Lori Fanara died last year. She was clinically dead for seven minutes. Heroic efforts by the medical team and open-heart surgery brought her back to life.
The surgeon told her he didn’t think she would survive.
“I saw angels in the ceiling of the LifeFlight helicopter,” Lori recalls wistfully.
A year later, except for the faint scar on her chest rising above her tank top shirt, Lori is still the same bright and passionate woman she was before her heart attack – only more so. There is now a deeper warmth behind her bright smile and a resolute vision in her clear-eyed gaze.
Lori’s two great passions in this second-chance life are homelessness and roller skating.
She grew up on skates in Santa Cruz, and at age 64 with a patched-up heart, she still skates with easy grace and a happy grin. “It’s heaven on wheels!”
Lori also knows hell on wheels. After she lost her house in the 2008 mortgage fiasco, she became homeless. She lived in her car for two years, working full time as the night custodian at a local movie theater. During that time, she perfected playing her guitalele (six-string ukelele) and singing her original songs about homelessness.
Lori’s a drive-by angel. If she encounters a homeless person on the street, she stops to speak to them and listen to them. She often gives them food or money, but more important, she acknowledges their humanity without shame or judgment.
I made a deal with Lori. If she would sing one of her compassionate homeless songs to the Nevada County Board of Supervisors on March 10, I would write a news feature for an upcoming spaghetti feed fundraiser on March 7 to generate money to light up Grass Valley’s new skate park.
light up joy
Unbeknownst to Lori, the news hook was the fundraiser, but the real story was about her. For a decade, she has waged a heartfelt, one-woman campaign of “Skate and Live” to promote the safety and image of everyone who finds joy in life on wheels.
Over the years, she has led the effort to light up the Grass Valley skatepark so skateboarders could play at night like the kids on their brightly lit baseball field. She was distressed by the drug-dealing in the shadows and the physical risk to skateboarders, including her own son Dominic, at the old, dark skate park.
Not only did she make life uncomfortable for the drug-dealers, she bought and set up $2K worth of temporary lights for many skate jams at the park to prove it could and should be done.
In gratitude for my writing the news story, Lori bought me a ticket to the spaghetti feed fundraiser Saturday night, March 7.
Heart beats
Unfortunately, neither of us got to slurp up spaghetti. I passed out at the beginning of the fundraiser at the Grass Valley Elks Lodge. I woke up to learn they’d called 911.
Lori followed the ambulance to Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital where she stayed that evening with me to reassure me that if she could survive a fatal heart attack, she could get me through what appeared to be a cardiac emergency.
Sunday morning, several EKGs and a nuclear (radioactive) stress test determined I was “normal” for somebody with a known obstructed coronary artery.
Sunday afternoon, just as they were about to unhook all the wires and send me home with a diagnosis of exhaustion and dehydration, somebody noticed my heart rate had dropped to 31 beats per minute.
All of a sudden, the room filled up with doctors, nurses and orderlies. They were all excited. They informed me I was in imminent danger of dying. Really?
They wouldn’t even let me get out of bed. They hoisted me onto a gurney and trucked me down to cardiac ICU where I was wired up with shock paddles in case my heart stopped. Really?!
It was decided I needed a pacemaker, and that needed to be done “down the hill.” I was sent to Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento in another ambulance.
My very uncomfortable hospital bed was alarmed if I got out of bed, which I kept doing to the nurses’ extreme displeasure. Apparently, I was being too lively for somebody on the verge of a heart attack.
It wasn’t until Monday evening that they put a pacemaker in my chest. Now, my heartbeat is not allowed to go below 60 beats per minute. Okay. I don’t feel any different.
destinies denied
Tuesday morning, March 10, I made it crystal clear I needed to be in Nevada City. I had a scheduled interview with reporter Kayla Moeller of Channel 13 TV, and the intention to be at the1:30 p.m. Board of Supervisors public hearing and vote on the RV housing ordinance that I have been advocating for over seven years.
I try not to be any more annoying than I have to be. Just to get rid of me, the hospital finally called a Tesla Uber. I got to the Rood Center just barely in time for the TV interview (that never aired), right before the hearing before the Board of Supervisors.
Folksingers Charly Price and Walt Webb sang their truths to power, and true to her promise, Lori sang her touching plea for compassion for our homeless folks.
I was supposed to just testify and then go home to recuperate from the surgery. Yeah, right. Telling me what I’m “supposed” to do rarely works with me. I stuck out the three-hour hearing to its disappointing end.
Throughout the year-long ordinance rulemaking process, we outnumbered ordinance opponents in both spoken and written public comments. We never blustered threats, fear-mongered, or imagined catastrophes.
We were – and remain – civil, respectful, and relentlessly and emotionally reasonable.
We anticipated a 4-1 vote to approve the ordinance, but the supervisors caved under pressure from the sometimes belligerent and mean-spirited opposition minority.
The supes voted 1-4 (with only Supervisor Heidi Hall standing her ground) to throw out the entire ordinance and rewrite the ordinance that is already on the books.
We didn’t win; we didn’t lose. The supes just kicked the can down the road for reconsideration this summer.
So, I didn’t get the ordinance I’ve worked on since 2019, and Lori still hasn’t gotten lights for the park she’s worked for even longer. (Although the spaghetti fundraiser was reasonably successful, the skatepark is still a couple hundred thousand dollars shy of getting lit up permanently.)
Regardless of the outcome, I am so grateful to all the people who showed up and spoke up because it’s not about me. it’s about us.
We have a housing crisis. I know this personally because I have to move by the end of this month – and there is no place to go.
Nobody said this would be easy. And nobody’s giving up.
Skate and live!
Feed your grassroots
If you want to support lighting the brand-new Grass Valley skate park, Nevada County Skate, a nonprofit organization at https://nevadacountyskate.org/, is happy to take your tax-deductible donations.
If you want to support the continuing effort to legalize alternative housing (RVs, trailers, yurts, shipping containers, and anything else that meets minimum health & safety standards) for our deserving unhoused and at-risk citizens (college students, homeless youth, essential workers, emerging entrepreneurs, freelance creatives, single-parent families, and disabled and older people, please donate (also tax deductible) to the No Place To Go Project at https://www.noplacetogoproject.org/donate-now-1.
Tom Durkin is the executive director of the No Place To Go Project, a nonprofit organization using the creative arts to advocate social justice for at-risk and unhoused/homeless people. Donations are tax-deductible and gratefully appreciated. Durkin may be contacted at tom@noplacetogoproject.org.