SILVER DOLLARS AND WOODEN NICKELS: She’s writing her own chapter of love

The Nevada Appeal’s Silver Dollars & Wooden Nickels feature recognizes achievements from the capital region and, when warranted, points out other acts that missed the mark.

SILVER DOLLAR: To bestselling New York Times young adult author Ellen Hopkins for creating Ventana Sierra, a non-profit organization, to help at-risk youth who were aging out of the foster system. Ventana Sierra is a housing program to help get those youth off of the streets and help get them into college.

She decided she needed to open Ventana Sierra in 2013 after hearing about a Truckee boy who had been living homeless for about a year, but still came to school every day.

At its opening in June 2013, Ventana Sierra consisted of two houses, a boys and a girls quarters, where kids can have a place to stay. Hopkins and her volunteers help the kids with things such as obtaining their GEDs and going to college. To date, the organization has helped about 25 kids.

SILVER DOLLAR: To all those who were honored with this year’s Nevada Appeal’s Best of Carson City Awards and to all of our readers who selected our community’s best.

SILVER DOLLAR: It’s been there for a while now, but we’ll take this chance to thank the Carson City Parks and Recreation Department for establishing a dog park at Fuji Park with separate fenced in areas for large and small dogs to roam as they please. The area is definitely a popular place for dog owners and their dogs. Remember, the dog park will be closed this week for the Nevada Fair, but will reopen Aug. 5. In the meantime, dog owners can take advantage of Carson City’s several other parks that cater to dogs.

WOODEN NICKEL: Actually the man who recently allegedly tried to evade law enforcement on a scooter receives a Wooden Nickel, but also a Silver Dollar for his humorous, although maybe not too smart attempt, to get away. We also can’t resist pointing out how appropriate the alleged scooter escape artist’s name is: Joseph Scurti.