Laura Murphy with dog Ella and a rescued desert tortoise/Photo by Ben Hicks

For Laura Murphy of Tuolumne, who heads the Rose Wolf Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, it’s all about setting injured and orphaned birds and animals free.

“We don’t make pets of them,” she says. “Our goal is to get them back where they came from.”

Rose Wolf is not a place, but a coalition of volunteers who care for native birds and animals at their homes. Last year its 18 volunteers rescued 258 animals of 64 species, with a yearly budget of just under $12,000 in donations and grants.

Most of the rescued animals come from Tuolumne County. The next closest rescue centers are in Hughson and Jackson.

Rose Wolf was founded in 1989 by Sonoran Nina Huff. Her work with veterinarian Robert Pollard led to an interest in wildlife rehabilitation, and her love of roses and wolves led to the group’s name. “It’s just in my blood,” says Huff. “I have rescued animals all my life.” Now working full-time for Pollard, she stills raises money and finds volunteers for Rose Wolf, but has turned most of the day-to-day work over to Murphy and others.

Carmen Yurchak, 70, of Crystal Falls, credits Murphy for her devotion. A retired banker, Yurchak became a Rose Wolf volunteer after finding a baby robin in her yard. She contacted the group, turned the bird over to a volunteer – then signed up to help. “It’s marvelous what she does,” Yurchak says of Murphy, whom she helps care for orphaned or injured squirrels, chipmunks, and other wildlife.

A semi-retired engineer and consultant, Murphy, 52, and her husband, Bernard, moved to Tuolumne from the Bay Area in 2005. She got her first taste of wildlife rescue 15 years ago, when she volunteered at a San Jose wildlife center. She began feeding baby birds, then baby squirrels and raccoons. She next volunteered at a rehabilitation center in Morgan Hill, where she specialized in birds of prey, bobcats, and songbirds.

Like the entire Rose Wolf crew, Murphy is unpaid and donates many hours to the group’s mission. Her work includes building cages, which must meet legal requirements and are expensive. The material for a 5,000-square-foot fawn pen and nearby herd pen, for example, cost $15,000.

Judy Herring, 73, a Jamestown area resident, has nurtured songbirds for the center for seven years. “I did it because no one else was doing it,” says Herring, also president of the group’s board of trustees. “It’s sad to see animals out there with no recourse but to just stay there and die a slow death.”

Handling birds takes devotion and hard work. They need heat, water, and a safe place. The job also includes applying splints to broken wings and, occasionally, feeding nestlings every 20 minutes, dawn to dusk.

Herring enjoys the challenge of caring for the birds, but is gradually handing over many of her responsibilities to Sharon South, 57, a former life-science technician who lives near Columbia.

“I love Rose Wolf, and I love animals and birds,” says South, an Audubon Society member who became a volunteer after Murphy gave a presentation to the group.

Soulsbyville volunteer Debbie Veysey, 40, helps Murphy when she gets overloaded with animals and needs another place to keep them. Veysey’s guests have included everything from opossums to jack rabbits and squirrels.

The volunteer work can be dangerous. Murphy deals with deer, foxes, and adult squirrels that can scratch and bite, unlike baby squirrels. But among her most challenging charges are birds of prey, including owls, turkey buzzards and hawks. “It’s important to have a good handler because you can get hurt,” says Murphy, who has a license to handle these species.

Although Rose Wolf volunteers may get attached to some of the rescued animals, they know these species belong in the wild. Sometimes, though, it’s necessary to euthanize an animal.

“Many people want you to put them in cages and keep them for the rest of their lives,” Murphy says. “But very few (animals) have the temperament to do that. I used to think I could not handle life and death, but I’ve learned to handle it. What is the option? I put them down to end their suffering.”

Donations, Rose Wolf’s sole funding source, tallied $11,800 in 2009. Expenses were about $14,300, Murphy says, including $8,520 for new deer pen fencing, cages and a new songbird hospital and $1,630 for feed. To feed a fawn for one season costs $200; birds require an expensive formula; raptors and foxes need mice. The group accepts donated food, including frozen mice, bird formula, live meal worms and freeze-dried worms and crickets.

