘I want to do some updates’ [and] ‘I don’t want to lose the old-school vibe.’”

Pascucci’s uncles Alfio and Onofrio Sanfilippo opened Volare in the ’70s, running the restaurant as partners until they returned to their native Sicily 20 years later. Their sister Anna, Pascucci’s mother, took the reins, and it’s remained in the family ever since. Now, Pascucci handles the day-to-day and hopes that, one day, her own children will take over the business.

That history is visible inside. Terracotta-colored walls showcase crinkled photos and mismatched paintings over an industrial-gray carpet, worn down over decades of service. None of the plates match, and there’s one beer on draft, $13.95 for a pitcher.

Food prices have hardly soared with the times, either. Pascucci says they’ve rarely had to increase prices until recently, thanks to a longtime affordable rent agreement with their landlords at Squidco, another multi-generation, family-owned business. “I literally have raised prices probably three times this year, because of the fact that my mom had prices from, like, 1992,” she laughs.

It’s still a screaming deal—my linguini with clams cost a whopping $15.95 and easily serves two. You can feed a kid for less than 10 bucks. A glass of wine is $7.

Despite the family’s disinterest in traditional advertising, decades of word-of-mouth referrals have proved to be enough to keep loyal regulars coming back again and again and again. Just don’t look for them on delivery apps. “My focus is my customers that are in the restaurant,” Pascucci says. The kitchen is tiny, and, frankly, they don’t need the added stress.

Speaking of stress, soon after my visit to Volare, I find myself gritting my teeth as my car scrapes and bounces its way along the crumbling stretch of University Avenue from Rolando Park to City Heights. “This food better be worth it,” I whisper to myself.

But once I step inside the 600-or-so-seat Chinese banquet hall at City Heights’ Diamond Palace resplendent with glittering chandeliers; Chiavari chairs; and white-tableclothed tables piled high with pan-fried potstickers, shrimp siu mai, and steamed pork buns—the intense salivation prompted by the glorious scents helps wash my irritation away. Aromas of scallions, chili oil, roasting meat… my olfactory glands are working overtime.

Michael Tran is one of the four partners behind Diamond Palace, which opened in 2022. It’s hardly a new endeavor for the longtime restaurateur—he’s worked in restaurants for the better part of 30 years, 23 of them as general manager at another San Diego dim sum giant. That experience helped him launch what he believes is the biggest (and best) dim sum restaurant in the county.

He points to the menu, each item accompanied by a picture. “[Ordering is] very easy,” he promises, even for first-timers. While the restaurant does get plenty of Chinese guests, he says City Heights’ heavily international neighborhood brings in diners from all over the world, including many refugees and immigrants from Somalia, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

“Weekdays, we’re not that busy. You can show up with 20 people, no problem,” Tran says. But on weekends or holidays, the dining room often fills up for both lunch and dinner, especially when a private party books the adjoining room that can be sectioned off.

Dim sum is always available, as is the regular kitchen menu with dishes like Peking duck and salt-and-pepper shrimp. To get the most out of your visit, Tran encourages guests to order a variety of options without fear. Don’t like one? “Don’t worry, I’ll take it back,” he promises. “I’ll make it simple, easy.” He doesn’t let me leave empty-handed, and I show enormous self-restraint not scarfing down all of the steamed custard buns before leaving the parking lot.

Of San Diego’s estimated 11,000 restaurants, only a small fraction of them ever appear on a TV show or the pages of a glossy magazine. Many of them have managed to survive, against all odds, without viral videos or even reliable hours. Even the most adventurous eaters can fall prey to new restaurant FOMO I’m guilty of it. But it’s worth exploring those quiet spaces built not on the backs of giants, but grandparents and dreamers. These restaurants provide more than food. It’s a legacy. And it tastes great.

The post 3 Popular San Diego Restaurants You’ve Likely Never Heard Of appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

It’s 74 degrees out, the sun is shining, and the 54-year-old is pushing through bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 8 freeway at 5 o’clock on a Tuesday evening. But she’s not going to Ocean Beach for a last minute dip. No, she’s headed in the opposite direction—to an overgrown strip on the outskirts of the Admiral Baker Golf Course that’s peppered with broken beer bottles and tents.

The reason? One of her wireless cameras picked up footage of a dog that she’s been tracking. Fry runs A Way Home for Dogs, a charity dedicated to finding lost pets for free, so this is equivalent to her Bat Signal—or Babs Signal. She has to go inspect the area, personal safety be damned.

“The jolt for me is when the hunt is on. You get a sighting, and we’re in the game. Let’s go,” Fry says. “This is life or death.”

