President’s Message

-Happy New Year! 2023 passed by so quickly! Just a quick overview of events we held and attended as representatives of SFIP in 2023:

Our Community Action Chair, Jenny Chea-Vaing spearheaded the March 4th American Lung Association Fight for Air Climb in San Francsico. Our group raised $600 for this worthy cause. Jenny, Annette and her grandkids chose to walk at Land’s End instead of climbing up the stairs at the Bank of America building.

The following week, on March 11th, Jenny Chea-Vaing and Annette Ing-Firmeza volunteered with the SF Public Works Division’s Arbor Day event to help beautify the SF neighborhood around Bessie Carmichael Elementary Schoolyard.

On April 9th Jenny Chea-Vaing, Annette Ing-Firmeza, Celeste Joe, and Allen Shiu volunteered at the Wa Sung 65th Annual Easter Pancake Breakfast held at Lincoln Square Park Recreation Center in Oakland. We cooked pancakes and sausage patties, cut up oranges and assembled the plates for the attendees. There was also entertainment and other community action booths. The money raised goes for Merit Scholarships and distributing free copies of the Wa Sung Community Directory.

We had two Lunch N Learn sessions: The first was on July 25th, Navigating Retirement Financial Planning sponsored by Edward Jones and JP Morgan Asset Mgmt. Thank you Josephine Palacios for coordinating and all the timely information you provided. It’s never too early to start saving for your retirement. The next one was on September 20th with FBI guest speaker, Agent Gimbel telling us about past active shooter incidents and what to do in the event of being caught in this type of situation. I know the attendees thoroughly enjoyed both presentations. We are planning to ask Agent Gimbel to come back as he has a wealth of knowledge on many issues including terrorism, human trafficking, financial scams, etc.

On April 18th, Allen Shiu, Marie Meadows and Maritz Portillo volunteered at the local Food Bank in SF where they passed out bags of food.

The Regional Conference was hosted by HAIP at the Prince Hotel in Honolulu on April 27th - 29th . Representing our chapter were Allen Shiu as the Delegate, Annette Ing-Firmeza and Marie Meadows as the Alternates. This was an amazing event and the HAIP Chairs and Committee members worked hard to make this a memorable event. We even had the pleasure of seeing two lion dances! The classes were terrific. Marie, Annette and Tina Kong supported this event by selling our famous breads which raised over $1K! It is always nice to see members from other chapters attending the conference.

The IAIP Convention was held in Providence, Rhode Island on June 23rd – 25th. Representing our chapter were Allen Shiu as the Delegate and Annette Ing-Firmeza as the Alternate. This was quite a busy event, attending classes, meetings, seeing old friends from various regions and making new friends.

Thanks to Marie Meadows and Annette Ing-Firmeza, we had a very exciting and fun-filled day at Tilden Golf Course in Berkeley on August 18th. We had 30 golfers and 8 hole sponsors. The raffle is always a fun event with many nice, donated gift cards and prizes. Sorry I can’t name all the donators, but they are greatly appreciated for all their support!! We were able to sponsor Rae Lynn Zachary who is a huge supporter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Light the Night and has raised probably over $40K in all the years she has done this event. SFIP also supported Marie Meadows’ passion for the West Coast Boxer Rescue. Two well-deserving charities we are proud to help and were able to give each charity $200

We had our annual SF Giants Tailgate and Game event on October 1st and thank Maritza Portillo for chairing. It was highly appreciated and successful. We had delicious Mexican food and beverage! SFIP, Greg Kelson, Laura Gutierrez and John Cigavic supplied additional beverages.

The Fresno chapter hosted the Ca Council meeting on Oct. 20th – 21st. While this event didn’t have as many members as we expected to attend, it was still a very successful meeting. Marie and I were asked to help support this event by selling our breads and raised over $1K. We gladly did so and were asked again to support the upcoming Council meeting in S. Cal. Jody Nishida was voted to succeed Dawn Manzano as the Council Director in July. Representing our chapter were Allen Shiu as the Delegate and Annette Ing-Firmeza as the Alternate.

Unfortunately, we were unable to have our annual Day at the Races due to the cost of the Turf Club buffet luncheon. It was sad to hear Golden Gate Fields was closing at the end of 2023.

Our final annual event was the holiday luncheon on December 14th. Our thanks to Marie Meadows and Maritza Portillo for chairing this event and Cassandra Yu for creating those cute Grinch ornaments filled with M&M’s. Our raffle was fun and we raised $500 for the Hawaii Maui Fire Relief Fund and Hawaii Humane Society. We want to thank the members for their donations to make our raffle a success!

We want to let you know that Allen Shiu, President has turned in his resignation. We wish him well in his future endeavors.

Marie and I are working on Saving the Date in February to volunteer at the White Pony Express Food Bank in Pleasant Hill. We are not sure which Saturday we will be assigned to help. Normally you come around 10am and leave by 1pm. A flyer will be coming soon.

We are working on our scholarship program and hope to have this in place soon. Stay tune for more details.

We will continue to plan more events and keep the momentum going. Let us know if there is anything you would be interested in supporting and other Lunch N Learn topics. We welcome all suggestions.

All the best,

Co-Editors of Cover Notes 2024 - Annette Ing-Firmeza & Marie Meadows