Bruin Coach Coaxes Trojan to Donate; OC 50 Rundown

Orange County Business Journal, May 5-May 11, 2008 by Reiff, Rick

OC Insider

Rick Neuheisel hasn't led UCLA against USC yet, but the new Bruins head football coach already has leveraged the rivalry for the benefit of OC United Way. Neuheisel, keynote speaker at United Way's annual Real Estate and Building Industry luncheon last week at the Hyatt Regency Irvfne, declared he was donating his $2,500 honorarium to the nonprofit and challenged one of the many Trojans in the audience to match it. Tom Schriber, chairman of shopping center developer Donahue Schriber, complied. Neuheisel then urged a UCLA partisan to match that. Answering the call: "NFL on Fox" analyst Terry Donahue, Neuheisel's former coach at UCLA and the brother of Schriber's late partner Dan Donahue ... The event drew 750, down from 1,000 last year, and raised $517,000, down from $560,000. Given what's been going on in real estate, United Way's Kristin Bush calls the results "awesome" Pacific Life's sleek new HQ for its life insurance division, off the 73 toll road in Aliso Viejo, took only 15 months to build. CEO Jim Morris says that's less time than it's taken one of his employees to remodel a kitchen ... How are we doing? Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle says some public utilities have done it, but he knows of no other city that has commissioned J.D. Powers & Associates to do a customer-satisfaction survey. Anaheim is paying $125,000 to find out what its residents think about the city's planning and building, law enforcement and public utility services ... Marine Capt. Floy Rodriguez, now an assistant property manager with The Irvine Company at Irvine Spectrum, recently received the Bronze Star for Valor. He spent eight years in the service and saw combat in Afghanistan... John Stratman has left Faubel Public Affairs in Lake Forest to join Kaiser Permanente as OC public affairs director ... Celeste Signorino has moved from biomed/tech-industry promoter Octane to become business development veep for the OC Biz Council ... Observations on last week's OC 50, this paper's annual list of the most influential businesspeople: The number of OC SOers who live in Santa Ana, OCs biggest city: zero. Number who live in Anaheim, the second-biggest city: one, the above-mentioned Pringle. The number of SOers who live in Newport Beach or Laguna Beach, which together comprise just 4% of the county population: Fully half, 33 of 66. (The 50 listings include a few multiple entries.) The most popular enclaves: Emerald Bay, with six OC SOers, and Newport Coast and Coto de Caza, five each ... Only three OC SOers-Henry Segerstrom, Parker Kennedy and Dan Young-were bom in the county. Ten others are from the L.A. area, but none from San Diego. Fifteen are foreign-born; seven are from the Chicago area ... The OC 50's youngest and oldest members are homebuilders-Peter Shea Jr., 41, and William Lyon, 85.