In the largest donation ever to Humane Society Silicon Valley, Michelle Oates Detkin and Peter Detkin made a $10 million gift to fund the agency’s Wellness Waggin’ — a mobile veterinary clinic that will help low-income families in the valley care for dogs, as well as cats and other pets.
The Los Altos couple’s pledge will be spread out over several years to the agency, which was founded in 1929. The Humane Society Silicon Valley also has renamed its Milpitas facility after the couple and plans to dedicate the Peter Detkin and Michelle Oates Detkin Animal Community Center on Ames Avenue at a community event in November. Michelle Oates Detkin said the couple accepted the naming honor in hopes that it would make the center more personal and welcoming place and inspires others to give.
Michelle Oates Detkin is a retired attorney who worked at Intel. Peter Detkin, who served as assistant general counsel at Intel and was previously a partner at Wilson Sonsini law firm, is a founder of Intellectual Ventures and a managing director at Sherpa Technology Group. “Bringing a pet into a home makes a family whole. We want to make and keep more families whole across this region,” said Peter Detkin, a Humane Society board member since 2016. “We also want HSSV to ensure that families or individuals with pets, regardless of economic means, can keep their pets healthy and receive the veterinary care they need to thrive so they can stay in the home with people who already love them.”
And the couple are more than just Humane Society supporters — they’re clients, too. They family includes Chloe, a dog adopted from HSSV, as well as three cats — Blake and HSSV adoptees Joey and Danica.
HERE’S TO A CUPERTINO PIONEER: This Cupertino City Council declared this past Tuesday as Boris Stanley Day, honoring the attorney’s role in the incorporation of the Santa Clara County city in 1955. Stanley, who turned 95 on Tuesday, has lived in Florida the past few years but flew back to California this week to receive a city commendation presented by Mayor Darcy Paul.
Stanley, often described as the “legal midwife” at the city’s birth, said he was very grateful for the honor and glad to be recognized for his role after all these years. “For a natural person, the gestation period is nine months. For something like this corporation event, it was two years,” he said Tuesday at the council meeting. “But like any parent knows, that’s just the beginning. Somebody else has to do the heavy lifting in producing an adult child into a mature, groomed individual. That happened here, now we’re 55 years later with a city council and its predecessors that has done the heavy lifting.”
After opening his legal practice on Stevens Creek Boulevard in 1953, Stanley provided counsel to Cupertino residents and businesses. And when voters approved incorporation, it was Stanley who prepared and filed the incorporation papers for the new city. A few years ago, Stanley donated his papers on Cupertino’s origins — as well as its Chamber of Commerce, which he also helped found — to the Cupertino Historical Society.
SWITCHING GEARS: After going virtual in 2020, Habitat for Humanity Silicon Valley’s Cycle of Hope event was hoping to return the former Hewlett Packard campus in Palo Alto on Oct. 24, with a virtual option remaining for those riders who preferred to avoid crowds. But the rain expected on the Peninsula this weekend has dampened those plans and the whole event will again be virtual — and extended to Nov. 7. You can get more information on how to participate at habitatcycleofhope.org.
Source: www.mercurynews.com