2003 Canopy Awards Presented
Roche Receives Arnold Soforenko Award
For Commitment to Community Involvement

PALO ALTO, Calif., October 9, 2003 – Canopy: Trees for Palo Alto, at its 7th Annual Party to honor volunteers and donors, presented awards to honor its volunteers and to honor an individual or company that has made an extraordinary effort to enhance and preserve Palo Alto’s community forest. The following awards were presented:

The Arnold Soforenko Awards (given to an individual or company that has made an extraordinary effort to enhance and preserve Palo Alto’s community forest)

• Roche Palo Alto – Roche has demonstrated a real commitment to community involvement. The company approached Canopy three years ago and suggested a unique partnership arrangement that provided both funding to Canopy and volunteer opportunities for Roche employees. Over the past years this has led to one of their employees becoming a member of our Board, volunteer projects each Earth Day, a tree walk through the Roche campus, and frequent use of Roche’s facilities and resources for Canopy activities. The award was accepted for Roche Palo Alto by Dr. Ian Massey, Senior Vice President of R&D.
  
  
• Susan Rosenberg – Susan was a founding board member of Canopy and served on the board for six years. She is currently on Canopy’s Advisory Committee and is key to the Canopy’s fund development efforts. She is also the co-chair of the Trees for El Camino project. Her award is for “outstanding support of Palo Alto’s trees through her vision, tireless energy, and willingness to do whatever is necessary to ensure the success of local organizations supporting the goal of enhancing our urban forest”.
  
  Their award is for “contributing to a healthy local environment by taking the initiative to develop an innovative partnership with Canopy that includes important financial support, volunteerism, and countless in-kind donations”.
  
  
• Straun Edwards – Straun works for Arbor Well, a company located in Castro Valley. As part of the Sand Hill Road Corridor Agreement between Stanford and the City of Palo Alto, it was stipulated that all of the trees in the area near the Menlo Park bridge behind the Stanford West Apartments be professionally trimmed and that dangerous trees either be made safer or removed. The scope of this was enormous and special specifications were required since many trees had not been trimmed in 100 years. In the words of Dave Dockter, the City of Palo Alto Planning Department Arborist, the result of this effort was “one of the most outstanding jobs I have seen in my career, both in quality of workmanship and size of the job. The public trail is now one of the most beautiful, peaceful and safest places in Palo Alto to walk”.
  
  Straun’s award is for “his expert maintenance of many historic trees along San Francisquito Creek during one of the largest local tree maintenance programs, and for ensuring that ‘not one errant cut’ would be allowed to destroy what nature had spent a century growing”.

“Out-on-a-Limb Awards” (Volunteer awards given to outstanding Canopy volunteers)

• Chris Holstrom – A great all-around Canopy supporter. He designed and wrote the program for Canopy’s new tree database, served as “tech support” for various office computer problems, helped Canopy make the move to a new web-host, worked as a planting leader at five planting events, and authored an article for the newsletter.
  
  His volunteer award is for “his many roles as database developer, computer tech support, planting leader, and author”.
  
  
• James Imahiro – James has been a great volunteer for the past year. He’s done everything from helping re-arrange office furniture to scanning and tracking hundreds of photos for Canopy’s new website. He helped plant trees at the Lawn Bowling Green, enter data from last year’s tree care survey, and compile information for the tree database. James has also been a great help in solving office computer problems.
  
  His volunteer award is for “all his hours in website development, tree-care survey data entry, computer problem solving, and planting trees”.
  
  
• Julie Luu and Talia Bender – Julie and Talia are students at Gunn High School. They first came to Canopy this summer to help with the tree care survey. They enjoyed their first route so much that they really went the extra mile and took on four more over the course of the summer. Together they surveyed over 100 trees. Their dedication really helped Canopy complete this year’s tree care survey. Talia has also become an office volunteer and helped to enter the data that she and Julie collected.
  
  Each is given a volunteer award for “her enthusiasm and dedication in surveying the health of over 100 young street trees”.

Canopy’s major donors were also thanked for their generous support during the year that made possible for Canopy to serve the community.

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