Mariana Dale
explores and explains the forces that shape how and what kids learn from kindergarten to high school.
Published February 7, 2025 5:00 AM
Marcia Workman holds Cupcake the classroom rabbit, who had to be rescued from Don Benito Elementary School in Pasadena.
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Topline:
The mission to retrieve Cupcake the bunny from a Pasadena first-grade classroom during the Eaton Fire grew into a district-wide effort to locate, rescue and care for lizards, snakes, rats and fish at a half-a-dozen schools.
The backstory: When Marcia Workman left her first-grade classroom at Pasadena’s Don Benito Elementary School on Jan. 7, she anticipated she’d be back the next day. But because of the fire, schools were closed for weeks and most visitors barred from the wildfire evacuation zones.
A history of class pets: Animals have been a feature of Workman’s classroom since she first started teaching in 1973. The very first class pet was Midnight, a rabbit donated by a family who was moving and could no longer care for her. “I didn't have pets as a child, so I thought, ‘Well, something I can put into the class to help the children have empathy for animals, take care of them, was ... some nice, wonderful bunnies,” Workman said.
The rescue: The operation to save Cupcake expanded: Administrators compiled a list of animals that included a bearded dragon, beta fish, rats and snakes at six different campuses.
Read on ... for the inside story of making sure the class pets were taken care of.
When Marcia Workman left her first-grade classroom at Pasadena’s Don Benito Elementary School on Jan. 7, she anticipated she’d be back the next day.
That night, a wildfire raged out of Eaton Canyon and into the surrounding neighborhoods.
Families emailed to ask if Workman, who lives in Pasadena, was OK.
Then they inquired about the class pets.
Workman said she wasn’t worried about the gecko hibernating beneath an artificial log, or the hardy gold orange loach fish. She figured as long as the school was still standing, they’d be OK.
But … what of the fluffiest creature in Room 4?
Cupcake, the black-and-white Polish rabbit with “dramatic eye make-up,” was trapped. And the National Guard had closed off the route to school.
“I had half of my heart thinking, ‘OK, what, what is the scenario?’” Workman said.
She said she wondered how she would explain the bunny’s demise to students who’d lost so much in the fires. “You can't sleep; you can't think of anything else.”
And so a mission to save the bunny was launched. It soon grew into “Operation Paw Patrol,” a district-wide effort to locate, rescue and care for classroom pets at half-a-dozen schools as the Eaton Fire burned.
Marcia Workman has taught at Don Benito Elementary since 2002. “We have kids that can walk to school with their families,” Workman said. Most of the teachers, like her, have been there for decades.
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Teaching ‘empathy for animals’
Animals have been a feature of Workman’s classroom since she started teaching in 1973.
The very first class pet was Midnight, a rabbit donated by a family who was moving and could no longer care for her.
“I didn't have pets as a child, so I thought, ‘Well, something I can put into the class to help the children have empathy for animals, take care of them, was … some nice, wonderful bunnies,” Workman said.
Maybe that animal in the classroom sparks something that's going to be a whole career for that child. You just never know what's going to turn them on. So it's up to me to bring that into the classroom.
— Marcia Workman, first-grade teacher, Don Benito Elementary
When she had students who were allergic to furry animals, she brought in snakes, lizards and a tarantula. All were adopted or rescued.
Cupcake (née Oreo, née Fluff — the students vote on the animals’ names at the start of each school year) is one of at least six bunnies that have hopped through her classroom over the years.
“I think [the vote on] ‘Cupcake’ this year was a little closer to lunchtime, so they were hungry,” Workman said.
The whiskery, red-eyed loaches, which are indistinguishable from one another, are 1, 2 and 3. The gecko is Gecky.
The students take turns feeding and caring for the animals. Workman welcomes any student who walks by to come say hi.
Workman said the kids compare her freckles to those on “Gecky” the gecko. “She's wonderful to come out during math time as we talk about repeating patterns,” Workman said.