And for Fry, it is her life. She’s been helping San Diegans reunite with their pets, day in and day out, for the last 10 years. Each month, Fry helps locate “dozens” of pets, according to her estimate.

Today, she’s already driven from her home in East County to La Jolla, then to Fiesta Island, before heading toward the golf course. A half dozen dog leashes, hanging from her rearview mirror like rosaries, and a moderate amount of fur accessorize her GMC Yukon. She herself is dressed in a black t-shirt reading “Dog Rescue in Progress.”

She says the long drives don’t faze her; this is just another afternoon on the job.

“I don’t take days off,” Fry adds. “Dogs don’t take days off.”

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As Fry maneuvers through traffic, the radio is muted. Listening to music would be futile, because her iPhone rings every other minute with texts and calls from owners looking for help. One woman who reaches Fry is frantic, asking for pointers on the best gameplan to find her four-pound Pomeranian, who escaped from her house earlier that day.

“There are so many coyotes around here,” the woman says anxiously.

“Are you talking to Babs?” a friend of hers asks faintly in the background—proof of the local fame Fry has garnered as a “pet recovery specialist.” (Fry, beyond helping locals find their companions, has assisted owners as far away as Shanghai.)

Fry tells the woman to keep calm and follow her directions. Her first piece of advice is one that many owners find counterintuitive: “I would not be out actively looking for your dog,” Fry says. “The biggest mistake people make is they go off racing for their dog. And their dog is looking for them, and now they’re spreading their smell everywhere.”

That creates confusion for the pup, Fry continues, and extends the time they’re lost. The odds a dog returns home, Fry says later, are “directionally proportional to people staying the fuck out of the way.” The second step, she tells the woman, is to put an old sock in her front yard, because her dog will be acutely familiar with the scent. Fry asks the woman to contact her soon with any updates—and adds that she doesn’t need to worry about bothering her, because she’s available 24/7.

Fry says she learned these lessons the hard way a decade ago, when one of her dogs went missing for 10 days. “For a day and a half, I was an idiot,” she recalls. “I chased my dog, I searched for my dog, I did everything wrong.” After receiving input from Mike Noon, who runs a dog-finding service called CatchingPaws that assists owners in the greater Los Angeles area, Fry discovered her lost pup—and her calling in life.

A recovering alcoholic with 17 years of sobriety under her belt, Fry had previously worked in finance. That was nowhere near as rewarding as tracking down lost pets, though, she says. Fry—who had a hysterectomy in her 20s, barring her from having children with her Navy vet husband—feels that the dogs are more like kids than animals to her.

“When you get clean and sober, at the end of the day, you need purpose,” Fry says. “For me, this work and my dogs are sometimes the only reason I get up in the morning. They give me a reason to live. They remind me of unconditional love.”

After ending her call with the Pomeranian owner, Fry admits she’s reluctant to share “the recipe” for finding dogs in a magazine. Her concern is people will merely follow what they read, rather than reach out to her. And that’s a problem, she says, because there is no set playbook for locating a lost pup.

“This is a dance. The dog is picking a card, and I’m the dance instructor,” Fry continues. “And until your dog pulls that card, we don’t know whether we’re doing the waltz, the tango, or whatever.”

When Fry pulls up to the golf course, she’s ready to roll.

She jumps out of her truck, grabs a bag with supplies out of the back, and makes a beeline for her camera. It’s wrapped around a tree, pointing toward a large cage that she uses to trap lost dogs. Altogether, Fry has about 20 cameras—which run between $150 and $500 each—that she monitors via several iPhone apps. The dog she’s tracking is nowhere in sight, so Fry fills the cage with pieces of rotisserie chicken and summer sausage, then sprays the plants nearby with chicken broth and liquid smoke, to try and lure it back later. Before leaving, she marches up to the door of several RVs that are parked nearby, seeking intel.

Earlier in the day, at Fiesta Island, Fry looked like Napoleon scanning a battlefield. She squinted toward the sun, hands on her hips, and directed Michelle Jones, a 43-year-old nurse, as she searched for a missing cat. (Fry helps cat owners, too.) Jones knew to turn to Fry because she’d already used her guidance to find a lost dog.

“She’s incredible,” Jones says. “She takes into account patterns, where the dog has been, and what kind of personality it has. She’s savant-ish.”

Jones says that’s why she recently contributed $500 to Fry’s operation. A Way Home for Dogs is a 501(c)(3) that runs on donations—and Fry’s own savings, occasionally. Fry says the organization requires several thousand dollars a month to operate, with the bulk of that money going toward digital cameras, SIM cards, cages, gas, and food to lure in lost animals.

But Fry explains that Jones’ largess is the exception, not the rule.

