The best and worst of 2011

By J. Patrick Coolican

Saturday, Dec. 24, 2011 | 2 a.m.

The stories of 2011 I’ll be happy to forget, but probably won’t:

At a well-intentioned back-to-school fair in a working-class neighborhood, Dollar Loan Center is giving out logo-emblazoned pens and “koozies,” which are foam cylinders usually associated with keeping beer cold and are most definitely not school supplies. Dollar Loan Center is a payday lender that profits from our poorest citizens. Blech!

Miss USA contestants exhibit a stunning scientific — and pedagogical — ignorance when asked at the pageant here in Vegas whether evolution should be taught in schools. Most say students should believe what they want and that “all sides” should be taught. I have the same feeling about gravity. I refer you to The Onion: “Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory.”

Our higher-education system is in a state of crisis. So how do legislators of both parties respond? Naturally, by kicking and clawing at each other to see who can be credited with arming our students and professors.

More broadly, may I never set foot in Carson City, ever again.

Some people try to do a ‘farm-to-table’ event, serving fresh food at the farm where it’s raised, and the Southern Nevada Health Department shows up; eventually the food is destroyed with bleach in an act of comical bureaucratic overreach.

State Treasurer Kate Marshall runs for Congress in the conservative 2nd District as a Democrat but tries to fool voters into thinking she’s really a Republican in one of the most craven, infuriating campaigns in memory.

•••

Stories I’ll happily remember:

The best part of my job is that I get to meet great people doing remarkable things for our community. And they’re totally selfless.

I like to think I’m helping the community with my reporting and opinioning, but I do it for mostly selfish, vain reasons. These people are actually doing the real work and for no other reward than knowing it’s the right thing to do.

Day after day, the Rev. Mary Bredlau ministers to the dead and their loved ones, serving at funerals across the valley. Just a week after burying her husband, she was there for yet another family.

Through great fortune, I found my high school English teacher, who left a high-paying job as a commodities trader to run a school in Haiti.

Heather Richardson has one of the hardest jobs I can imagine — trying to whip into shape parents who have had their children taken from them. Her goal is to reunite parents and children. If that doesn’t work, she places the children in the home of a loving, adoptive parent.

Child Focus, meanwhile, is a nonprofit organization that brings together siblings who have been separated by the foster care system.

Jeffrey Hinton brings history alive at Northwest Technical Academy, while Scott Ginger has built a speech-and-debate dynasty at Green Valley High School.

The teachers at Advanced Technological Academy are killing it, having earned a Blue Ribbon from the U.S. Department of Education — meaning it’s one of the best schools in the country.

Jeff Iverson is a recovering meth addict who is now general manager of Presidential Limo and in his spare time runs a sober living facility called Freedom House.

Robert Hunter brings people back from the brink of suicide at the Las Vegas Problem Gambling Center.

Volunteers for the United Way ward off the parasitic tax preparers in poor neighborhoods by helping people do their taxes.

Those are just some of the people I happened to meet and write about in 2011. There are thousands more. If you know them, tell me about them because they should be recognized. After all, without them, what kind of community would we be?

Happy holidays.