Rotary Club of Conifer Meeting, January 9, 2024
 

Updates & Announcements
 
Announcements:
  • Please sign up for Visioning for the club on Jan. 20.
  • The Rotary area social likely to be April 24 at El Rancho, $59 per person, all-inclusive. It has a great menu.
  • The Mindfest website is up and running, sign-up genius is up and running at the bottom of the page. Please follow and like our club Facebook page, which has this. We have a goal of 500 attendees, so we really need to get the word out. I have flyers for you to hang up. One good place is the back of restroom doors. All of our speakers are lined up. Keynote is the leader of Mental Health Colorado. His topic is what a healthy community looks like and steps to get there.
  • Stan sent out a notice to all of the Rotary metro presidents and president-elects about Mindfest and got a good response. This group is really well-organized.
  • Ann reported on the Ukrainian family, where the women have job offers from the Amazon warehouse for the end of January.
  • Ann also reported that Rotary Wildfire Ready is trying to find out the criteria used by companies that are rating our neighborhoods for wildfire, then selling the data to insurance companies. This is why our insurance rates are skyrocketing. RWR is concerned that the rating criteria has not been ground-truthed, and we all need to be on the same page as far as which dangers are worst and need to be addressed.
  • Ann also reported that she is suddenly working much more on a fuel break for her neighborhood because the adjacent Denver Mountain Park contractor, who is needed for removing logs through the park, is starting work as soon as this week, instead of summer.
  • Dean and Suzanne have donated $1250 toward match for a Rotary grant for Sasa Harambee’s teen program in Kenya. After the funds are matched (more than 4 times), the money will be used in a low-income area of Nairobi, and in Siaya county, where Sasa Harambee operates. This includes sex education, teaching respect for females, teaching a responsible lifestyle. Carol Carper explained the program at a club meeting a few months ago.
  • Maria Rosa has a family of Burmese Rohingya refugees arriving Wednesday Jan. 17 at 7 p.m. They are mom, dad and three daughters. “What an amazing team this is preparing for their arrival,” she said.  We will take them to their short-term lodging, and they will be moving to permanent housing in February. Stan will do a grocery run before they arrive. Stan said the Rohingya in general are stateless, traumatized, and often have been tortured.
 
Meeting program
Cale Gould, State Patrol Program
 
OVERVIEW:
 
The State Patrol program is focused on reducing car theft, which has doubled in Colorado from 2019 to 2022, from 20,000 to 41,000. There have been another 5000 attempts.
 
Thieves are not youth looking for a joy ride or thieves looking to sell the car. It is mostly adults, stealing cars to perpetrate other crimes, such as robbing a bank, dealing drugs, etc. They are armed now.
 
Colorado has very high recovery rate, likely 90 percent for 2023. This is partly because the cars are dumped after the crime. Colorado is the number one state for car theft per capita, so we have an auto theft coordination center. Car thefts are expected to have fallen in 2023, roughly 21 percent.
 
The most commonly stolen are Chevrolet Silverados, Sportage, Ford F250 and Honda Civic and the rest of the top 10 are Hyundais and Kias.
 
An organized crime ring was indicted in fall and car thefts at the airport were nearly eliminated.
 
Thieves target vehicles they suspect have firearms in them to steal. That includes vehicles with gun stickers, trucks, SUVs, outdoor vehicles.
Keep your fob away from the vehicle, don’t leave the car running, don’t leave spare keys in the vehicle. Some 30-50% of thefts involved owner apathy, such as not locking the car.
 
www.Lockdownyourcar.org  has a map of hotspots for theft. This includes your house, parking lots, gas stations, park and rides, large parking lots. Chances are that some of these cars are unlocked.