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“I get yelled at for free every day,” Fry says. “It’s amazing when you do things for free, how people can be. But I am reminded there are some amazing human beings in the world.”

Fry explains she’s balked at turning her operation into a for-profit business for one reason: She doesn’t want money to be the deciding factor for whether people call her or not.

After coming up empty for answers at the golf course, Fry hops back into her Yukon and heads for downtown. Her next mission: scout for a lost dog that’d caused an accident on the 5 freeway. If she’s lucky, she’ll make it back home, where she runs a rescue shelter with 80 dogs, at around 10 p.m. That might give her just enough time to watch an episode of 90 Day Fiancé, she says, before hitting the road again tomorrow morning.

“I’m convinced God put this in my journey because he knows my people skills still need some fine-tuning,” Fry says. “But I don’t do it for people—I do it for the dogs.”

The post Meet San Diego’s Renowned Pet Detective, Babs Fry appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Little did the Radys realize that, within a few decades, it would be impossible to live in San Diego without knowing their name.

Rady founded his primary business, American Assets, Inc., in 1967. The real estate company grew substantially over the years, eventually going public in 2011 as American Assets Trust. In 1971, Rady launched the Insurance Company of the West. The success of those businesses has allowed him to offer changemaking contributions to some of the biggest medical, educational, and cultural institutions in town.

UC San Diego’s graduate business school bears Rady’s name, as does the now-iconic, shell-shaped, open-air music venue operated by the San Diego Symphony at the Embarcadero.

The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park broke ground in September 2019 and opened in August 2021, so most of the construction took place in the throes of the pandemic. San Diego Symphony CEO Martha Gilmer recalls staring out at the build site with Rady, contemplating the future in an era when so much was uncertain. “Standing next to him on those occasions, I felt his great humanity and that this was something that was making him optimistic about emerging from that time,” she says. “If you look at Ernest’s great contributions around our city, they are human-based.”

Rady himself would prefer everyone focused on other humans—not him. “You know, if I had my druthers, I’d just as soon be less prominent and visible,” he says.

For him, it’s all about Rady Children’s Hospital.

Rady ended up on the hospital’s board in the ’80s because he owed a building-related debt to Tom Carter, who, at the time, was the chief loan officer at Great American Bank. Carter, whose son was born with a hearing impairment, was active with the children’s hospital.

“Tom took me out for lunch one day and said, ‘You want to be on the board of the children’s hospital?’” Rady recalls. “And I said, ‘Okay.’ I owed them so much money that it wasn’t really optional.”

A few years later, the then-chairman told Rady it was his turn to step up. He began his tenure as chairman of the board of the hospital, serving from 1990 to 1993.

“I had other opportunities which would have been less costly than my involvement with what is now Rady Children’s, but foolishly, I chose the hospital,” Rady jokes.

During his tenure on the board, he recruited other members and supported the hospital’s leaders. Since he stepped down more than 20 years ago, “they’ve done fantastic without me,” Rady says. “I tell them, ‘You didn’t really need me, and you probably didn’t even want me.’ If I’m anything in this environment, I’m a cheerleader.”

His cheerleading has included major financial gifts.

After Rady and Evelyn announced a $60 million contribution in 2006 that helped pay for a massive expansion of the institution’s treatment capacity, the hospital was renamed for the family. That donation has since been dwarfed by the Radys themselves, more than once.

A second gift of $120 million in 2014 became the seed money for the Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine, designed to help the hospital tailor treatment to each patient’s DNA and research the genetic underpinnings of common childhood diseases.

Then, in 2019, the Radys made the single biggest donation in the hospital’s history—$200 million—to redevelop and expand its facilities. In August of last year, the hospital broke ground on a new, seven story tower. Projected to open in 2028, it will house 140 intensive care beds and four operating rooms, doubling the size of the emergency department. The building will also include three dedicated intensive care units.

The project is slated to cost around $1.2 billion, and Rady Children’s CEO Dr. Patrick Frias says Rady’s donation made it possible for them to raise the other funds needed for the massive undertaking.

“He’s someone who has been innovative in his career and life, and he likes to hear about the opportunities to innovate,” Frias adds. “But he also wants to support things that we need and not just bright shiny objects.”

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Rady insists that writing the check is the easy part.

“I get gratitude from people whose children have been served, and I tell them, ‘Don’t thank me. Thank the people at the hospital who do all the work,’” he continues. “I’m grateful to have my name associated with this magnificent institution that is the children’s hospital, even though I deserve very little of any credit.”

