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Children who fall off the jungle gym while visiting John D. Morgan park will have a softer fall now that volunteers who took part in United Way of America's "Week of Caring" filled in the areas in the sandbox that were low on or lacking sand and wood chips.
Twenty Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) employees teamed up with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Santa Clara County on Sept. 10 to help maintain and beautify the park that Vince Huppe, park supervisor for the city of Campbell, calls "the biggest, oldest and most used park in the city."
However, Huppe says, because it is the most used park it was in need of a great deal of maintenance. Software engineers shoveled sand, painted benches and planted colorful annual flowers in front of the park sign on Rincon Avenue.
"This is peak season, so we jumped on the opportunity to have help with these projects," Huppe says. "Lots of these projects were in waylay so this definitely helps, and helps the community at large."
The Week of Caring is an annual United Way event that places volunteers in one-day community projects that involve everything from landscaping to painting to cleaning to taking part in social events for children and seniors.
Even though HP is located in Mountain View, some of the volunteers are familiar with this Campbell park. Richard Hayashi remembers visiting the park as a child, playing on the volleyball courts and chipping his tooth on a chain-link fence.
"It is a good feeling to come back to the same park I came to as a kid and help out," says Hayashi, who has worked at HP for seven years. "It's great to give back to the community."
Dennis Ortega, who has been picking up litter at the park for four months, says the effort was a great help for the three Campbell employees assigned to regularly maintain the large park that spans from Budd Avenue to Rincon Avenue.
"These jobs would have normally taken these workers a few days, rather than the four hours it took the volunteers," says Al Morales, who has worked on irrigation and planting at the Campbell Community Center for 27 years and helped out during the Week of Caring.
HP employee Joan Cheng chose the site because she wanted to help children, and Annie Nguyen, who has worked at HP for five years and has three children, says, "This park is a great environment for the kids."
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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer