Not the finest hour for SoCal’s higher education sector last week, with the college admissions scandal getting tabloid treatment across the country.
With multiple ties to the proceedings, OC hasn’t gotten this much scandal-related attention since the St. Regis hosted AIG execs for their infamous 2008 retreat, just after that insurer got an $85 billion government bailout.
“It’s a horrible situation” said Chapman University President Emeritus Jim Doti, noting his university was looking into its own application and admissions procedures in wake of the cheating and bribery episode.
Leave it to Doti to provide some good news for the area’s collection of colleges. The 72-year-old is scheduled March 18 at UCI Medical Center to donate a spare kidney.
“I’ll be the oldest donor” in the history of UCI’s transplant program, he noted last week, with hopes that his actions will prompt young and old alike to consider similar gestures. Doti doesn’t know who the recipient will be.
He said he was inspired by the ’17 actions of Laguna Beach businesswoman Heidi Miller, whose kidney donation helped save the life of Daily Pilot columnist Bruce Cook.
Doti said an extensive amount of testing by UCI gave him the all-clear, and that he’s not expecting a long recovery time; a half marathon is still scheduled for early May, along with his always busy work-load.
Palmer Luckey and Bob Olson are a few decades apart, but the two execs count their share of similarities. Both honed their skills while still in their teens and each learned to move on from setbacks in their respective careers, they said at last week’s Business Journal Excellence in Entrepreneurship event at Hotel Irvine.
Hotel developer Olson, our Businessperson of the Year for 2018, was the event’s keynote speaker, while Oculus founder Luckey was one of five winners; the 26-year-old proudly told audience members that he’d been fired from Facebook prior to starting his latest defense and security tech venture, Anduril Industries.
Another similarity: fondness for Newport Beach, and the city’s Mayor’s Table restaurant.
R.D. Olson Development built the restaurant as part of its Lido House hotel, and Luckey (clad in a suit and flip flops) spent a not insignificant amount of time after our event telling Olson and Chef Riley Huddleston the restaurant—not far from his home—was among his favorite spots.
What local housing slowdown?
Real estate exec and budding soccer star (see story, front page) Emile Haddad noted last week that while his firm was cognizant of turmoil in the industry, it wasn’t being seen in Irvine. His Cadence Park project in the city “had one of its best months” in February, and per-acre prices for land it sells here continue to rise.