Rady also emphasizes that everyone in the community has a responsibility to give back—and that you don’t need wealth to make a difference. “This isn’t only about money,” he says. “They have, I don’t know, 500 or 1,000 volunteers at Rady Children’s. Some people provide service animals to come and amuse the children. There are all kinds of things that people can do and, frankly, that require a lot more effort than what I do.”

Rady’s primary emotion is gratitude—that he lives in San Diego; that his health has allowed him to continue working and giving back; that he has his wife of 64 years, three children, and five grandchildren.

“You know, people have to find a vocation, a hobby, an interest that gives them satisfaction,” he says. “Those who have [resources] ought to feel that they should be a part of the community and do what they can.”

According to Frias, the hospital and many other nonprofits in San Diego are only able to provide comprehensive assistance and services to the community because individuals like the Radys contribute to their causes. Gilmer agrees.

“If you’re going to get anything like a hospital built or create a performance space, or if you’re going to invest in infrastructure to support better living conditions for people, it doesn’t just happen with earned revenue or government subsidies,” she says. “It doesn’t happen without individuals. Without philanthropy, we wouldn’t have the city we have. There are some incredibly generous people in this city, and Ernest and Evelyn are some of them, as quietly as they want to do it.”

The post The (Not So) Secret Work of Billionaire Philanthropist Ernest Rady appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Real estate moguls Matthew and Iris Strauss purchased the 6,000-square-foot dwelling, situated directly next door to their own art-filled private residence, in 1999. “We more or less took it down to the base, with an eye toward turning it into an art gallery,” Iris says. Ever since, it’s held the Strauss Family Foundation, a contemporary art collection that steadily expanded with the Strausses’ trips to Miami’s Art Basel, the Venice Biennale, and other renowned art fairs. Today, the collection is valued at approximately $20 million, according to the family.

But, soon, all that art will move to a new home: In October 2023, the Strauss family donated the entire collection to UC San Diego. They also gave the foundation house, which will be sold to create an endowment fund for the art’s maintenance. UCSD, in turn, is building a museum as part of the incoming Triton Center, a new central campus hub that will also include an alumni building. Named The Strauss, the arts space is slated to open in fall 2026.

It’s a natural progression of the Strausses’ longtime vision. “Mom and Dad always felt it was very important that the art be seen by the public,” says the couple’s son, Steven Strauss.

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The foundation offered 12 to 15 pre-booked tours a year. Matthew, who passed away in August 2024 at the age of 91, particularly enjoyed welcoming student visitors and often led tours himself. “He loved it when they would come in with their phones and then, after a few minutes, they would put their phone away, and they’d start looking at the art and they’d start asking questions,” Steven remembers.

The family has also been deeply involved with UCSD for years. After their two daughters passed away from cancer, Matthew and Iris became leaders at UC San Diego Health, donating significant funds to research a cancer vaccine and establishing the Iris and Matthew Strauss Center for Early Detection of Ovarian Cancer. Steven and his wife funded the new Steven Strauss and Lise Wilson Cardiomyopathy Center in 2021. However, they dreamed of doing more for the campus’s arts scene, as well.

“[Matthew] used to say, ‘Every great institution has a museum,’” Iris recalls. “‘You look at Yale, you look at Harvard, you look at Stanford—they all have an art museum. We should have one here [at UCSD], too.’”

The museum’s presence on campus will offer students increased opportunities to do what Matthew didn’t: get into art in their youth.

“My husband never really knew anything about art, and he was never that interested. He was too busy being a businessman,” Iris says of the early days of their marriage. “I was an art major in school, so I knew something. Once we got the house [in the 1980s], we started looking at the walls. We said, ‘We need art. It’s empty.’”

They began by hiring an art consultant, but within two months, Matthew’s curiosity had grown. The couple elected to handle acquisition themselves. “We decided we wanted art of our time,” Iris adds. They began attending art fairs and then became involved with the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla.

“Once we joined the museum, we really got going,” Iris says. “The director at that time was Hugh Davies, and he had arranged a trip for collectors to go to Documenta in Germany, which was and is one of the greatest art shows ever. We signed up—our kids were grown and married, our grandchildren in college, so we went and we made friends there.” Among them were Irwin Jacobs and his late wife Joan, who became Iris’ best friend. “We really saw art,” Iris continues. “Oh, boy, we saw great art, and that really was it.”

By 2009, ArtNews Magazine named the couple among the world’s top 200 collectors. Matthew eventually wrote a 600-page almanac documenting more than 860 major artists of the last 800 years. But he maintained an interest in up-and-coming, boundary-pushing creatives, as well.

“He wouldn’t just look for the most pleasing pieces, but pieces that he thought were unique, the best work of the artist, maybe challenging,” Steven says. When the Strausses began separating the foundation collection from their personal one, those edgier, younger works became the focus of the former.

