8 Honored by City for Volunteer Efforts

Six employees of the Volunteer Center of the San Fernando Valley and two police officers were honored by the Los Angeles Board of Public Works earlier this week in a ceremony at City Hall for help in the city’s Operation Clean Sweep.

Operation Clean Sweep is a citywide program staffed by volunteers who remove graffiti from public buildings.

The six members of the Volunteer Center honored were Executive Director Jim Leahy, Leticia Cabrera, Ella Clark, John Glass, Otto Hernandez and Carlos Olaya.

Also honored were LAPD Officers M. Arce Dominguez of North Hollywood and Webster Wong of the Rampart Division.

The Volunteer Center is run by the Assistance League of Southern California. The center’s outreach coordinators and managers were recognized both for recruiting 2,200 volunteers to work 250,000 hours in Operation Clean Sweep and working many weekend hours themselves in the program.

“We used to get a lot of graffiti on our building,” Leahy said. “We took a zero-tolerance approach to it and now we get it once or twice a year. It’s a rare thing.”