Rotary Club of Santa Monica

"COLOR YOUR LIFE WITH ROTARY"

Rota-Monica

BEWARE THIS PHONE SCAM! 

Don’t Ever Dial Area 809 

            Southern California Edison is distributing this warning as widely as possible: 

            All over the U.S., people are receiving E-mails, phone messages, or web calls instructing them to call an 809-phone number. The reason varies. It may be “information about a family member who has been injured” or “someone important to you has been arrested” or “you’ve won a wonderful prize.”  In each case, the message leaves an 809-phone number to be called immediately. 

Since there are so many new area codes now, people impulsively return these calls, whereupon they’ll be charged $2,425 per minute. The originator tries to keep them on the phone as long as possible to increase the charges. Quite often a charge of $24,000 or more will appear on the phone bill. Trying to fight the charges is hard, since the recipient really did make the call. The local phone company and the long distance carrier will not want to get involved, and will probably say they are simply passing along the billing from a foreign company. 

The 809 area code is in the British Virgin Islands, and can be used as a “pay per call” number. Since 809 is not in the U.S. it is not covered by U.S. regulations. 

            The National Fraud Information Center has identified this as one of the fastest-spreading current tricks. Verizon (the phone company) is spreading the word as widely as possible. Rotary suggests to members that they pass along the warning whenever the can. 

*   *   *   *   *

COMING UP

December 22            -- DARK  (Christmas)

December 29            -- DARK  (New Year’s)

January 5            -- Bruce Sievers will present a program entitled:

         “An American in Love with His Country”

January 12            -- Dr. Kevin Grazier from JPL will speak on the

        Saturn and Titan space missions

HE ARRIVED EARLY 

(One of a series on new members of our club) 

            Have you noticed that many of our newer members look remarkably young? The club’s average age is unknown because we don’t divulge birth dates, but it does seem lower lately. 

            Anyhow, Jonathan Kemp is certifiably younger than our average. He began his professional career in 1977, as a Congressional aide. Then last year he stepped into an elevated post at Pepperdine University, and became a Rotary type, talking with corporate executives and government officials as an envoy of the university. 

            Earlier he had been an undergraduate at Pepperdine, majoring in English literature. Then he earned master’s degrees in the same field at University College, London, in 1995 and the University of Virginia in 1998. He became a comparatively rare example of a star athlete who switches to academics and public affairs. “I went to Pepperdine to play water polo,” he recalls, “but became a serious student as I became interested in teaching and committed to attending graduate school.” 

            The water polo team, of which he was a bulwark, took third in the national collegiate tourney. Jon, instead of pushing on to a doctorate, found a job inside the beltway. He’d heard about government work occasionally from his uncle Jack F. Kemp, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and subsequent contender for nomination as U.S. President. Jon joined the staff of Mark Souder, an Indiana Congressman. This required him to become knowledgeable about agriculture, natural resources, and other matters that Souder’s constituents watched closely. “Some of our visitors were cool at first because I wasn’t a farmer,” he recalls. “I got better with experience.” 

            When Pepperdine invited him to become director of it’s new Institute for Public Policy, he accepted. The Institute is part of the university’s School of Public Policy, which he describes as “taking an innovative and student-centered approach to the increasingly inter-disciplinary field of public policy. Public policy is broadened to embrace community-based and free-market approaches. Solutions are guided by moral and ethical principles nourished by Pepperdine’s Christian heritage.”