New acquisitions, commissions, and exhibitions at The Strauss museum will share that polestar. “It’s really where contemporary art will meet technology,” says Jess Berlanga Taylor, director and curator of UCSD’s Stuart Collection. She’s leading the creation of The Strauss. “We’re also asking ourselves what the future of art is through our programs. We’ll be presenting immersive environments. We’ll be working with augmented realities and VR and AI and everything that digital artists are doing nowadays.”

She wants the museum to be a “portal”—to a place both familiar and transformative. “Most museums are still based on the 18th-century tradition in which art is in one place, and life happens elsewhere. That is something that doesn’t work for our societies nowadays. So we’re really looking at creating a space where it’s truly social, and you’re surrounded by art,” Taylor says. “We’re hoping that, because of one of our exhibitions, you suddenly feel connected to something much bigger than yourself.”

For her part, Iris’ dream is to drive a new generation of art lovers. “I hope that [visiting The Strauss] enhances their way of thinking, or perhaps even their life, because art just does that for you,” she says. “It would be very empty to live without it.”

The foundation house—mostly devoid of furniture but nearly bursting at the seams with color and history—is proof.

The post New UCSD Museum Will Feature the Strauss Foundation’s $20M Collection appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

On the surface, America often looks divided.

Election maps present California as blue—along with its coastal neighbors and many East Coast cousins—while the middle is presented as red. This zoomed-out view provides a simple visual dichotomy for people to understand, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. I’ve been a bartender throughout my life, and I can tell you that, when you sit down on the barstool and look close, Americans are often purple in person. The space that divides our country isn’t as wide as it often appears.

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the classrooms of San Diego Refugee Tutoring (SDRT), a nonprofit in City Heights that pairs elementary, middle, and high school students from refugee families with volunteers who help the kids learn English and math. Naïvely, I walked in expecting a small operation— maybe a handful of kids, a few tutors. But what I saw was so much more.

Seventy-five students showed up, and each one had a tutor ready to work one-on-one for an hour-and-a-half during dinner time. Kids—no matter where they’re from or how big the challenges they face—love to learn, and their tutors were there to engage their curiosity. Some volunteers from North County drive every week during rush hour. Others leave their jobs as special education teachers to then come tutor for free. One is a marine helicopter pilot. Being among them was an instant reminder: People care.

Over the course of my reporting career, I’ve seen that, regardless of who is in the White House or the mayor’s office, day-to-day people are out there trying to make a difference for one another. Like at SDRT, they’re working together, sharing resources, and improving our communities in countless ways. It’s a cool thing to see and feel inspired by. That’s why we’ve dedicated this issue to the people and organizations working to make San Diego better, because collaboration greases the wheels of progress.

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In our annual Charitable Giving guide, you’ll find stories of people helping people, including a neighborhood group who stepped up after flooding devastated Southeast San Diego last winter and a nonprofit mentoring foster kids in our city. There are stories of volunteers and organizers and leaders—and one very special mom who, on the path to understanding her child’s seizures, ended up with a PhD.

Later in the issue, we’re climbing in a truck and setting traps with a local woman working tirelessly to help San Diegans—and people all over the world—reunite with their missing pets. And you’ll learn more about local icons whose gifts have transformed San Diego. There’s much here to be inspired by. This is an issue to remind us all of the power of giving what we can, doing what we can, and building what we can, the best way that we can: together.

The post Editor’s Note, December 2024: The Philanthropy Issue appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

“I wanted nothing to do with my own culture as a kid,” says CH Projects founder Arsalun Tafazoli over a plate of kebabs and manakish and a greatest hits parade of Middle Eastern sauces (toum, amba, zhoug, garlicky yogurt elixirs of all kinds) in the movie set that is Leila, his new restaurant in North Park. “It wasn’t cool to be Middle Eastern when I was growing up. Then 9/11 happened. I tried to disappear into SoCal American culture.”

In Leila’s open kitchen, a vertical log fire licks glistening fat off kebabs on massive skewers. Steam rises from a custom-made tabun, stuffed with naan and pita and barbari. The air is starchy and caramelized with rice. The ceiling is blackened, with pinhole lights conjuring stars. Every surface has been decoratively rugged, amber-lit with oil lamps. A life-sized lion head is etched in the synthetic rock staircase leading to the bar on the second level.

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“You have all of these ideas to try and create something meaningful, and you never know when you’re going to go too far,” Tafazoli says. “Even as we were installing the ceiling—this massive thing we’ve built because we hope it will make it a more immersive place—I was thinking Is this the thing that will make it look cheesy?”

