Category Archives: Heroes

Michele Roberts: An inspiration

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On a fall day at UC Berkeley, I left campus utterly inspired, and it wasn’t from class. It was from talks by Michele Roberts, a respected litigator and the first woman to lead the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). She spoke candidly at a morning coffee with law students about her tough childhood, her youthful aspirations, and a legal career that proved her mettle.

Accepting a citation award later that day, she shared a story about one of her early criminal cases: a young prostitute she helped get off the street and go back to school. It’s a tale that, in the telling, moved her to tears, reminding her of her own hardscrabble road to the top.

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Team Raises Money for Cancer Research

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“It’s a cure from hell,” my aunt said, as she described her son Tim’s bone marrow transplant. “No, it’s worse than that,” she added. Tim was diagnosed with leukemia some 15 years ago. He survived after surgery on “true grit.”

But it takes more than courage to survive. It takes medical care and therapy. It takes scientists, doctors, and research labs to find the cures and treatments for blood cancers. It takes financial support.

Enter Team in Traning, an endurance sports charity program under the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). It’s dedicated to raising money for blood cancer research and patient care.

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Hero: A Sheriff’s Volunteer

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Armed robbers shot my friend’s brother-in-law, a volunteer with a sheriff’s dept., as he rushed to the aid of a fellow cop.  Sixty-three year old Philip Grigg a father and grandfather, now clings to life in a Phoenix hospital.

On December 31, a gray and cold day, Grigg, a tractor-trailer driver, hopped into his truck — probably on his way to a local market, according to his wife.

But on the way, a car driven by armed robbers fleeing a patrol car crashed into Grigg’s pickup. Grigg watched as Officer Scott Sefranka pulled up to arrest the men. But when Sefranka struggled, Grigg jumped out to help. In a flash, one of the alleged suspects, Roger Sharp, grabbed Sefranka’s gun and fired. He hit both men—at close range.

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In Honor of Military Veterans

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The scars of war are hard to hide and hard to heal. For many U.S. combat veterans, the emotional toll combined with debilitating physical injuries can make it tougher to survive on home soil than on the battlefield.

Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of vets are suffering from a healthcare benefits backlog. Compounding the problem, more than 62,000 veterans are homeless on any given night; many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse. Another 140,000 are in prison.

Policy makers and the VA need to honor and care for those who sacrificed their lives and livelihoods for our country—and not abandon them when they need us most.

Law students are stepping in to help with a free legal clinic at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco.  Read more here.

Forgotten Heroes

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Emmanuel Fisher (Sept. 25, 1921—July 22, 2001) was a British composer and conductor who was probably best known as the leader of the London Jewish Male Choir. But as a young army private during World War II, Fisher served in the British medical units that helped liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

He did not know about Hitler’s “Final Solution” until he arrived at Belsen in the spring of 1945. “It was so horrendous that I thought in years to come I’d think that I’d exaggerated it, unless I kept a diary,” he told The Independent in June 1998.

“The whole thing was just like a bad dream,” he wrote in his diary. “I almost pinched myself to make sure that I was awake. … It was too unbelievable to believe. I was stunned.”

Aged 24, he was nurse, mother, and father to 150 to 200 patients. Within eight days, 6,000 patients were brought to the unit for treatment in army barracks outside the camp.

Tens of thousands died from disease, neglect and starvation. Among the victims: diarist Anne Frank.

Fisher’s diary is now archived in the Imperial War Museum. Watch his dramatic story in a videotaped interview conducted by the USC SHOAH Foundation: