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		The Difference of One Who says you can't change the world? Five alumni who did it through sustained, selfless determination. as told to Andy Dappen "If we just had more people who cared, we could end injustice and achieve peace," chuckles Dave Purchase, a Tacoma resident who started the nation's first public needle-exchange program. "At least that's what I believed in college." Purchase, '62, is part of the crowd who cares, but he is also seasoned enough to shake his head over that notion of old. "Now I just want to get drug users access to sterile needles. I'll worry about injustice and world peace on the weekends." Clean needles may seem a small piece in the puzzle of societal ills, but Purchase's devotion contributed to the rise of 178 needle-exchange programs around the country, prevented thousands of drug users from contracting AIDS, and saved billions of public-health dollars. That's big stuff from just one person. All of us who have ventured out from college can relate to the impotency felt when confronting world-scale problems. Yet these five alumni-NASA scientist Richard Stolarski '63, teacher Roberta Moore Zarbaugh '74, lawyer Michael Woerner '82, state representative Ida Ballasiotes '71, and social worker Dave Purchase '62-illustrate the power of the individual. They remind us that people working alone or within focused teams can instigate change, can make a difference. Thomas Fuller said, "He who is everywhere is nowhere." That's a reminder that there is power in letting go of the whole and targeting the one-one person, one task. One contribution may not seem like much, but Purchase was on target in believing that we simply need more people who care. If we each committed ourselves to leave this world better than we found it, if we each devoted the hammer of our actions to one nail, just what would the cathedral of humanity look like? The product of each of us exercising the power of one would be staggering. Richard Stolarski '63 Foreteller of the thinning ozone layer Some people save the world more literally than others. In 1973 Richard Stolarski and colleague Ralph Cicerone made a formal presentation to NASA, concluding that chlorine compounds in the upper atmosphere could be a significant destroyer of ozone. Later that year, Stolarski discussed chlorine chemistry in the Earth's atmosphere at an international conference in Kyoto, Japan. This became much-referenced material about the devastating affect chlorine had on ozone. One chlorine molecule in the upper atmosphere created a catalytic reaction capable of neutralizing 10,000 particles of ozone. Shortly thereafter, when it became known that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from refrigerants, insecticides, and aerosols were torn apart in the upper atmosphere by the sun's UV rays, exposing the ozone layer to chlorine, Stolarski wondered if the upper atmosphere was in serious trouble. In September 1974, in an article published in Science, Stolarski and Cicerone were among the first to warn that the sky might be dissolving. "Before we knew that CFCs were breaking down and exposing the ozone layer to chlorine, I was studying how effluent from the space shuttle affected the upper atmosphere. The spent fuel contained chlorine and although people in atmospheric sciences didn't know it, every chemist knew that chlorine destroyed ozone. People asked why I was doing this research-it wasn't a big issue because nobody believed there was a significant source of chlorine in the upper atmosphere. I said it allowed us to learn the field and someday something might connect to it. The fact that CFCs came along was lucky for me. I was working on a small problem in the scope of things, but I was in the right place with the right information when we learned what happened to CFCs in the upper atmosphere. I eventually realized that our work was a critical part of the big picture. I tell people that by jumping into an emerging field, doing good work, and getting to know the people in that field, great things can happen. In my case, my research was important in understanding the dangers of CFCs, and I got to know people like Sherry Rowland, Mario Molina, and Paul Crutzen, the scientists who discovered that CFCs were breaking apart up high. By knowing them, pretty soon I knew Nobel Prize winners. [Rowland, Molina, and Crutzen received the 1995 Nobel Prize for their contributions to the field of ozone depletion.] In 1974 I took a job as a research scientist with NASA-they felt they should have a program studying the environmental impact of shuttle effluent. Out of this grew NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Program, which became a major player in reporting to Congress about the state of the atmosphere. In 1987, when the chlorine damage in the upper atmosphere was found to be creating an ozone hole near the South Pole, this agency was positioned to do the instrumentation and data collection allowing us to monitor and understand the ozone hole. I went on to join NASA's research facilities at the Goddard Space Flight Center, named The Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamic Branch. Our division studied atmospheric chemistry and the reactions occurring as elements move around. You can't study elements in isolation, you need to see them in context. Take ozone: In the lower atmosphere it's a pollutant we don't want to breathe, but in the upper atmosphere its ability to filter UV protects life down below. Or take CFCs: They are inert down low, but are destroyed by UV up high. What each element does or what it contributes depends on where it is and what it can react with. I deal with a lot of data, but I try not to get too immersed in details. I try to see the big picture, look for generalities, and determine what interactions could be the next big thing. I was in on the ground floor of one big thing, and in research that's about as much as you can hope for. But that hasn't kept me from dreaming about working on the next big thing. Much of my ability to have made a difference in this field was a function of working with the right people. Many of us are unlikely to make a difference as individuals-we drift when we're left to attack problems alone. We need to find the right role with the right group to become a significant player who pulls an important project forward. That's what happened with ozone: It was a relatively small group of people who identified the problem, monitored it, collected data, and figured out the chemistry and meteorology creating the ozone hole. Ultimately, we affected global policy to counteract the problem. Have we fixed the problem? Maybe. By adopting the Montreal Protocol (an international agreement signed by over 100 countries), we have severely limited the use of ozone-damaging compounds. If we keep CFCs and chlorine out of the upper atmosphere, the atmosphere will cleanse itself over a 50-year period. Meanwhile ozone is a renewable resource-the sun is creating ozone in the upper atmosphere at an incredible rate. So the ozone hole and the ozone layer should recover. I'm prepared to be surprised by what happens, however. Climate is changing, and we're dumping so much into the atmosphere. I expect something unexpected to present itself."
