Meeting was called to order by newly elected president Jim Ripley. During his opening statements he welcomed everyone in attendance, “just a reminder for those of you who were here last week to keep our little secret and not let the others know.” This week’s temperatures have soared, “It’s going to get hotter. I heard Bill Clinton had to sleep with Hillary Clinton,” joked President Ripley in reference to Hillary’s cold heart.
For our Commencement Ceremonies, Dan Kiernan led us in our Patriotic Moment and our Flag Salute. Secretary Carol Morris led us in our Invocation and asked us to bow our heads in gratitude, “Heavenly Father, we thank you and pray that we may use these gifts as to increase the happiness of all those around. Amen.”
Our Songmaster was the irreplaceable Johny Hong. He led us in the karaoke version of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of you,” made popular by Frank Sinatra and Lauryn Hill. Great job Johny!
Announcements, the Fullerton Rotary Club’s Facebook Page is being updated with photos of the weekly meetings and happenings. Please Follow and Like. Cathy Gach reminded members about invoices being mailed and emailed. Please make your payments. Past President Zoot Velasco announced a joint conference between the North Orange County Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club of Fullerton, and Fullerton College. It takes place Wednesday, January 10th, 2024, and it will be free for Rotarians, “you will be covered as your lunch that day, but $50 for guest. We’re going to have a software engineer from Meta talking about how to conduct online business in the Metaverse.” For more information on the event, please contact Zoot Velasco.
Today’s guest include Bryan Monterrosas, recent Joya Scholars graduate and brother of Giselle Monterrosas.
Immediate Past President Joe Lins was our Finemaster/Recognition Master. “No Joke Joe,” is the nickname the people have given him. Immediately, he fined $5 to Johny Hong for his Songmaster segment, “Johny, just $5 man!” He pulled out his secret weapon, a cringy dad jokes book that he used during his presidency, “this is where I got all my material from. I didn’t make it all up.” He thanked everyone for being here “this morning” and called President Ripley “a nice change” for the club. He asked him to stand and raise his right hand and repeat after him, “by the power vested in me as the immediate past president, I hereby declare you fine free during my term as president.” Joe Lins then asked everyone that had anything to do with his demotion night to please stand, “I really appreciate that. That was a lot of fun, so thank you very much.” Joe recognized Sue Ling for her birthday, although she was not present, “you are all off the hook. You don’t have to sing.” Bob Muschek was recognized for his 13th rotary anniversary. Allyn Lean was recognized for his 23rd rotary anniversary. Brett Ackerman’s wife’s birthday was on Friday, although he was not present he was recognized and fined $5. Past President Bob Sattler was recognized for his 42nd rotary anniversary. Bill Peloquin’s wife Wilma Peloquin was recognized for her birthday on July 16. “I am wondering, Larry Bennett, why are you even here? You weren’t here for my whole term! Was it something I said my first meeting?” Shoutout to Larry Bennett for showing up for our meeting. Mr. Bennett donated $5 to the fine net to make the grand total of $10 worth of fines. Great job Joe Lins!
