Here’s some cheer to get the holiday season started: Augie Nieto is “leg-pressing and lifting both legs up off the wheelchair” he’s been confined to by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, reports Ivo Tjan of CommerceWest Bank. Word of Augie’s progress came earlier this month in Beverly Hills, where the 7th Annual Tradition of Hope Gala for Augie’s Quest—which is chaired by Augie and wife Lynne—honored R.D. Olson’s Bob Olson. The event helped Augie’s Quest pass the $35 million mark on fundraising, and the total comes to more than $77 million counting money raised for the ALS Therapy Development Institute in Cambridge, Mass., which is chaired by Nieto and is part of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Augie reports that 51 employees recently moved into a new research center in Cambridge with 26,000 square feet of laboratory space. There are promising results on a first drug in development, and progress on a second. “We have momentum,” says Augie, who’s up to 3 sets of 20 reps of 100-pound leg lifts and has the videotape to prove it …
Frank Singer is best known as an aerospace entrepreneur and a founder of Tech Coast Angels. He’s an angel to more than startup companies, thanks in part to the wings of the Beechcraft King Air he keeps at John Wayne Airport and trots out for a number of causes. The latest was a doozy: a load of 100 cats that Singer flew to Texas. Seems their owner got orders to thin out the herd at her place up in Lancaster. The lady was ready to exit California because of taxes anyway, Singer says, noting some irony, since she’s a retired school teacher with a public pension. Texas apparently is more lenient about large numbers of pets, in any case, and just to make sure the woman bought a 6-acre spread there. Singer hauled the cats on behalf of Wings of Rescue, a nonprofit that counts on private pilots to get animals due for euthanasia to new homes. He also flies for Angel Flight, which helps folks in need get to healthcare providers, and for Veterans Aim Command, which provides transportation for disabled vets …
UCI’s men’s basketball team continues to reach for rarefied air with a commitment from 7-foot-2 Giannis Dimakopoulos, who is from Greece and currently a senior at Cathedral High in L.A. His letter of intent came a few days after Mamadou Ndiaye, a 7-foot-5 native of Senegal who plays at Brethren Christian in Huntington Beach, signed with UCI for next year …
Forget whatever you think you know about Stanton and give Park Avenue on Beach Boulevard a try. The osso buco is recommended, with plenty else to please amid a very cool 1960s vibe …
OC looks to be a prime target for Campaign 2016, with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio due this week for a visit with the Orange County Business Council. That’s the same Rubio who could help the GOP get over its Latino problem. Rubio can play it coy on presidential ambitions all he wants, but his trip to donor-rich OC was scheduled about a week after he went to the crucial early caucus state of Iowa for a birthday party for the governor there.
