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Irvine is privileged to have such citizens
The community's good neighbors continue to reach out helping hands to the thousands of victims of Sept. 11.

Pamela Hewitt, who works at Irvine Valley College, wanted to join the relief effort in New York, but she wanted to help someone specifically. She wanted to know their names and their special needs. So she did her research and learned about Jamie Concepcion, a restaurant deliveryman and father of five who was killed in the New York attack. His wife is an invalid.

So Ms. Hewitt and coworkers and Irvine Valley students are trying to help the Concepcion family, selected from the thousands of families who no doubt are equally deserving of a helping hand. The Irvine Valley group so far has raised about $2,000 for the Concepcions in New York.

Mitch Goldstone, an Irvine businessman and resident, has earned a reputation over the years as a good neighbor who comes up with creative ways to muster support for worthy causes in the community.

Mitch hopes to fill an airliner with friends and fly to New York and spend money, pump some tourist dollars into the city's economy. One airplane load of Californians may not make a great deal of difference, but Mitch is hoping the idea catches on and spreads outside Irvine and the state.

Mitch the astute businessman is timing the trip for Veterans' Day weekend, "the beginning of the holiday retail season."

Michael Anthony of Irvine, a pastor and a volunteer chaplain for Irvine's police department, made his contributions at Ground Zero.

When officials in New York learned of a visiting police chaplain trained and experienced in counseling men and women working under great stress, they rushed him to the scene of devastation.

Chaplain Anthony spent five days in the rubble and its stench of death and in the morgue set up nearby, comforting exhausted workers and grieving firefighters.

He recounts in today's Irvine World News how late one night he waited as workers in the pouring rain cut through twisted steel girders to recover the bodies of two firefighters. Chaplain Anthony told us he cried, and he felt privileged to be there.

Irvine is privileged to count among its citizens Michael Anthony, Mitch Goldstone and Pamela Hewitt and the many others like them.