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The student animal feeders for the week of Feb. 3 are posted on a wall in Marcia Workman’s first-grade class at Don Benito Elementary.
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“Maybe that animal in the classroom sparks something that's going to be a whole career for that child,” Workman said. “You just never know what's going to turn them on. So it's up to me to bring that into the classroom.”
Aidan, 6, was one of the week’s two “animal feeders” when I visited.
Her favorite creature is Cupcake, but she also enjoys how the fish tickle her fingers, and she likes the spotted gecko.
“The only thing I don't like about him is that he eats worms,” Aidan said. “I had to feed him once, and it was disgusting, because I had to touch the worms.”
‘Operation Paw Patrol’
When the Eaton Fire broke out, Workman fled her Pasadena home along with her son, her daughter, their spouses, two dogs and a cat. She grabbed several boxes of Nilla Wafer Cookies. She forgot her late husband’s ashes.
The fire "just set us into panic mode,” Workman said.
She also grabbed the class hamster, who had joined her household over an extended winter break.
By the time she tried to return to the school to retrieve Cupcake, the National Guard had blockaded the roads.
John Maynard became the principal at Don Benito Elementary School in 2023 and has worked in Pasadena Unified since 1998. He said the Eaton Fire is hard to compare with any experience in his career.
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She reached out to Principal John Maynard to ask for help. Fellow first-grade teacher Amethyst Juknavorian had also emailed Maynard, anxious about the other animals’ conditions.
“It's so easy for people to feel so helpless when so much destruction is going on around them. And, you know, you're thinking, what can I do?” Juknavorian said. “I couldn't have this bunny sitting in that classroom.”
Maynard shared the message Friday, Jan. 10, in a virtual meeting with other Pasadena principals.
“All of a sudden, the chat started getting filled with ‘This school has reptiles in it here’ ... and then ‘there's fish here,’” Maynard said.
So began “Operation Paw Patrol.”
Administrators compiled a list of animals that included a bearded dragon, beta fish, rats and snakes at six campuses.
They just needed an inside man.
Tracking down the animals
Facilities Program Manager Michael Dunning started as a carpenter nine years ago and now oversees contracts and construction in the district’s 24 schools.
“ I know every nook and cranny of this district for the most part,” Dunning said. “I've been in the basements, to the attics, to the roofs.”
Dunning helped coordinate the more than 1,500 contracted workers who joined existing maintenance staff to clean schools and remove more than 159 tons of debris.
“ I haven't stopped since that first morning of the fires,” Dunning said. “Seven days a week, just trying to get the kids back, get everybody safe ... get as much back to normal as much as possible. But I'm one of lots of people that are doing the same thing.”
And as a member of maintenance and operations, he could pass through the National Guard checkpoints.
Marcia Workman adopted Cupcake from the Pasadena Humane Society. "I think that some animals, when you rescue them, they give you even more love," she said.
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Workman said she picked up this rabbit pin while shopping for new shovels for the first-graders' garden.
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Dunning worked with school staff to assess whether each class pet needed to be relocated or whether a wellness-check and some food would suffice.
He escorted the principal of Sierra Madre Elementary as she retrieved a gecko. He brought the bearded dragon at San Rafael Elementary some Dubia roaches to snack on courtesy of his own family's bearded dragon, Fiji. A contracted cleaner had already started to feed the fish at Marshall High School.
“ I love all these schools,” Dunning said. “Just knowing that the schools are in danger for me was difficult to deal with.”
Maynard hitched a ride from Dunning in a maintenance and operations pick-up truck on the morning of Jan. 11 to retrieve Cupcake.
Despite having prior clearance, they still had to tell the National Guard “we were coming up to rescue a rabbit,” Maynard said.
The principal wasn’t sure what he’d find at Don Benito, which sits at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. There were rumors the school had burned down. Ash and debris covered the hill that borders the school’s north side, but the buildings were still standing. Several homes across the street to the east were leveled. The mountains were charred brown in the distance.
“Looking at the damage around the school and what had occurred.” Maynard said. “I don't have words for it. It's just shock, just not really even sure how to process that.”