Says Murphy: “It takes a lot of dedicated work – and love for wildlife – to be a volunteer.”

The next orientation for new wildlife volunteers is planned for April. Volunteers are also needed to serve on the group’s board, raise money, answer phones and more. Contact Laura Murphy, (209) 928-3526, or Judy Herring, 532-6056, or visit the group’s website, rosewolfwildlife.org.

Joe Garcia (right) in Khe Sahn foxhole, 1967

The screaming rockets and bursts of cannon fire during the Vietnam War still haunt the dreams of Marine veteran Joe Garcia, 62.

The nightmares and flashbacks are among many symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which affects many war veterans and others.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can develop after a terrifying event where the person was physically harmed or felt threatened. Garcia enlisted in August 1966 at age 19 and was a “rocket humper” and mortar gunner with L Co. 3rd Battalion 26th Marines.

Since then, it has been a challenge for Garcia to trust people and be around them. He buys his groceries early in the morning before it gets busy. He avoids picking up his mail when neighbors are present, rarely leaves his home, gets only three hours of sleep a night, has a bayonet in his bedroom and a rifle underneath his bed. He and his wife divorced 12 years ago.

Garcia traces the events that led to his PTSD to the beginning of his tour of duty in Vietnam, from December 1966 to February 1968. He had become close friends with a fellow Marine, Texan Pat Cochran – nicknamed “Roach” – who was killed in an ambush.

“I never got close to anybody anymore,” says Garcia, who started drinking heavily after the war. “It was very difficult for me. I just could not deal with friendship again.”

He helped set up ambushes and foxholes during the 77-day siege of Khe Sanh, part of the 1968 Tet Offensive. An estimated 700 to 1,000 U.S. soldiers died in that siege.

His unit was hounded by constant North Vietnamese army attacks in which whistling rockets and shrapnel often found targets in foxholes.

“I saw bits and pieces of bodies,” Garcia says. “We couldn’t even identify some of them.”

He is deeply affected by the fact that he survived and others didn’t.

“I sometimes wonder why I made it and others didn’t. I don’t know … I guess I have survivor’s guilt.”

Before Vietnam, “I was the kind of person who liked to make people laugh,” the Tuolumne County man recalls. “I was pretty social, always in a crowd.”

He came back a different person. He had never heard of PTSD until a few years ago, when fellow Chapter 391 veterans encouraged him to seek help. Though he attends a monthly support group and gets counseling, daily life is often a struggle.

By sharing his story, he hopes other veterans affected by PTSD will realize that they are not alone, and perhaps seek treatment.

Says Garcia: “So many veterans are afraid to seek help, but they should.”

© 2010, Friends and Neighbors Magazine

Some of VVA Chapter 391's members/Photo by Ben Hicks

Vietnam veterans braved a brutal war, then faced rejection at home. Decades later, many continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or illnesses linked to wartime chemical exposure. A growing number are homeless. Many have not taken advantage of veterans’ benefits.

But that’s beginning to change, and in California, Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 391 is leading the way. The 22-year-old group, based in Tuolumne County, is the state’s largest VVA chapter – and ninth largest among some 650 VVA chapters nationwide.

There are two key factors in the chapter’s exponential growth from 60 members in 1998 to more than 400 now, says chapter publicist George Eldridge. Vietnam-era veterans are facing more health issues as they age, and they’re looking to the VVA for help. Tireless recruiting by chapter members Dick Southern and John Mendiola is another reason.

“Dick is always pushing it and John seeks out new members at virtually every fundraising event,” says Eldridge, 66, of Jamestown, a former Naval journalist, chapter public affairs chairman and public affairs officer for the VVA California State Council.

Southern, a former army medic, says the VVA motto sums up the chapter’s mission: “Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.”

The Tuolumne resident, who became the group’s membership chairman is 1998, is now second vice president of VVA’s state council and director for VVA Region 9, which covers seven states and the Philippines and Guam. He also sits on the VVA national board of directors.

Southern, 66, says the chapter is not a pop psychology group or 12-step program. “We run it like a business,” he says. “Education and communication are what it takes to get people involved.”

