This is the place to learn about Murietans who are helping save the lives of children, setting sports records and assuring generations of health care. It's also where you go to see Rod Hart in a tuxedo.

Son of longtime Murieta contributor weds at Country Club

The Hart family posed for a photo after the ceremony.

It was almost three decades ago that Rod Hart began working in Rancho Murieta at the Country Club. He has since gone on to become the head of the Maintenance Department at the Rancho Murieta Association and one of the community's best-known figures.

On March 15, his eldest son, Rodney Hart Jr., married Christina Adams at the club under an arbor Rod made for them -- he even added carved initials on the inside. The bridal couple posed with Rod and wife, Danette, on the steps of the club after the ceremony.

The arbor was hand made by the proud father.

Keeping the record in the family

Seventeen-year-old Dan Hansen traveled to Columbus, Ohio, with his dad, Kim Edwards, and set a national record March 29 in a competition that measures football players' speed, power, agility, reaction and quickness.

Dan, a junior at Pleasant Grove High School, set the national SPARQ rating record by competing in a Nike Football Combine. The combines are held annually all over the country and thousands of high school football players travel to participate in them. Players are tested in the 40 yard dash, the 20 yard shuttle, power ball throw and vertical jump and the numbers from each test are combined to come up with a SPARQ score. SPARQ is owned by Nike. The score gives coaches and athletes a measurement of athletic ability.

Dan Hansen picked up the record once held by his older brother, Tom Hansen.

It was four years ago that Dan's elder brother, Tom Hansen, broke the national SPARQ rating record. Tom's record held for two years before it was broken, according to Barbara Edwards, the boys' mother.

To get the record back in the family, Dan ran a 4.64 40-yard dash, a 4.25 shuttle, threw the power ball 41 feet 10 inches and jumped straight up 42.1 inches, his mother reports. The individual scores gave Dan a combined score of 131.97 to set the new SPARQ score record.

Cancer event shaves heads, raises $33,000

Five Murietans -- Steve Anderson, Chris Himmelman, Eric Dubey, Mary Walker and Jim Moore -- were part of a team of 42 people who shaved their heads March 14 to raise money for childhood cancer research. Led by Anderson, the Angels and Warriors team raised $33,000 for St. Baldrick's Foundation in this year's event. Anderson started the team in 2006, shortly after his infant daughter Aubrielle was diagnosed with leukemia.

Steve Anderson has helped fight against his daughter Aubrielle's disease.

Aubrielle, 3, successfully completed treatment for the disease last November. "Aubrille continues to get stronger and healthier every everyday! She is beautiful!" Anderson wrote in an e-mail reporting the results of this year's event. To make a donation to Angels and Warriors, click here.

Walking the Breast Cancer 3-Day

Murieta teenagers Brittany and Alyssa Pedersen are walking 60 miles over three days to raise funds and awareness for Susan G. Komen for the Cure and National Philanthropic Trust. The Breast Cancer 3-Day event takes place in the Bay Area Sept. 5-7.

Brittany stepped up to the podium at the March meeting of the Rancho Murieta Association to request donations as her proud father, Director Chris Pedersen, looked on from his seat on the board. Director Paul Gumbinger is another board member with a connection to the event -- his wife, Louise, has made the walk twice.

Participants are each required to raise $2,200 by the date the event begins to be able to make the walk. Donations to Brittany and Alyssa's team, Gaucho Girls, can be made here.

Relay for Life May 17

The American Cancer Society's Relay for Life event is an overnight event that includes a Survivors Lap and a luminaria ceremony. It's about celebration, remembrance and hope, and takes place May 17 at Cosumnes River College.
Learn about neighbor Denise Rooker's team here and her 11-year-old son Carter's CRES K Kids team here .

Bequest to Shriners Hospital honored

Taking part in the Shriner's Hospital ceremony were, from left, Martin and Karen Kehoe, Alicerae Hanley, Gaby Martel, Frank and Jean Simmons, Karen Rutkiewicz, Ginny Purdy, Bobbi and Art Belton, Claudia Taylor, Urb Stroy and Dick Taylor.

More than a dozen friends of the late Gloria Humphries attended a luncheon at Shriners Hospital for Children in Sacramento held to honor her bequest of $750,000 to the hospital's endowment fund.

While lunching in the board room, they shared stories about Mrs. Humphries' devotion to teaching, her love of bridge, and how you could often hear her playing her beloved grand piano as you passed by her home. Mrs. Humphries lived in Rancho Murieta for a dozen years. She died in 2003 at the age of 75.

Hospital administrators and board members dining with the group provided an introduction to the work of the hospital that left no doubt why Mrs. Humphries chose it as her beneficiary.

The hospital offers free medical care for all children who are patients in the three Shriner hospital specialties - spinal cord injuries, orthopedics and burns. Although there are 22 hospitals in the Shriner system, only the Sacramento facility - formally known as Shriners Hospitals for Children Northern California - offers all three under one roof. Administrators referred to it as the flagship of the organization.

The hospital has 80 patient beds and also nine parent apartments to accommodate the needs of children receiving the highly specialized care and their families. There is also an on-site public school and school re-entry programs for rehabilitation patients.

The endowment fund supports the hospitals, and Mrs. Humphries' friends were assured the funds she'd specifically donated to the Sacramento facility wouldn't be spent -- only the income they generated as part of the endowment fund.

After lunch, the group was provided with a tour of the hospital, which opened in 1997 on the site of the old state fairgrounds on Stockton Boulevard. It replaced the San Francisco Shriners Hospital. The eight-story building is flooded with light from an atrium that offers unparalleled views of the Capitol and downtown skyline.

The hospital has five operating rooms, research laboratories, and a lab where small artificial limbs and face masks for burn victims are designed and fabricated. In addition to burns, the facility treats spina bifida, spinal cord injuries and much more.

Yet when the group gathered at the atrium on the 7th floor to begin the tour, Alan Anderson, director of development, asked everyone to pause and listen to the sounds drifting up from the other floors opening onto the atrium. "What do you hear?" he asked. Strains of music and murmurs of conversation drifted upwards. It sounded more like a well-appointed hotel than a hospital, the group agreed.

When the tour reached the large game area circling the rim of the second floor atrium, the group saw children playing at games that required dexterity or movement. Anderson remarked this was "hospital as cruise ship," designed to promote social interaction and therapeutic play as part of the healing process.

But even before the tour began, Frank Simmons was convinced the hospital and his friend Gloria Humphries shared the same healing philosophy. All it took was the sight of the ebony grand piano on the 7th floor atrium. "That's Gloria," he said, pointing it out to the others.