Tafazoli’s parents immigrated to San Diego from Iran when he was young, his mom raising him largely on her own in University Heights. As both survival instinct and escape, he read—books, culture mags, music blogs, art leaflets, everything, obsessively, all the time. He forged documents to get into La Jolla High, the revered “good school” in the affluent nearby neighborhood. That self preservationist nerding manifests in the art-project hospitality concepts of CH: Craft & Commerce, Born & Raised, Polite Provisions, the LaFayette Hotel, and many others, including Leila.

When his mom passed a few years ago, Tafazoli allowed himself his own history. He went back to the Middle East (not Iran, for reasons), loitered in night markets and bazaars, and took notes on culture and how cities and towns and villages built inspiring environs. “Everywhere I went, there was water, whether a stream or a fountain,” he says, pointing to water cascading down a 30-foot rock wall into a lagoon and the creek that runs through the restaurant. “So we made sure you could hear water from every seat in here.”

Tafazoli’s base instinct is selfmockery, so he shares his favorite story. His plan was to find merchants and artists, pay them well, pack everything onto shipping containers, and build Leila out of Middle Eastern handiwork. “So, I’m at a small market, explaining my whole international shipping system to this man,” he recalls. “He looks at me kind of weird and says, ‘Why don’t you just order from our Etsy page?’”

CH brought in exec chef Wesley Remington Johnson, who led Portland restaurants (Tusk, Ava Gene’s) and worked under Michael Solomonov at the James Beard Award–winning Zahav. Even with the pedigree, they often enlist local Middle Eastern cooks, point to a bread or a batch of rice that’s not quite as good as mom’s, and ask for help. 

“I’m very clear to say we’re not claiming it to be the most authentic; we’re just inspired by the dishes and doing it our way,” Tafazoli adds. “Because no one is ever going to make tahdig as good as your mom. My mom used to say about Persian food, ‘Only men are allowed to work in restaurants, so restaurants suck.’”

They’re trying not to suck… and succeeding. In one corner, there’s a space, all flowy with gorgeous fabric, pictures, and paintings—his mom’s things, which are his things. 

The post Inside CH Projects’ New Persian Restaurant Leila appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

“One day, a friend stopped by [my job at Chrome Digital in Little Italy], and on a whim, I asked him to step into the street for a quick portrait,” Castillo says. “A few days later, another friend visited, and I snapped his portrait, too. That was the moment something clicked. I knew I was onto something.”

We’ve woven a selection of Castillo’s portraits throughout this issue because, well, we love people- watching. Humans are beautiful, unique, wild, and complicated. And fun to look at.

Richard Ybarra (above)

What’s one interesting fact about you that people—even your friends—may not know?

“My friends know me as a cowboy wannabe—they call me Buckaroo Richard. But what they don’t know is that I’m a Western TV and movie aficionado. I’m up at 4 a.m. watching my movies and shows.”

Nan Coffey

What’s one interesting fact about you that people—even your friends—may not know?

“When I was 12 years old, I carried the torch in the 1984 Summer Olympic Torch Relay. I ran my segment in Carmel, CA. I still have the torch.”

Drasko Bogdanovic

What’s your favorite SD memory?

“I work as a State Parks Lifeguard. I got to rescue a sea turtle during El Niño years back.”

Sofía Tannenhaus & Elena

What are you thankful for?

“I was widowed while I was pregnant and I am profoundly thankful to have a healthy, vibrant, and caring daughter. It is such a privilege to be her mother. I am forever grateful that my husband chose to marry me and for his last gift to me: our sweet girl.”

Denise Pomplun

What’s your favorite SD memory?

“Definitely going to breakfast and the swap meet on the weekend with my family. Me and my dad used to go eat at Jimmy’s Family Restaurant, then hit up Kobey’s. I always remember having the best time and getting so excited about what I would find.”

Chenoa Scalora

What’s one interesting fact about you that people—even your friends—may not know?

“I played the alto saxophone when I was in junior high. I played it because of Lisa Simpson—and because the teacher told me my hands were too small to play it, so I wanted to prove him wrong.”

Tone Anderson

What’s one interesting fact about that people—even your friends—may not know?

“My mom calls me Boo, still.”

Daniel Rodriguez

What are you thankful for?

“I’m thankful for the San Diego cycling community. Many people in that community invest their time and energy to host free local events that bring so many different cyclists together. At the same time, I appreciate the effort of local political leaders who have worked on improving city infrastructure to [make biking] safer and easier around San Diego.”

Lety Beers

What are you thankful for?

“I’m thankful for my music and skate family. Keeps my life rich and full of action and amazing friends.”

