Honoring Salinas Trade      

By Victoria Manley
February 20, 2004

A handful of business leaders were honored on Thursday by more than 800 members and supporters of the Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce.

The luncheon, at the California Rodeo Banquet Hall at the Salinas Sports Complex, was the chamber's 83rd annual celebration honoring a select few who typically put in much more than eight hours each workday in the spirit of community giving.

Honorees, including Scarr Moving & Storage and Hayashi & Wayland as 2003 Outstanding Businesses of the Year, urged members to do more for their Salinas neighbors.

"Find something that you like to do, and do it for somebody else," said Dave Mills, who was named 2003 Citizen of the Year. "I worry that sometimes we lose our way."

Mills, senior vice president of Mills Family Farms, also served as co-chairman of Salinas Relay for Life in June. The event raised more than $1 million for cancer research, outpacing all Relay for Life fund-raisers in the state and making it the third largest fund-raiser in the nation.

Other winners included:
• Harden Foundation: Spirit of Community Award.
Chamber board President Ernie Mill said the award was created this year for the foundation, which has given more than $40 million to local nonprofit organizations since it was founded by Eugene and Ercia Harden in 1963.

The foundation has given money that helped build the National Steinbeck Center and the California Rodeo Grounds, and most recently the Harden Youth Center administered by the Boys & Girls Club of the Salinas Valley.

Most of its work is done by the foundation's small staff and four-member board of directors.
"We're a very small team but we're mighty," said Executive Director Joe Granger.

• Vickie Dixon: Member of the Year.

Dixon, vice president of sales at KCBA Fox 35, thanked chamber members for "a great honor" and encouraged them to increase their involvement with the organization.

"Whatever your interest, the chamber has a niche for you," she said.

• Catherine Kobrinsky Evans: Athena Award, or Business Woman of the Year.

Evans, a partner with Quadrangle Investments, is also board president of the Oldtown Salinas Association.

She said Oldtown Salinas, a three-block span of restaurants, shops and various offices anchored by the National Steinbeck Center on Main Street, "is a place to be proud of and it keeps getting better."
That goes for the rest of Salinas as well, she said.

"Salinas is a working person's town. We're not flashy, but we know who we are," she said. "And we like doing what others say we can't."