		Roberta Moore Zarbaugh '74 Hawaii State Teacher of the Year Puget Sound was Roberta "Bobbie" Moore Zarbaugh's first experience away from island life. After the snow, clam digging, and cold rain of the Pacific North "Wet," Zarbaugh returned to Hawaii. She found her calling in the classroom in 1992, but first she was sidetracked for 17 years-as a flight attendant and a small business owner. Today she teaches language arts to seventh and eighth graders on Kauai, and more than 1,000 students have learned about the importance of words from her. Hawaii's Board of Education named her the State Teacher of the Year for 2003. "My master's thesis studied decision-making among adolescents. I discovered that to be good learners, young teenagers need a lot of structure. But although structure is crucial to the age, it is actually evaporating. Parental involvement in their teenager's school, activities, and sports drops off dramatically; many parents check out altogether and return to full-time work. Parents assume that because teenagers look like adults, they are adults. Emotionally, however, these kids are still immature and need guidance to make good decisions. Consequently, structure is important in my classes. I post the agenda for the day-students like knowing what we need to accomplish. This minimizes surprises, which teenagers get enough of in normal life. Knowing the agenda doesn't mean you can't have fun, that you can't mix things up, that you can't make time fly. We write in journals, conduct mini grammar lessons, and read out loud in every class. I work hard to get everyone participating. We read and edit each other's work. There's considerable peer feedback and group discussion. Through it all, I acknowledge that we each have multiple intelligences, and I plan an array of activities to bring out the best in each student. Many adults are intimidated by middle schoolers, but I love the age-they're still so impressionable and pliable. They're hungry to learn. They're still wondrous, childlike, evolving daily. They're still young enough that you can make a difference-you can inspire, motivate, open pathways to learning and self-discovery. Maybe I like the age because I remember those years being the hardest for me. I can remember what they're going through. And maybe I like the age because they're zany, and I fit in with them. The real challenge of middle school isn't the age, but the external factors affecting students, namely the media's influence and the breakdown of the family. It's expensive to live in Kauai, and both parents work in many families. We have classrooms of latchkey kids-children who are left home alone and have no one monitoring them. Classrooms of children whose families no longer sit around talking-family time is dinner at McDonald's. Once, aunts, uncles, grandparents-even the village itself-helped parent and provide adult role models. Now everybody is working. Students find their heroes on TV-wrestlers whose vocabulary is a string of four-letter words, gangsters covered with tattoos, singers flaunting their sexuality. We're giving our children a wealth of mixed messages and a dearth of positive direction. Society needs to take more responsibility for the messages it transmits. And because parents are not home, we need more after-school activities. Sports, churches, Boy Scouts help, but we need more: Junior Achievement, art classes, dance classes. After school, the lives of many teenagers lack structure they get bored, and this gets them in trouble. Every middle schooler needs significant adults in their life-adults who stop, listen, pay attention, and care about them. Today, parents are forcing schools to fulfill this role. They're forcing us to teach character. This shouldn't be our job, but that's the society we live in, so I try to be there for those who need an adult, who need a sounding board or an advisor. It's tough, because along with teaching character, I'm supposed to teach language arts to 150 students every day. If I had 20 rather than 30 students per class, I could reach so many more. There just isn't enough of me to go around. Still, it's the reward of influencing a few that keeps me teaching. Even if I can't reach everyone, there are a few in each class I can help. I can help them see the value of learning or help them believe in themselves. I can be a meaningful adult providing some of the perspective and structure they need. I can make a difference for them. I'm often asked what's most rewarding about teaching. It's not one big thing but the little things happening daily. It's as simple as helping a student pick a good book, knowing the book will influence him. Or a student confessing with pride that she just completed her first book ever. Or a letter from a former student thanking me for making him a reader. It's knowing that every day I'm helping these 'tween'agers find their way between childhood and adulthood. And that every day they're forcing me to grow as well."
		Michael Woerner '82 Advocate of the people in the Exxon Valdez and fen-phen cases Michael Woerner has spent his professional life with the Seattle-based law firm Keller Rohrback as part of its complex-litigation group. In an age when lawyers are perceived as pinstriped money-grubbers, Woerner argues that his profession has done more to help the public good than harm it. For example, in the arena of mass torts and class-action suits (Woerner's world), the damages caused by the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the fen-phen diet drugs have hurt tens of thousands of people. Woerner worked on these two cases for nearly a decade and is bringing restitution to the many who were damaged by the few. The national association representing Trial Lawyers for Public Justice recognized Woerner when it granted the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award to the litigation team Woerner worked with on the Exxon Valdez case. "The most rewarding part of my work is the occasional phone call of thanks from a grateful client. In the fen-phen cases, people started taking these drugs in the 1990s, thinking they were helping themselves lose weight, only to discover they may have caused major health problems [heart-valve damage or primary pulmonary hypertension]. That made them feel guilty and foolish for taking the drugs in the first place, and some of them were devastated when tests showed they had compromised their health. The government recommended that anyone who took fen-phen should have an echocardiogram to determine whether they suffered from heart-valve damage or pulmonary hypertension. Before our class-action suit, many people were ignoring the test because their health insurance would not cover the $1,000 cost. Many just couldn't justify the expense if they seemed to be feeling OK. When this test became available as part of the settlement, tens of thousands who needed it were able to afford it-and many users of the drugs discovered they had suffered damages that qualified them for additional compensations to pay for medical care. The tests also gave fen-phen users a leg to stand on if they opted out of the class-action settlement and chose to pursue individual damages in court. In the Exxon Valdez case, thousands of miles of fishing grounds [salmon and herring] were devastated around Prince William Sound, Kodiak Island, Chignik, and Cook Inlet. The year of the spill [1989], fishing simply shut down in these waters-no one wanted to send oiled fish to market and risk ruining the reputation of the Alaskan fisheries. Then there were future uncertainties-no one knew if the oil would affect fish getting back to their spawning grounds or what oil would do to fish eggs. The oil spill drove the prices of Alaskan fish way down; even today, 14 years later, prices have yet to rebound to their pre oil-spill levels. Meanwhile, fish populations in Prince William Sound never fully recovered. Thousands of fishermen have been affected-they've suffered years of financial difficulty and, in many individual cases, this has contributed to bankruptcy, depression, divorce In 1994, a jury ruled in favor of the fishermen and awarded them $5 billion in punitive damages, but Exxon appealed. The appeal process is still dragging on because Exxon knows how to work the system; they know they make money every day they keep their billions invested. In the end, I believe Exxon will pay billions in punitive damages. While that decision may come too late for some, many fishermen will benefit and Exxon will have been held accountable for the damage it caused. Class-action suits and mass torts have been emerging fields over the past 15 years, and I enjoy working these cases. They're complex, challenging, stimulating, and many feel like the right thing to do because bad things have happened to large groups of people. We're usually the underdog, and we're going up against giants that have top legal counsel and the ability to play the system. Sometimes our opponents have gross revenues exceeding the GNP of many countries. But lawyers like me who have been involved in mass tort suits have accomplished what legislation hasn't. We've had victories against those giants-tobacco companies, pharmaceuticals, and oil companies. I believe we've helped keep corporations that abuse the public good accountable. This is important work. And with the jury system, the verdicts are normally fair. Judges will tell you that the verdicts are usually not outrageous-the juries usually get it right. Sure, there are individuals and high-profile cases that occasionally give us all a black eye, and there are lawyers primarily interested in earning a comfortable living. But in the global sense, we care about making a difference. I got into law because it was challenging and stimulating, but finding this niche where I'm working for the benefit of large groups of people has added passion to my work. I didn't plan it like this-fate had a hand in it. But now I believe that finding your passion-or being open to letting a passion find you-is a key ingredient in making a difference. "
		Ida Ballasiotes '71 Crusader for public safety Ida Ballasiotes' life had been progressing just fine. Family life was good, and she had been successful in her career, having run small businesses and handled personnel matters in both the private and public sectors. But one night in 1988 her world changed when her daughter was murdered in Seattle's Pioneer Square by a convicted sex offender on work release. Ballasiotes despaired over how this could have happened. How could such a person be wandering around unsupervised? In trying to answer those questions, it was obvious the system was broken, and she went to work fixing it. Her volunteer work with a task force studying what to do with released sex offenders eventually led her to politics. In 1992 she was elected to the state Legislature, and for a decade her service made an impact that most citizens of Washington recognize and appreciate. When her last term ended in January 2003, she opted to retire. "When my daughter was murdered, I had an overwhelming sense of grief and anger. I needed to know how something like this could have happened. Investigating was like peeling back the layers of an onion-what happened to my daughter and my family was not an isolated event. The system was emphasizing the perpetrator's rights, not the rights of the victims or the public welfare. I had to get involved; it was a place where I could channel my emotions. I joined a task force of 24 people the governor had assembled. Several of us were victims. I remember being told it usually took three years for these task forces to accomplish anything. I responded, 'I don't think so, not on this one.' We traveled around the state talking with social and law-enforcement agencies, collecting ideas, discussing possibilities, and within six months we got the Community Protection Act passed. It was very comprehensive and the first law of its type in the nation. It allowed stiffer sentences for violators, required that the public be notified when sex offenders were being released in their community, provided more specialized treatment to offenders, included mechanisms to keep the worst offenders locked up indefinitely in treatment centers, and offered more assistance to victims. Over half the states in the country have borrowed heavily from this act in creating their own legislation. It was never my intent to go into politics. But once I got started, I saw it as a way to make permanent change. I also saw that the Community Protection Act was slow to be enacted and enforced-continued pressure was necessary. So I ran for the state Legislature in 1992. During my 10 years in Olympia I got over 30 bills passed, primarily in public safety and victims' rights. These included bills that allowed only two strikes for sex offenders, helped victims of domestic violence, compensated crime victims, expanded drug courts statewide, created work-release facilities, implemented anti-bullying laws, and aided the authority of local jails. I also worked on 'Three Strikes and You're Out'-an initiative that passed by 78 percent. The partisanship of the Legislature drove me wild, and I refused to get mired down in it. I was called a moderate Republican, but I cosponsored bills with Democrats and worked closely with Democrats on many issues. To be successful, you must work across the aisle and get support from many quarters. Some colleagues had trouble voting against their caucus, but I voted my conscience or what I felt my district wanted every time. Many colleagues were so concerned about being re-elected they were afraid to do anything for fear of angering people. Re-election was never a concern for me. I felt either something was worth doing or it wasn't, and I acted accordingly. The legislation I'm proudest of has allowed emergency medical technicians to carry and administer epinephrine to those having an allergic reaction. I pushed this legislation when a local child had an allergic reaction to peanuts. The EMTs who arrived could have saved her but they weren't allowed to carry epinephrine; by the time the paramedics arrived, the child had died. It was senseless. We passed legislation allowing a two-year test period-by the end of the first year, 25 lives had been saved. The sentiment was 'forget the second year of study, make this permanent now.' One paramedic wrote to thank me, saying he had opposed the law when I had drafted it but that this was, in fact, a good law. The results spoke for themselves. Most legislation is far less rewarding because you can't see what happens. The law is absorbed into an amorphous system. It's resisted and tweaked in implementation, or it isn't properly enforced, or budgets aren't available to administer and enforce the law. Sometimes you can't tell if the law made a dent. Of course, budgetary matters are a big problem with the current Legislature. The anti-tax crusade has been a disaster. People vote for simple solutions to complex problems (like cheap license tab fees in the case of Washington state) without knowledge of how they're affecting the entire picture. But public distrust is high right now. State legislators are paid $32,000 per year, plus a per diem while we're in session, and we have extremely strict disclosure laws, but the public thinks we're pulling a fast one on them and making tons of money. I'd like to find all that money we're accused of making. Motor vehicle excise taxes funded criminal justice and public health. Recently I was involved in a situation where we were dealing with an anthrax hoax, and the state services couldn't even handle the hoax. 'My God, what's going to happen if we have a real situation?' I asked some of the administrators? They laughed nervously and didn't say anything. I could see it in their eyes-catastrophe. But, hey, the good news is that we've got $30 license tab fees. I won't miss trying to make government work in the face of increased partisanship and decreased budgets. Still, the letters I received when I announced my retirement made me realize that my work was recognized. Many wrote to thank me for practicing nonpartisan politics. Some who considered themselves dyed-in-the-wool Democrats wrote to tell me they consistently voted for me because I looked at what was needed, not at the party line. Because so much of my legislation pertained to criminal justice, many wrote to thank me for making Washington a safer place to live. One person sent me a postcard of a picturesque church and said my government service reminded him of the church-he wrote I was 'very present, bold when necessary, always graceful and filled with a great commandment. You have left it [Washington] a much better place.' It's been said that the great end in life is not knowledge, but action, and I believe that you make a difference by being willing to act. When you see that something is wrong-not just in your eyes but in the eyes of many-go after it to make it better."