Vayunamu Bawa

What’s one interesting fact about that people— even your friends—may not know?

“I have always wanted to be a fashion designer and release a clothing line.”

BJ & Pete Jezbera

What’s one interesting fact about that people— even your friends—may not know?

“I have performed plays on three iconic stages in San Diego—The Old Globe, the La Jolla Playhouse, and San Diego Repertory Theatre.”

The post Photos: Portraits on Kettner appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

I pray we don’t topple over onto a stingray, thinking maybe kayaking isn’t the best tactic to get acquainted with our coast. Though I’ve lived in San Diego for four years, I have an embarrassingly flimsy relationship with the sea. In summer, I occasionally paddle board the bay, boogie board Moonlight Beach, toss tennis balls for my dog in OB, or amble along Sunset Cliffs. But after reading that La Jolla Cove boasts the densest variety of animal life at any US beach—even those in Hawaii or Alaska—I couldn’t help becoming curious about our front yard, a destination that over 4 million people visit annually.

Which is how I found myself here, battling the surf with Mulligan, an ocean conservation coordinator for local nonprofit Wildcoast, an environmental organization co-founded by whale scholar Serge Dedina and turtle conservationist Wallace J. Nichols 25 years ago. Today, Dedina still helms Wildcoast, but he’s quick to give credit for the robustness of La Jolla’s marine protected areas (MPAs) to his staff—70 percent of which are women.

November 28, 2022

Consider the WhaleRELATED ARTICLE

“Look at all these people recreating,” Mulligan exclaims, motioning at the clumps of kayakers and paddle boarders mingling outside the caves in the MPA that Wildcoast actively monitors. “They’re here because they know they will see marine animals.”

She points out silvery bait fish darting amid kelp forests, along with orange Garibaldi (California’s state fish), leopard sharks, cormorants, and pelicans, all markers of ocean health. “Look for the green sea turtles,” she adds, tying her hair into a knot and peering into the water. “La Jolla has four.”

Dedina calls the Eastern Pacific green sea turtle one of Wildcoast’s biggest success stories. When he and Nichols were young PhD candidates surfing southern Baja, they only ever saw dead turtles. Over 30,000 were slaughtered annually to serve as a pre-Viagra food that purportedly increased male virility.

Wildcoast’s earliest campaign, masterminded by communications and policy director Fay Crevoshay, rallied the pope to speak out in support of protected places for nesting mothers. The team put up signs on beaches, on billboards, and in newspapers; on them, a model posed beside the words “My man doesn’t need turtle eggs, because he knows they don’t make it more powerful” in Spanish. This got locals educating their neighbors about not eating turtles.

The latter became a key part of Wildcoast’s approach: Start small by encouraging residents to protect their wildlands. Rather than having some outside wonks policing fragile ecosystems, collaborate with folks on the ground, teaching and inviting them to become invested in safeguarding their backyards from harm. Turns out that working with Mexican communities to protect sea creatures south of the border benefits the overall health and diversity of San Diego’s coastal regions, too.

After seeing too many stories of blue whale sightings off San Diego’s coast to ignore, I book a summer whale-watching trip. Eager faces peer into the blue, seeking an Instagrammable moment. As La Jolla’s palaces shimmer atop fragile sandstone cliffs, docents wax poetic about San Diego’s rich waters. It is possible to see whales year-round here: gray, humpback, orca, fin, Bryde’s, blue.

“Whales rebounded because we stopped whaling,” says Russell D. Moore, whale-watching boat captain with Xplore Offshore. “Today, our waters are a testament to a well-managed biosystem. Wildcoast has contributed to that.”

It’s true. Twenty-five years ago, a coalition of conservationists, including Wildcoast, stopped Mitsubishi from constructing a massive salt mine in San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja, an important gray whale breeding site. Five years later, the team helped to permanently safeguard 450,000 acres there. Today, that space is a marine protected area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With their breeding site preserved, the whales are thriving.

“More whales mean we have another problem,” Moore says. “San Diego is the Wild West of whale watching—boats are harassing whales by getting too close.”

So, in response, Wildcoast’s Ann Wycoff, Annelise Tappe, and Devon Lukasiewicz developed the Protect the Locals campaign to educate whale-watching guides and visitors on the importance of keeping a safe distance, so our beloved whales’ breeding and migration patterns aren’t disrupted by our adoration.

On my whale-watching venture, none grace us with their presence. Surprisingly few visitors appear disappointed. Rather, people seem energized by the salty wind on our faces; the pod of dolphins that swoops in to say hello isn’t a shabby consolation prize, either.

Another morning on the water, this time on a speedboat gliding north from Mission Bay. The resident dog, a mutt called Captain, sits next to Joe Cooper, the boat’s true captain, barking whenever she spots a sea lion or dolphin.