Crystal Falls resident John Mendiola, 58, is a former Army photograph technician and chapter vice president. Among other duties, he is part of the group’s color guard, leads a program helping veterans in state prison, and co-chairs the chapter’s Veterans Emergency Team, which helps any veteran in crisis with immediate needs.

He finds it rewarding that the chapter “is not just out to tell war stories and drink.”

Instead, its main role is to be a central source of information about benefits and services available through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, known as the VA. That includes medical care, homeless care, employment help, information about Social Security and other federal programs, and services such as a free shuttle from Sonora to VA sites in Livermore and Palo Alto.

The Tuolumne County Veterans Service Office (533-6280), at 105 E. Hospital Road, Sonora, provides direct assistance to area veterans and their families in obtaining benefits. The Calaveras County Veterans Service Office (754-6624) is at 509 E. Charles St. in San Andreas.

“Seventy-five percent of Vietnam veterans do not access the VA health care system,” Southern says.

Many are simply unaware of what’s available, Eldridge says. Others are reluctant to seek help, particularly with mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (see separate story).

“Many don’t realize or are in denial about their PTSD,” he says. “I didn’t realize I had it until years after leaving Vietnam.”

Few veterans, Eldridge notes, are aware of Agent Orange’s role in 15 maladies and diseases, including diabetes, Hodgkin’s disease, hypertension, prostate cancer and other illnesses. Yet for those who qualify, free help may be available.

He believes his own diabetes stems from “almost daily” exposure to Agent Orange – containing the highly toxic chemical dioxin – at the U.S. air base in Da Nang. He also flew in aircraft that sprayed the defoliant.

But the problems extend far beyond health care. Nationally, Eldridge says, the number of homeless Vietnam veterans has doubled over the past two years.

Says John Mendiola: “They lose hope and don’t know where to go. They haven’t seen all the opportunities they have.”

VVA-391 was founded in 1987 and chartered in 1988, largely through the efforts of community and veterans’ activist Frank Smart, 69, of Columbia, a combat journalist in Vietnam.

It sprang from his ire over a newspaper story. In 1987, Smart wrote a letter to The Union Democrat, criticizing it for running a story on Huey Newton, former leader of the Black Panthers, then incarcerated at Sierra Conservation Center near Jamestown.

“When Mr. Newton was inciting his people to ‘Burn Baby Burn’ I was in Vietnam serving my country honorably and getting shot at daily,” Smart wrote, adding that the newspaper instead should run a story about a down-and-out Vietnam War veteran “who pulled himself up from the bootstraps and made something of his life.”

This spurred Smart and others to organize. Another motivating factor “was to show everyone that we were pretty normal American veterans, albeit castigated in the press and villainized as baby killers and drug addicts,” he says. “Our generation did not have any more or less problems than the Korean and WWII and WWI veterans.”

For several years, they had trouble getting other Vietnam vets interested in joining. “Many Vietnam veterans felt unappreciated by the public and Veterans Administration after the war,” he notes. “They felt forgotten and just put it out of their minds.”

A key decision was made early on, Smart says. “The question was, “Do you want to form a self-help group and attempt to counsel guys with problems or do you want to form a Kiwanis-type chapter, which was community-service oriented? Everyone voted for the latter.”

As a result, the chapter does considerable charity work, including holiday food baskets for the needy, six yearly $1,000 scholarships for local high school seniors who are related to a Vietnam War veteran. It also hosts an annual “Stand Down” in Sonora, offering homeless vets from throughout the foothill counties free medical checkups, clothing, counseling, employment and housing opportunities.

Chapter 391 is open to Vietnam and Vietnam-era vets throughout the foothills. An estimated 13,000 veterans of all military services live in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, the California Department of Veterans Affairs estimates. Some believe the actual number is much higher. Vietnam veterans are a sizeable part of that total, but the exact number is unknown, Southern says.

The chapter accepts all veterans who served during the Vietnam War era from 1964 to 1975, not just members who served in Vietnam. Vietnam veterans from 1961-1964 must have served in Vietnam to join.

Though they can’t join it, the chapter also helps veterans who did not serve during the Vietnam War era.

