Getting Benchwarmers in the Game: Retired Engineer Keeps a Promise


Joe Bock retired in 2008  after a long and successful career as an electrical engineer. But he always remembered his time back in grade school as a kid sitting on the sidelines and never getting into an athletic game. “I wanted to be athletic more than anything else.” And when he retired he was determined to help “kids like me.”

So at 74 years old, he now runs a program called “Benchwarmer Basketball” that has a growing and faithful following at the Cheviott Hills Recreation Center in Los Angles, California. He went back to school to study kinesiology (what Joe terms the “politically correct” word for physical education). And he hit many road blocks along the way. But he stuck with it and has helped dozens of kids off the bench and on to the basketball court.

DOWNLOAD EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

BENCHWARMER BASKETBALL VIDEO

Special thanks to Encore.org for assistance in arranging this interview.

 

From “Late Night with Conan” to Rikers Island


Deborah Shaw was an established costume designer in New York City. For 15 years she worked for “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” creating hundreds of costumes for the program. But when the show moved to Los Angeles, she decided to stay in New York and do something completely different.

And her second act took her to Rikers Island, one of the most dangerous prisons in America. Starting in 2009, she began working in  “The Big Garden” — a two-acre plot amid the prison complex — helping both detainees and prisoners via horticultural therapy. Today she is building a new program for the Fortune Society using gardening to help individuals recently released from the prison system re-enter everyday life.

DOWNLOAD EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Special thanks to Sarah McKinney of Encore.org for connecting us with Deborah Shaw.