Despite my kayaking struggles, Mulligan and Cooper invited me on one of their monitoring excursions to educate fishers about marine protected areas. San Diego County boasts 11 MPAs: Tijuana River Mouth (Tijuana Estuary), Cabrillo (off southern Point Loma), Famosa Slough (between Old Town and OB), two in south La Jolla, Matlahuayl (La Jolla Caves), San Diego-Scripps (La Jolla Shores), San Dieguito Lagoon (Del Mar), San Elijo Lagoon (Escondido), Batiquitos Lagoon (Carlsbad), and Swami’s (Encinitas).

In 2012, Wildcoast teamed up with NGOs and government officials to designate and protect important keystone coastal regions, like rocky reefs, kelp forests, and wetlands. Matlahuayl State Marine Reserve, which roughly translates as “land of many caves” in the area’s Indigenous Kumeyaay language, houses pregnant leopard sharks who come to bask in the warm waters, a tactic that shortens their gestation period by two months. Swami’s is the only kelp and eelgrass habitat between La Jolla and Palos Verdes.

The health of MPAs depends on compliance of no-take zones—areas where you cannot pull anything from the water, including fish. MPA Watch, San Diego’s citizen science group, monitors on land. Lifeguards and state park officials also supervise from shore. Wildcoast uses boats and radars to ensure no one fishes inside the MPA boundary.

For now, Wildcoast’s efforts appear to be mostly working. On a recent holiday weekend, Mulligan explains, they’d encountered a few boats fishing in the MPA, but most folks said they just didn’t know there was a boundary they couldn’t cross.

Mulligan often approaches these teachable moments with data, citing a 2022 Decadal Management Review proving that species diversity in MPA intertidal habitats is higher and more stable than outside MPAs and fish are more abundant, are larger, live longer, and produce more offspring. Another study showed MPAs may be more resilient to heatwaves, too. And, because species that become abundant in the MPAs leave the areas’ boundaries and increase populations in the surrounding waters, their success creates a domino effect.

Just before we head back into Mission Bay, Captain the dog lifts onto two legs and starts howling. A massive pod of dolphins leaps into our wake. There have to be 50 small cetaceans surrounding us, playing together, finding the dolphin equivalent of joy. Mulligan kicks off her shoes, gleeful.

“This never gets old,” Cooper says. His sunkissed face explodes into a grin.

Mulligan points at the dolphins vaulting around the boat. “They are why we do this.”

My tour of San Diego’s MPAs takes me to all but one: the Tijuana River Mouth State Marine Conservation Area. Once a gorgeous southern California wildland with perfect surf, today the area is an environmental travesty plagued by pollution.

Despite Wildcoast’s knack for pulling off feats of conservation in unlikely places, even Dedina, former mayor of Imperial Beach, cannot yet do away with the 60 million gallons of raw sewage seeping into the ocean each day. This year, South County waters have been too polluted to enter for more than 1,000 days. The situation is now the longest-lasting environmental disaster in US history.

Still, Wildcoast is doing what it can. The nonprofit’s marine debris manager in Tijuana, Rosario Norzagaray, is leading an educational campaign to teach locals not to toss garbage into the river. In addition, in 2021, her Wildcoast team installed a trash boom, a durable structure that catches river debris before it reaches the ocean. To date, they have collected over 250,000 pounds of garbage, repurposing old tires into playgrounds, building materials, and even structural foundations to halt hill erosion. In October, they placed a second boom, with hopes to add more in the coming years.

In addition, Norzagaray and her team have incentivized plastic as currency, adding a financial benefit to encourage residents to fight pollution in their neighborhoods. “Educating locals and installing trash booms doesn’t just empower communities,” Crevoshay says. “We’re stopping trash from floating up to San Diego.”

All this traveling through our region with Wildcoast shifted something in me. I’m no kayaker, but I’ve started regularly snorkeling, swimming, and paddle boarding in La Jolla. The ocean is no longer a stranger to me. There’s treasure here; I like to engage with it. And when I do, I often remember something Dedina told me.

“We cannot allow the problem to overwhelm the solution,” he said. “You can support efforts to safeguard and steward the place in San Diego that brings you joy, or you can ground yourself in despair. Why not ground yourself in solving the problem?”

Editor’s Note: The print version of this article, published November 2024, mistakenly stated that San Diego has six MPAs and misstated the amount of garbage collected by Wildcoast’s trash boom. We have also removed an incorrect quote.

The post How Wildcoast Keeps Our Marine Protected Areas Teeming With Life appeared first on San Diego Magazine.