The group also runs a Veterans Incarcerated Program, whose membership includes some 45 prisoners at Sierra Conservation Center and at Mule Creek in Ione. The inmates meet twice monthly to hear guest speakers talk about job placement, housing, rehabilitation and other resources. And, they’ve organized fundraisers for Operation Mom, a military family support group that sends care packages to soldiers abroad.

Chapter 391’s future? Continued recruitment, and more immediately, a March 28 parade through Sonora – the nation’s first-ever “Welcome Home” parade, a long-overdue demonstration of gratitude and respect.

It’s a far cry from when they returned stateside in the 1960s and ’70s. “When I got back,” Eldridge recalls, “I was told not to wear my uniform in public. People were spitting on veterans and yelling obscenities.”

What a difference the decades make – and the efforts of this still-growing chapter.

“I got a call a few days ago from a Vietnam veteran who asked if he could wear his dress blues in the parade,” Eldridge says. “I said, of course you can.”

Chapter 391 President Dan Brown, 66, is a former Seabee who served near Da Nang during the Tet Offensive. As chapter members’ average age moves ever higher, the group will increase its mentoring of younger veterans, “directing them to resources and helping them start their own groups.”

Many of those Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will need long-term help and support dealing with severe physical and mental injuries, he says.

“But as far as the emotional part of it – coming back and not being recognized for their service – they won’t have to worry about that.”

© 2010, Friends and Neighbors Magazine

Mayor Stearn on Washington Street outside former Mundorf's building/Ben Hicks photo

He is the only four-time mayor in the City of Sonora’s 158-year history, a former National Guard master sergeant, 50-year Freemason, trombonist, Sonora United Methodist Church trustee, Sonora Rotary Club member, 2000 Mother Lode Roundup Parade grand marshal, and longtime member of E Clampus Vitus.

With 45 years of service, he is the longest-tenured city council member in the state, according to the League of California Cities. The late Talmadge Burke holds the state record for serving on the Alhambra City Council for 51 years, until 2003.

Most of all, Sonora Mayor Ron Stearn, 81, is known as “Mr. Mundorf’s.” For 47 years he worked in and managed the Washington Street hardware store, which opened in 1859 and closed in 1995. Known for his frugality and staying power, Stearn drives a 1962 GMC pickup he bought in 1975 for $300, and has lived in his 1919-built house on Gold Street for 58 years.

“Everything is paid off,” he says, jovially adding, “My son thinks I’m tight. I inherited my spending habits from my grandfather. He didn’t waste much.”

Stearn’s love for the city is obvious. He was elected to the Sonora City Council in 1964 and is in his 12th four-year term, which ends in 2012. His popularity with voters is a testament to his popularity, knowledge, evenhanded manner and fiscal conservatism. One may as well call him “Mr. Sonora” for his love of the city, especially downtown. Four shopping centers and nearly 600 parking spaces have been added to the city since he was first elected.

“I am a parking-space advocate and I consider the extra parking as my greatest accomplishment,” he says. “It may not sound like much, but it is.”

Although he’s voted for shopping centers on Mono Way and welcomes the tax revenue they bring, “My heart has always been on Main Street,” Stearn admits. There he got his first job as a delivery boy for Mallard’s Washington Street grocery store in the 1940s – giving him an endless supply of early Sonora stories. But as a council member, he’s always looking ahead.

“I like it because it keeps you going and current with what’s happening,” he says. “I’ve always liked the looks and the feeling of it. There’s nothing static.”

Sonora City Administrator Greg Applegate says Stearn is the “salt of the earth,” someone who is open and honest, utterly devoid of pretension.

“He is the last of a dying breed,” Applegate says. “He has absolutely no agenda. He just runs on his love for the city. It’s a blessing to have someone who has a good grasp of the community. You know what you get with Stearn.

“He’s the cog that turns the wheel here. The integrity, respect and honor he brings to the office set the tone for anyone else who sits on the council.”

When he joined the city council in 1964, Stearn recalls, the starting wage for a policeman was $485 a month – $5,820 a year compared to today’s starting salary of about $45,000. The city budget was about $180,000 in 1964 compared to about $5 million today.

Sonora was first incorporated in 1851. Since Stearn assumed office, the lower Save Mart, Sonora Plaza, Timberhills and Crossroads shopping centers have been built, changing Sonora from a quiet town to a growing city. The best government is one that focuses on the basics, he says. “Good fire and police departments, sidewalks you can get around on, and good city officials.”

