By Ann L. Rappoport
Energy and vision connect industrial real estate and the National Greyhound Adoption Program (NGAP).
David G. Wolf, 69, brings as much fire to these passions as a nuclear reactor. Wolf founded Wolf Investment Inc. and later the NGAP, both headquartered in Northeast Philly.
Since graduating from Temple University in 1961, Wolf built a corporation of industrial properties successful enough to launch and support a world-renowned nonprofit greyhound rescue operation and state-of-the-art veterinary clinic.
Through NGAP, Wolf has rescued almost 7,000 greyhounds from cruelty and premature death when their owners decided their racing careers were no longer lucrative enough.
Many are therapy dogs
“They just want to be your buddy,” says Wolf, who boasts about his own four greyhounds as if they’re his grandkids. They’ll lean on you and be your couch potato, or they’ll take you on a healthy walk, he adds.
Many dogs adopted from NGAP have become therapy dogs, taken to hospitals and nursing homes to cheer up the patients. A retired man and a woman in her 50s regularly take their pets to Abington Memorial Hospital, Wolf says.
Others come to NGAP kennels just to walk the dogs awaiting adoption. For although the dogs come out of their cages for exercise each day, it’s better to have the off-campus personal attention of a friendly visitor to walk them around the block. Wolf welcomes volunteer walkers.
Profits go to NGAP
Wolf’s NGAP initiative in 1990 has catalyzed the formation of other concerned groups and a vigorous public awareness effort. Also, he leverages his resources to improve NGAP’s capacity. He donates some profits from the sales of his buildings to NGAP. He’s been known to send his trailer trucks to pick up in-kind gifts — for instance, pet food — and share such bounty with other rescue organizations.
Wolf, who started his career with buildings serving the parts division of Mack Trucks, heads Wolf Investment Inc., an umbrella corporation for a number of properties, including Torresdale Plaza and Dutton Road One, Two and Three. His two sons are involved in the business as well.
An admitted eBay addict, he buys up overstock inventories and greyhound collectibles that he then turns over, mostly to benefit the dogs and the new kennel he’s building.
He has also helped humans, too. In the 1970s, Wolf and his wife, Gerda, “adopted” a Laotian refugee family, set them up in their new residence and sponsored them as needed.
Overcoming obstacles — like heart catheterization for one of the children — members of the family assimilated, became educated and well-employed. Wolf maintains occasional contact with them.
A ‘greyhound tooth nut’
But he always returns the conversation to his more current rescue mission — better canine dental health. “We see dogs with atrocious mouths, and the dogs feel terrible” because of their bacteria-rich racing diets and lack of attention to their teeth. “I’m a greyhound tooth nut,” he acknowledges.
NGAP invested in a high-end diode laser, used in human dentistry, which — along with expert dental care — helps the dogs “play better, eat better and be so much more alive,” Wolf says.
“They make excellent companions,” Wolf says. “They’re always happy to see you, comfort you. They lift your spirits.”
Greyhounds are like potato chips, Wolf says, you can’t stop with just
one.
For more information about
the National Greyhound Adoption Program, animal rescue issues and health, and what you can do to help: 215-331-7918 or www.ngap.org.
By Lawrence Geller
We all know it’s the job of doctors to make people feel better.
But Michael Curtis’ job is to make people feel sick.
After one visit to his office, near Broad St. and Allegheny Ave., you may leave with anything from chest pain, asthma, nausea and abdominal pain, to depression, weight loss, back problems, a headache, even a stroke.
“That’s just the short list,” says Curtis, 56, who has been doing this for six years for Temple University’s medical school. He is director of its Clinical Simulation and Skills Center and is its Standardized Patient (SP) Program specialist. An SP, explains Curtis, describes his or her complaint to a medical student, who conducts an interview and performs an exam, depending on the nature of the case.
Serious play-acting
Under Curtis’s tutelage, SPs memorize the symptoms of the character they are playing. “This includes family, social and medical history,” he continues. SPs then practice on each other, trying to make it as realistic as possible before they meet their first medical student.
The use of SPs started more than 40 years ago in the Midwest and California. They now serve in most medical schools across the country, giving medical students practice before they work with real patients in the clinic.