Today’s program at hand, New Member Craft Talk with Giselle Monterrosas. She thanked everyone for having her, “I’m glad we’re all here just trying to enjoy the air conditioning and to listen to my personal story.” Giselle in the interim executive director at Joya Scholars, “a non-profit here in Fullerton, where we support students with college success with a variety of programs such as tutoring, mentoring, college application academy for 12th graders. And we even have a parent academy for the parents of the students.” Giselle is a first generation American, and first to go and graduate from college, “it’s a really big deal for my family because I knew nothing at all. I didn’t have anybody there to help me, but Joya Scholars helped guide me to that success.” She is thankful that Joya Scholars was there for her and now she can be there for them. Giselle shared a photo of her family, her parents just celebrated their 25-year anniversary and her 3 brothers, “so I do have one of my brother’s here today. His name is Bryan, he himself is actually one of the graduates that we (Joya Scholars) celebrated this year.” Giselle is a Fullerton Union High School graduate class of 2017 and a Cal State Monterrey Bay alumnus. “I am the first one in my family to go to university. I wanted to go a little bit farther, so I decided that a 6 hour drive up north to Cal State Monterrey Bay was a huge jump.” She remembers being confident about her decision due to her faith. She calls that the best decision in her life. She remembers bringing her whole family up to Monterrey Bay to tour the campus and the dorms. Her college experience was not traditional due to COVID. She remembers having a drive thru graduation. While on campus, she was the captain of the Cal State Monterrey Bay dance team, “I was on the dance team at Fullerton High School. It is a passion of mine. I’ve got too many passions.” During college, she worked with the University Police Department where she did the live scans, night walks and parking tickets, “those were torturous because I had shifts from like 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.” She learned to balance, classes, dance team, and campus safety officer, “it was a super fun experience.” COVID put her college experience on a tricky slope, she resorted to moving back home and doing Zoom classes instead. “So, what I did for my capstone, I actually created a 30-minute short film, focusing on the stories of Mexican American youth. Since I am Mexican American myself and I grew up in a low-income, first-generation neighborhood.” Giselle says that a lot of families in her neighborhood are immigrants who are just trying to find opportunities to survive. “There are a lot of students like us who were born here but have immigrant parents and are first generation. We’re trying to figure our way out, all the way through life and our schooling and all that stuff.” Giselle’s focus is on Journalism and media studies, ‘it has been a huge passion of mine so that’s why I studied it.” Other hobbies of hers are; beauty pageants. “In the past for beauty pageants, you have to be tall and pretty and skinny and you have to have talent, right?” The pageant world can be very misogynistic, until recent years, the beauty pageant world has slowly merged and converted to something more important. “So, they excluded talents, and instead you have to have a social platform. Mine is youth empowerment.” Having the proper platforms like Joya Scholars helps the empowerment of the youth, which is a big passion of hers, “we have to guide them to what’s best because they are the ones that are going to be taking care of us.” Throughout her beauty pageant career, she has won the Hollywood International Pageant, the Pan-American International which she represented U.S.A., “it was a hassle but I unfortunately did not win the crown, but I did win the first runner up.” Although, she did not win, she did something more important which was open doors for other young girls and gave them the opportunity to do the same. Another of her roles is Vice President of a non-profit in Santa Ana where she is part of their board, and she sometimes is a modeling coach/empowerment coach. “We work with young Latina girls from the ages of 3 to 18. We help them build up their self-confidence and esteem through modeling and entry level dancing and public speaking,” In that position, she encourages the girls to embrace their Spanish language because most of them are Mexican American and Latin American and the new generation is losing that Spanish side to them, “being bilingual is awesome.” Another role of hers is fitness trainer at a studio here in Fullerton. Her last role is video host for the Fullerton Observer Newspaper. “I am exercising my journalism title. If you want to check them out on YouTube. If you want to know the local news here in Fullerton, the Observer is your newspaper.” As far as her interim position at Joya Scholars, “as much as it breaks my heart, it is coming to an end at the end of this month. It was by far the best experience I could ever ask for. I want to thank you (Fullerton Rotary Club) for giving me the opportunity and recognize you guys as donors that change the lives of our students. And I know that Joya Scholars will continue to grow. We will continue to inspire more students, continue to work with our alumni, which is something that we’re trying to work on really hard.” Giselle took questions from the members in attendance, she credited Christian Esteban as her mentor and friend. President Ripley awarded her with a certificate that certifies a donation in her name to Working Dogs for Warriors organization, a non-profit dedicated to training and donating service dogs to veterans and first responders. She was also awarded the Paul Harris pin, “again, thank you so much for being a part of this club. Please, do not leave.”
Last thing on the agenda was the 50/50 drawing worth $25. Lucky ticket holder with the last four digits 0851 won the money. “Next week, our guest speaker will be my boss, Roy Jefferson from the district. He is our new district governor who wants to come and meet all of you and see what I am up to and make sure I am doing my job correctly and he wants to hear about some of the projects that we’re involved in. We look forward to that. See you next week. Meeting adjourned.”