Over-regulation is the most aggravating aspect of city government, Stearn says, noting that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), environmental impact reports, and a bevy of other regulations make it hard to get things done.

“The state has regulations that redefine the definition of definition,” he says. “They try to get things down to a gnat’s eyelash … They want to know how many square feet you take up at your job, or how many times you cross a yellow line driving from Sonora to Tuolumne.”

Stearn has haggled with environmentalists, no-growth and slow-growth advocates over so-called “big box” projects, including the most controversial development of his 45-year tenure: a Lowe’s home improvement center proposed for 10.7 acres off Old Wards Ferry Road.

Permit issues and lawsuits have dogged the project for four years. A citizens’ group sued the city over the Lowe’s store and proposed realignment of Old Wards Ferry Road, citing among other things traffic impacts and lack of parking spaces and, ultimately, forcing revision of the environmental report.

“It’s like walking on glue there’s so many regulations,” Stearn says, adding that he voted for the shopping centers due to the needed sales-tax revenue. He notes that sales-tax receipts from Walmart net the city about $300,000 a year.

Ron as a tot, stepping out of a 1927 Buick

Stearn was born in Oakland in 1928. Two months earlier, his father left his mother, Rosalie, a Portugese-American. Mother and son moved to Rosalie’s father’s house in Pleasanton where she worked in a laundry. She married her second husband, Charlie Raboli, in 1930. The family moved to San Francisco where Raboli bought a house for $4,600 in 1935. The couple divorced in 1942, and Rosalie and Stearn moved into a Sonora apartment behind the present Old Town commercial center at Lyons and Shepherd streets in late 1943.

“I had asthma really bad, and talked my mother into moving to Sonora,” Stearn recalls. In the 1930s they used to visit his mother’s uncle, Manuel Vierra, at his Shaws Flat Road home. Manuel’s daughter, Catherine Vierra Ghiorso, taught school in Tuttletown for 47 years.

“There were nine bars, only three highway patrolmen, and two hardware stores on (Washington Street) when we moved here,” Stearn says. Rosalie had a job at the venerable Europa coffee shop on Washington Street to help make ends meet. Stearn borrowed a 1925 Packard from the Sugg brothers, the town’s only African-Americans, to take his driver’s test when he was 15 years old during World War II.

In 1946, he went to work for Mallard’s Grocery, then part of the Mundorf’s Hardware building. Stearn recalls delivering groceries to Madame Hydron’s brothel, upstairs in the Washington Street brick building that now houses Umpqua Bank.

“She would release six locks to open the door,” he says. “They ordered quality stuff like artichoke hearts and stuffed olives.”

In 1946, Stearn graduated from Sonora High School, where he was a sprinter in track. He recalls working 13-hour days, seven days a week for 68 cents an hour at Carl Comstock’s gas station (where Bank of Stockton is now located), saving money to attend Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo.

When money ran short in the spring of 1947, he quit college and returned to his Mallard’s job. Then Mundorf’s co-owner, Florence Holman, told him of an opening on the hardware side. He worked at Mundorf’s from June 17, 1948 to June 17, 1995 – “exactly 47 years to a day,” he says, adding that this job led to his popularity with the voters. Creative Learning Aids and Sonora Music currently occup

y the former Mundorf’s and Mallard’s stores.

“I liked the mechanics of working at the hardware store,” he says. “I got to see people all of the time and liked helping them

with their problems. I didn’t get paid much – the most I made was $34,000 my last year there, and that included lots of overtime.”

Stearn has a philosophy of hard work, personal responsibility, thrift, and living within your means.

“I’ve always believed you should stand on your own two feet,” he says. He recalls taking a second job, working nights and Sundays at a gas station, to pay off a hospital bill for the birth of his daughter, Martha, in 1952. Stearn and his late wife, Lorraine, have three children: Ken, 58, Martha, 54, Laura, 43, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Stearn plans to stay on the city council “as long as my health holds up and I keep getting elected,” he says. “And as long as I still have my marbles and enough sense to know what’s going on.”

Mundorf's in the late 1940s