		Dave Purchase '62 Needle-exchange pioneer In the mid-1980s, Dave Purchase found himself disabled after he was hit by a drunk driver, and for several years he was in and out of surgeries. By the time he was thinking about returning to his job in the field of drug treatment, AIDS among injection drug users (IDUs) had grown to epidemic proportions. He wondered why he should bother with drug treatment if all his patients would soon be dead. Needle-exchange programs were curbing AIDS in Amsterdam and, given that he wasn't yet working, Purchase was poised to try something similar in North America. During the summer of 1988, using funds of his own and donations, he set up a table on Pacific Avenue in Tacoma. The first public syringe-exchange program in North America was up and running. I wish I could say there was a burning bush telling me to do this, but there wasn't. Among those of us who believed needle exchange might solve a problem, I was the logical choice because I wasn't working and no one could fire me for causing trouble. It seemed likely that distributing needles to drug users would result in an arrest, and we planned to use the courts to educate the public. Amsterdam was showing that syringe exchange worked-that the solution was elegantly simple. It's just common hygiene: AIDS is transmitted through the blood, and a needle going from an infected user to another user is a major vector spreading the disease. I had intended to do this for a summer before I returned to work. Fifteen years later, I'm still at it, handling the needle exchange and HIV prevention for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. In the early days, rather than getting arrested, we attracted a lot of attention. We made the national media, and people from San Francisco, Boulder, Seattle, everywhere really, came to see what we were doing. Now there are 178 cities with needle-exchange programs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. [Purchase is also the chairperson for the North American Syringe Exchange Network, supplying support services to those programs.] In a survey conducted by the Tacoma News Tribune, 68 percent of the respondents supported the work we were doing down on the streets. But there has always been a loud group opposing us. They say we're supporting the habits of the wrong people that we're sending the wrong message. But if we are going to talk about the 'wrong' people, just who are the right people? And if we are sending the wrong message, what is the right message-that drug users should die, that we should condone murder through neglect? I believe we are sending the right message: Public health is for the public. I like to tell our critics that dead people can't 12-step [as in, follow a 12-step program]-heck, they can't even two-step. Because of our work, drug users have a chance to get over being stupid-they can't get over being dead. People who are willing to look at the evidence rarely continue to oppose our work because we do save lives. Syringe exchange costs this area $316,000 per year, and what Tacoma-Pierce County gets in return is one of the lowest HIV populations in the country. When we started this program, the HIV rate among IDUs and their sexual partners was 3 percent. Now it's 1.5 percent. Over the 15 years I've been at this, we would have had at least 1,000 more infections without the exchange; each of those AIDS infections would have cost the public health care system $250,000. We've saved lives, kept AIDS from spreading, and saved hundreds of millions of dollars. In other cities like New York City, 50 percent of the drug users were infected 10 years ago. Needle-exchange programs have reduced that to 20 percent and saved billions of dollars. To control the AIDS pandemic, this is absolutely the right thing to do. Needle exchange is a proven method of prevention, so no matter how much I get slapped around, it's rewarding to know I'm serving others and serving the truth. Isn't that essentially what teachers and philosophers through the ages have been telling us-serve others and serve truth? Our three biggest challenges are resources, resources, resources. We know how to do this and, nationwide, we could be reaching another 400,000 people per year. Providing the resources for needle exchange costs about $100 per person per year. Compare that to the public health care dollars consumed by each AIDS patient, and prevention is cheap. But with the backlash against government and public services of all sorts, dollars are short. In the coming years, if we can just hold the line we've already established, not lose ground, that will be a success. Someday it would be something to get decently funded for this work. Human services and nonprofits are never well funded. There's an assumption that people who want to do good should be paid less-that the personal satisfaction derived from such work sustains you. Maybe they're right. Doing the right thing goes a long way in how you feel at the end of the day, although not that far when it comes to the mortgage. But pay is secondary. That first year when our funding was uncertain, folks on the street asked me how long I'd be around. I told them I wasn't leaving until HIV did. I intend to keep that promise.

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