Vote for Chavez
Rebecca Chavez has been an acting Commissioner on the Vashon Hospital District Board for several months and is now running for Position #4. During that time, I have been impressed by her knowledge, her thoughtfulness, and her focus on island healthcare needs. She is a clinical psychologist working with disabled veterans, and she is very sensitive to the needs of this population. But she is also a compassionate advocate for other people in health crises with few resources for help. Since joining the District, she has become involved with the Medical Reserve Corps Community Care Team, the group providing behavioral health support during an emergency.
As a nurse practitioner and former clinical specialist in psychiatric nursing, I appreciate her holistic view of the complexities of health care and her commitment to ensuring access to services. She and I have had several conversations in which we explored ways to address unmet healthcare needs while recognizing fiscal and resource constraints. Her approach is team-based, focusing on respect, shared decision-making, and collaboration.
In these challenging times, it is important to have people in public service with vision, creativity, and skills in collaborative problem-solving. Rebecca brings those qualities to this role, and she is the most clearly qualified candidate for this position. I sincerely urge voters to elect Rebecca Chavez to Position # 4 on the Vashon Hospital District so that she can continue the work she has started as a Commissioner. Thank you.
Wendy Noble
Yesterday’s heroes, today
Like the atrocities facing immigrants under the Trump administration today, Joe Okimoto’s family was torn from its community moorings in 1942 during the Japanese internment of the Roosevelt administration under Executive Order 9066.
Not unlike today’s threat, Joe himself was not an immigrant, but a natural-born American citizen. The 14th amendment protecting natural born persons as U.S. citizens was already in place — ratified in 1868. That didn’t protect Joe, just as U.S. citizenship is not protecting those who face the threat of incarceration and deportation today.
While Joe was 3 years old during the internment, Fred Korematsu was 23 years old, and was in a position to take a stand against being moved into a concentration camp. Fred refused to leave. Joe will introduce the third “Finding Courage in Dark Times – Public Sector Heroes Rediscovered” presentation, a series of talks presented by islander and Seattle University Professor Emeritus Dr. Larry Hubbell, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, at Vashon High School theater. Admission is free. Donations are welcome from those who are able. See you there!
Kevin Jones
Details that matter
I don’t know if it was an oversight or a blatant expression of disrespect, but I was concerned to see how the two candidates for Public Hospital District No. 5, Position No. 4, were presented in a front-page article of the October 16 Beachcomber. The section about Position No. 4 begins, “Kelly Wright and Dr. Rebecca Chavez …” Rebecca Chavez is referred to as “Dr. Chavez” at least once more in the article, while Kelly Wright is never identified as “Dr. Wright.” In fact, both candidates hold doctoral degrees in medical fields, while only one of them was credited as such in the Beachcomber. While neither candidate holds an M.D., they are both local practitioners, one in psychology and one in naturopathic medicine. The article should have either used the title “Dr.” for both of them, or for neither of them. It’s terribly insulting to refer to one of the candidates as “Dr.” but not the other.
Margaret Wessel
Editor’s note/Correction: The Beachcomber twice included “Dr.” before Rebecca Chavez’s name but omitted the title before Kelly Wright’s in the Oct. 16 article, “Vashon voters to decide heath, fire seats.” This was a copy editing and proofreading error, which we regret. The title has since been removed from Chavez’s name online to reflect how both candidates are listed on the King County ballot.