The student will ask, “What brings you in here today?” to which the SP will respond, “I have been having some chest pain, Doc.” The student then asks about the pain, medical and family history, work and social history. The SP responds based on training received under Curtis. A brief physical may follow.
Sound easy? It isn’t.
“During the interview and exam,” Curtis explains, “the SP not only has to portray his/her character accurately, he or she must mentally check off what the student did or didn’t do — and how they did it.”
Evaluating the evaluators
The SP fills in an evaluation sheet about what questions the student asked or didn’t ask; as well as one about the physical exam. And while the SPs are evaluating the medical student, Curtis is evaluating the SP on the evaluation.
“Temple is not only interested in turning out skilled physicians,” says Curtis, “but also warm, caring, sensitive human beings, who happen to be good doctors. With all the medical information students learn, some overlook that how they relate to people is equally important.”
This is an attempt to sensitize medical students to personality traits which need attention — insensitivity, perhaps — and praise them for such patient positive ones that are warm and caring.
“In the real world,” says Curtis, “patients rarely, if ever, criticize their doctors. So doctors never learn about that side of themselves. The use of SPs with the doctors of the future allows a valuable sharing of information and honest feelings which is difficult to do in any other way.”
Feedback appreciated
Most students “appreciate the feedback,” he says. “For others, it’s a challenge to hear constructive feedback with the need to have to change their manner.”
Curtis, at Temple since 2001, has been an SP himself. He has also been an actor. Born in Scotland and raised in Canada — he is still a British subject — he gained managerial experience as a factory manager in the garment industry. He believes he has finally found his niche in this specialized field — training tomorrow’s doctors.
“It’s nice to mix art and medicine and feel I’m doing some good in the world,” he concludes.
If interested in work as an SP, you may call Curtis at 215-707-3645.
By Constance Garcia-Barrio
Six days in prison so traumatized Marlena Santoyo that she decided to do what she could for the incarcerated.
She visits inmates in the Federal Detention Center, where she was imprisoned in 2003 after demonstrating with a peace activist group outside the Federal Courthouse.
“In prison, everything was orange,” says Santoyo, 70, of Mt. Airy. “We wore orange jumpsuits, slept on orange sheets, used orange towels. At breakfast, we had sugary orange cereal that came in little boxes.”
Police arrested Santoyo and other members of Women in Black for trespassing after they blocked entrances to the Federal Courthouse at 6th and Market Sts. in March, 2003, to protest the war in Iraq.
She spent six days in the Federal Detention Center rather than pay the $250 fine.
‘A matter of principle’
“I could afford the fine,” says Santoyo. “It was a matter of principle.”
Besides the neon cereal, other things blighted the prison surroundings.
“Everything was made of steel: the sink, the toilet,” Santoyo recalls. “You couldn’t look out the narrow windows. Several days passed before I could get my medication for arthritis and fibromyalgia, and even a change of underwear. I realized how horribly tedious prison is. After that experience, I knew I had to do something to support people in prison.”
Uses her teaching skills
Santoyo contacted Prisoner Visitation and Support (PVS). A non-profit Philadelphia-based group, PVS visitors focus on inmates in federal and military prison who have long sentences and receive few visitors.
“Prisoners know they can’t talk openly because their words might be used against them,” says Santoyo, who visits between one and five prisoners a month.“They’ve got to know I won’t squeal on them. I use my background as a teacher to draw out prisoners.
“I listen, ask questions and give them a chance to express themselves,” says Santoyo, who taught English as a second language at Temple University, Community College of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia School. “On the other hand, I don’t want them to be left vulnerable in a tough environment. A visitor must walk a fine line.”
Santoyo says you get to see and hear about the problems in our criminal justice system — “the harsher sentences dealt to people of color and those who haven’t money for high-powered lawyers. A judge gave one man 17 years for a white-collar crime when someone with a similar case got three years.
“Another man was told that if he pleaded guilty, his family would remain eligible for benefits.
He did plead guilty but his family got nothing.”
‘It tears me apart’
“Doing prison visits is an amazing opportunity. At the same time, it tears me apart. When I visit, I’m totally focused on that person. That kind of attention is exhausting, but I know I’ve done something that matters.”
For more information: Prison Visitation and Support at the Friends Center, 15th and Cherry Sts., 215-241-7117.
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