Opening and Welcome - President Jay Paulus
Colleen Coons led the Pledge of Allegiance and Exavier King offered the invocation.
Introduction of GuestBert Millett introduced visiting Rotarian, Blaise Vitale from the Grantsburg Wisconsin Rotary Club.
Partaking of Rotary KoolAid
Colleen Coons was obviously impressed with the way Jim Schmidt showed his leadership skills at PETS. She said the District 5495 hospitality suite was rated #1 by the attendees. Jim and Rosalyn had made home-made guacamole involving around 100 avacados. She said the District Session Jim ran was amazing!
Jim said that the prior weekend, he had been at the International Assembly in Orlando with 530ish other District Governors-Elect. He was very impressed with the experience of spending that much time with leaders from all over the world who were united by the purpose of doing good in the world. After he got home from that amazing experience, he was off to PETS for more Rotary Kool Aid. He thanked the club for all the support and pledged to donate $100 to Polio Plus.
Jim said District 5495 had quite a presence at PETS. PDG Bret McKeand was the PETS Chair and PDG David Simmer had lined up the speakers. Mesa West is the Ace of Clubs and District
5495 is the District of Choice.
Auctio - Chuck Flint
Our Club President is involved with the Hohokams, so spends a lot of time at Sloan Park during Spring Training. He enjoys shagging balls. He brought one that had resulted in a home run and asked Chuck to auction it at the meeting. The bidding was pretty brisk, but Don LaBarge's $30 bid made him the lucky owner of the unsigned home-run baseball.
Ace of Clubs Raffle - Chuck Flint
Chuck asked Erwin Reimann to draw the winning ticket, which was held by Jim Erickson making him the winner of the $40 small pot.
While he had a little down time, Chuck shared some Forrest Gump wisdom:
- How many T's are there in the days of the week? - Two - Today and Tomorrow
- How many seconds are there in a year? - Twelve - January 2nd, February 2nd...
- What do you call an overweight Psychic? A four chin teller.
- Why can't leopards hide? - Because they are always spotted
After Jim shuffled the cards, he tried to draw the Ace of Clubs which would have resulted in him winning an additioanl $820. He would have been mildly happy if he'd drawn the Joker and won $20 more. The card Jim drew, however, was the Jack of Diamonds, which was destroyed. March 6 the large pot will be even bigger and the odds of winning it just a little bit better.
Happy Bucks - Sgt at Arms Andy Bradford
- Frank Rosenberg was happy that his daughter Danielle had made him a grandfather on February 19. He pledged $219 toward his Paul Harris account.
- Colleen Coons was happy to announce some news about Danny White who was a quarterback for the Cowboys, also attended and played for ASU and prior to that, Westwood High School. He will be at the District 5495 District Conference the first weekend in May along with his daughter, Heather Kennedy who is a motivational speaker.
- Brian Harvey wanted to thank the Koenemans for the eggs he had gotten from them, so he pledged $100 to the McKinney Vento program where our club changes lives one person at a time.
- Lucinda General contributed saying that next week, she would be getting off a plane in San Juan Puerto Rico where she plans to scuba dive.
- Connie Bunyard contributed saying that John's mom has been successfully placed in a good home and is happy to be there.
- Harry Grossman said he had talked to his daughter in Minnesota. She had participated in a 21-mile cross-country skiing event and she finished. He said he didn't know where she got her athletic skills.
- Ed Koeneman was happy that Exavier had attended his first Interact meeting.
- John Pennypacker contributed for the privilege of - again - explaining how to effectively use a microphone. It needs to be held high up on the handle - near the mouth piece. And the mouthpiece needs to be almost close enough to touch the speaker's mouth. It's also helpful if the speaker takes time to carefully pronounce the words they are saying slowly enough to be clearly understood.
- Don LaBarge said that since the beginning of the year, he has received several donations for our "Salvation Army" kettle. For us to get credit for our kettle contributions, they need to be received by January 1. The local Salvation Army does get full credit for the additioal donations, but they don't count toward our collecton total.
- Erwin Reiman said that fifty years ago, he participated in the first cross-country skiing event in his area. He said he'd never been so tired in his life.
- Warren Williamson asked what you call a snake that is 3.14 meters long. It is a pithon. He also told about a preacher's sone who wanted to use the family car. His dad told him he hadn't done well in math, didn't know the New Testament very well and hadn't had his hair trimmed in a very long while. The boy brought his math grade up a full point, studied the New Testament and talked about what he was learning frequently. He got up the nerve to ask his dad again about using the family car. His dad complimented him on the progress he'd made, but said his hair was still too long. The boy replied that Moses, Noah and Jesus all had long hair. His dad responded, "Yes, and they walked everywhere they went."
AnnouncementsClub Leadership Academy (CLA) is March 8.
Rotary Day at the Ball Park is March 21
The Ignite Innovation Event is the evening of March 27
The District Conference is May 2-3
Ed spent some time talking about the April 5 Spring Olympics which he and Deb are again happy to host at their home.
Program - Terri Alexon - Arizona Corporation Commission
Eric Silverberg introduced Terri Alexon who would be alerting those in attendance about ways to avoid being scammed.
Terri explained that the Corporation Commission serves everyone. Utility company rates are regulated by them as are railroads, pipelines and corporations. She said that 23 years ago she was in the securities business, then she and her husband were in the real estate appraisal business together. She got a communications degree and ended up going to work for the state.
A common question is - with all that oversight, why is there still so much fraud? They write rules. They help write laws. When fraud is prosecuted, restitution and penalties can be ordered, but it is rare for the victim to get back what they have lost. There are "romance" scams where widows and widowers are targeted. Another fairly frequent problem is "fix and flip" scams.
There are constantly new ways scammers work. If you are notified that your account has been hacked, do not click on links contained in that notice. Instead, call the bank directly.