Lana Stefanac and Women’s MMA–Writer’s Cut

At 5’10” and 210 pounds Lana Stefanac is a Goliath in stature, but her story is pure David. Just three years ago, at age thirty-one, she left behind her life in Ohio for California, drawn West in pursuit of a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Today the Danville resident owns an undefeated record in mixed martial arts, or MMA, the hybrid fighting sport where combatants punch, kick and grapple for victory. She stands at the center of the women’s MMA scene in the Bay Area, setting up fights, managing fighters, and now, with her newly opened school, helping other women realize their own hopes of getting in the cage, no easy endeavor. MMA’s largest and most popular organization refuses to hold women’s bouts. Men dominate most martial arts schools, where women command little attention. And even the sport’s fans are unfamiliar with most female fighters. But Stefanac is undeterred. “Girls love to fight.  When they realize that there’s a community, there’s a group, there’s a resource for that, they will come in flocks.” And like Stefanac did so many years ago, they have.

East Bay Express: Lana Stefanac and Women’s Mixed Martial Arts

By Herman Wong

June 17, 2009

Lana Stefanac can fight. The Danville resident is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champion, has fought in Abu Dhabi and Japan and New Zealand, and is undefeated as a mixed martial arts fighter. Just three years ago, at age thirty, she left behind her life in Ohio for California, drawn west in pursuit of a black belt. Today she is at the center of the Bay Area women’s mixed martial arts scene, matchmaking for fights, managing fighters, and now, with her newly opened school, training professionals at her own gym. Stefanac aspires to help other women acheive their own dreams of fighting — no easy endeavor. The sport’s largest and most popular organization refuses to hold fights for women, martial arts schools are filled mostly with men, and even fans of mixed martial arts are unfamiliar with most female fighters. All this makes Stefanac an underdog. At five-foot-ten and 210 pounds, Stefanac is a Goliath in stature, but her story is pure David.

SF Weekly Best Of 2009

SF Weekly Best of 2009

By Herman Wong

Best Human Guide to Endangered Species
Brent Plater

Brent Plater, who teaches in the environmental studies department at San Francisco State University, possesses a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the endangered birds, plants, and fish found in the Bay Area. Last year he put his nature smarts to use. The former Bay Area director of the Center for Biological Diversity organized a massive treasure hunt to encourage people to see all 33 threatened and endangered species in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The contest, called the GGNRA Big Year, drew a few thousand people over the course of a year for trips to spots like Fort Funston to see California sea otters, or to the Presidio to find the yellow Lessingia flower. Plater has a story for every species: The Raven’s manzanita is not merely an evergreen shrub but the “loneliest plant in the world,” the Western snowy plover is “the cutest little puffball of feathers,” and the humpback whale the “most acrobatic whale.” This year Plater has been campaigning for the restoration of Pacifica’s Sharp Park Golf Course into a habitat for endangered animals, and was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach environmental law and policy in Trinidad in 2010.

Best Step Forward in Health Care
Healthy San Francisco

Healthy San Francisco, the city’s fledgling universal health care program, is a bold promise in the most uncertain of times. For its 37,000 members — most with incomes at or below the federal poverty level — Healthy San Francisco offers the possibility of regular treatment instead of seeing the doctor only when something is wrong. The program represents initiative at a time when accessible health care is needed more than ever, and so won the city praise from President Barack Obama. Some critics decry an increase in wait times for care, but for those enrolled in Healthy San Francisco, their membership cards afford them one less worry in a worrisome economy. And that should make us all feel a little better.

Best Place for Families to Help Others
San Francisco Food Bank, Sunday Family Hours

Put off your family vacation to help put some food on another family’s table. About a year and a half ago, the San Francisco Food Bank, which moves 33 million pounds of food through its warehouse each week, started letting parents bring kids as young as 4 on Sundays to volunteer and help pack food for the needy. The program has welcomed families to sort produce, divvy up rice into individual bags, and stamp labels on cans. Regular three-hour shifts have been reduced to 90 minutes to accommodate the younger crowd, with about 80 to 120 people showing up each week. With the Food Bank receiving 25 percent more requests for food in March 2009 compared with the year before, every little helping hand counts. A Sunday at the Food Bank is no trip to Disneyland, but in these tough times, maybe that’s a good thing.

Potrero View: Healthy San Franciscans Find a Home at San Francisco General Hospital

Healthy San Franciscans Find a Home at San Francisco General Hospital

By Herman Wong

Federico Lauchengco represents the best of what Healthy San Francisco, the City’s universal health care program, hopes to achieve.  Last year the 54-year-old enrolled in the program and began receiving regular checkups at San Francisco General Hospital.  For the first time since he immigrated to the United States five years ago Lauchengco had his cholesterol level and blood pressure tested. His sister, Elvira Lazaro, who accompanied Lauchengco to the hospital, said Healthy San Francisco represented security against the unpredictability of illness.  “There’s a place to go if he is sick,” Lazaro said.  “It makes him feel secure that if anything ever happened he has a place to go.”

As of last month, a year and a half after its launch, Healthy San Francisco had more than 37,000 participants, providing health care access to roughly half of the City’s previously uninsured residents.  In February the program expanded its eligibility requirements, offering access to San Franciscans who make as much as 500 percent of the federal poverty level, about $54,000 for an individual or $110,000 for a family of four.  Up to 12,000 of the City’s currently uninsured residents fall into this category.

Under Healthy San Francisco, participants select a clinic, or medical home, to receive care.  SF General is the second largest provider in Healthy San Francisco’s network of 31 clinics, which also includes the Potrero Hill and South East Health Centers.  Through three of its clinics, SFGH provides care to one-fifth of Healthy San Francisco participants, roughly 7,400 people.  Doctors at the hospital say that they’re seeing more patients, different patients, and, increasingly, patients seeking long-term, preventive care.

But the program also faces growing pains.  Anecdotal evidence indicates that wait times for care have lengthened. And the economic downturn threatens to swell the number of uninsured while also forcing the city to cutting budgets, even at the hospital.  “People are working harder with less right now,” said Dr. Hali Hammer, director of SF General’s Family Health Center, which provides care to 11 percent of all Healthy San Francisco participants. “But I think we all feel really good to be part of this innovative new system and just hope that once it’s clear that when we need more resources we will be able to get them.”

SF Weekly: Jobless professionals seek work at Alcatraz

Jobless professionals seek work at Alcatraz

By Herman Wong

published: April 08, 2009

In an odd turn, the recession is sending formerly well-paid professionals to prison. Well, sort of. Alcatraz is hiring! And this season, the island has attracted an unprecedented number and mix of applicants to contend for the chance to hand out audio tour guides or ring up jailhouse souvenirs for $12 an hour. But can they survive on the Rock?

SF Weekly: Change for the Worse

Change for the Worse

Some local Obama supporters hit hard times after the election.

By Herman Wong

published: March 11, 2009

Noelle Lewis is a poster child for Barack Obama volunteers. Politically motivated for the first time in her life, the 28-year-old San Francisco resident paid her own way to Las Vegas during the campaign to knock on doors on his behalf. On Election Day, she took the day off work to join other volunteers at the Oakland Marriott Convention Center to call voters in other states to rally last-minute support.”I’ve never really been involved with anything that was part of history while it was happening,” Lewis says. “I felt lucky that I was.”

But the problem with making history is the hangover. About 1.5 million people actively volunteered to help elect Obama as the 44th U.S. president. But from November to January, the country lost more than 1.6 million jobs. For some Obama volunteers, the deteriorating job market has made the inevitable return to reality a steep fall.

SF Weekly: Gimme Shelter

Gimme Shelter

Musician once played for the homeless as charity. Now he is homeless.

By Herman Wong

published: February 25, 2009

In these bad times, even good Samaritans are just a step away from tripping into misfortune. Take the case of the piano player who suddenly appeared late last year to play a little music (like Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”) for the homeless staying at the Interfaith Council’s winter shelter program, which feeds and houses 80 men from November through February at various churches. This good-hearted musician is still playing at the shelter, but now he also stays the night.

SF Weekly: Recession Pet Stories

Dogs also losing their homes in foreclosure

By Herman Wong

published: February 11, 2009

Recession horror stories now have new victims: pets. Animal rescue organizations in the Bay Area say they have been getting more and more calls from people who say they can’t keep their furry friends — mostly dogs — after losing their homes.Kim Durney of San Francisco’s Grateful Dog Rescue began receiving foreclosure-related calls last fall. One story proved unforgettable. A real-estate appraiser inspecting a foreclosed home in the East Bay discovered an abandoned 3-year-old Rottweiler so starved that she lacked even the milk to feed her six puppies. “That people would walk away and leave their dog to starve is just so incomprehensible,” Durney says.

SF Weekly: San Francisco Gay Mormon Couple and Prop 8

Drama Season

Prop. 8 divides Mormon family during the holidays.

By Herman Wong

published: December 17, 2008

In fewer than five months, Billy Hutchinson’s parents went from smiling at his wedding to voting against his marriage.Raised as Mormons, neither Hutchison nor his longtime partner, Scott Wilkinson, was surprised when the Church of Latter-Day Saints came out in support of Proposition 8. But Hutchinson never anticipated that his parents would donate $200 to support California’s gay marriage ban. Now Wilkinson wants nothing to do with his in-laws. The annual Christmas visit to see the folks in Calaveras County is off, and Hutchinson feels caught in the middle. “I don’t know what to do now,” he says.

Braving the Streets–San Francisco Salvation Army Red Kettle Bell Ringer

I’m standing on the street wearing a red apron and jingling a three-inch bell in the freezing cold. Sometimes the swarm of people becomes so thick and crowded that I have to retract my ringing arm, and I look like a T-Rex shaking a twig. And there’s three hours left to go. But hey, it’s for a good cause.

Every Christmas season the Salvation Army unleashes its cadre of red kettle bell ringers into the world to collect money for its many programs. Not surprising, the plastic buckets have been coming back a bit lighter this year. “We’re not making as much as we thought we would,” says Amy Keene, the red kettle project coordinator at the Army’s Tenderloin center.

Wanting to help I sign up and get a plum assignment–the Charles Schwab building on Montgomery and Sutter Streets. But I’m not the only vendor at this market: when I arrive a panhandler in black is already working the corner.  His message: “Very Poor, Need Money.” Acknowledging he’s been out-branded, the man cedes the spot and leaves while I set up.  Score!