The classrooms were coated in ash … but Cupcake was unscathed.
Maynard texted Workman’s son: “Bunny lives.” And he arranged to meet at the district office near downtown Pasadena.
Workman wanted Cupcake back in her classroom when school resumed.
“That would kind of give a sense of relief to some of the students who had lost everything,” Workman said. “They needed to see the classroom as they remembered Tuesday afternoon leaving it, and that certainly included the animals.”
Maynard welcomes students back to school on Jan. 29, 2025 along with Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco, right.
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Lessons from Cupcake
Don Benito reopened Jan. 29, more than three weeks after the Eaton Fire burned more than 14,000 acres and destroyed 9,400 buildings, including Eliot Arts Magnet Academy and several charter schools in the district.
Principal Maynard stood at the school’s front gate holding a sign that said “Welcome Back, Bobcats!” and offering hugs and high-fives.
“For today and the next couple days, I really just hope we actually have space for healing and the ability to express what we're feeling,” Maynard said that day.
A student works on a feelings sheet in Workman's class this week.
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In Workman’s class, students selected which of 20 colorful faces on a worksheet represented their feelings.
Ella, 6, drew an arrow to the yellow frowning sad face.
“My house didn't make it through the fire — it's gone,” she said.
District-wide, at least 862 student families lost homes, and 90 students have unenrolled since the start of the fires. It’s unclear how the fallout will reshape a district that, like other Los Angeles-area districts, has shrunk in recent years.
Workman is focused on helping students make up for three weeks away from the classroom.
“It's so important for us to get back on track, because everything is based on what we accomplished in first grade,” Workman said. “Every grade is on our shoulders.”
On Wednesday, a parent volunteer practiced reading with individual students while Workman rearranged magnetic letters on a white board and sounded out the words aloud with the rest of the class.
After discussing the A sound in "always," Workman asked the students to take out their feelings sheets again.
Ella hasn’t selected the sad face since the first day back.
“I was very excited to learn,” Ella said. “And happy that my school didn't get burned down.”
This week she's one of the animal feeders, which means she gets to top the bunny’s bowl of pellets with hay and vegetable scraps from the soup Workman made the night before.
Cupcake was called Oreo and Fluff by previous first-grade classes. "We have kids that'll knock on the door if they're in other grades. They come and visit her," Workman said.
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“We feed [Cupcake] hay," Aidan, a first-grader, said. "Sometimes we feed her carrots. Sometimes we feed her celery. Sometimes we feed her apples. She's living her best life right now."
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“I think her ears are cute,” Ella said. “Her whole body is cute, and the design on her back is cute too.”
The way Cupcake hops and zooms around her cage? “So cute.”
I asked Ella if she’d learned anything from the animals. She looked at the rabbit as she lay still, except for the wiggling of her nose.
“She's very calm,” Ella said. “And she teaches me how to be calm sometimes.”
A slew of Medicare Advantage plans are disappearing for next year, leaving seniors in many areas with fewer options. In 193 counties across the country, no plans are offered at all.
Why it matters: More than half of the 70 million Americans in Medicare choose Medicare Advantage. It's popular because it covers services like vision and dental, often with lower premiums than traditional Medicare. It also often folds in the "Part D" drug benefit, simplifying that decision.
Why now: Medicare's annual open enrollment period kicked off October 15 and runs until December 7, and seniors enrolled in those privatized Medicare plans that are closing in certain markets should carefully review their options.
Read on to learn about options if your Medicare Advantage plan is ending.
A slew of Medicare Advantage plans are disappearing for next year, leaving seniors in many areas with fewer options. In 193 counties across the country, no plans are offered at all.
Medicare's annual open enrollment period kicked off October 15 and runs until December 7, and seniors enrolled in those privatized Medicare plans that are closing in certain markets should carefully review their options.
Medicare Advantage means private insurers run Medicare for older Americans who choose it over traditional Medicare, where the federal government itself administers the program. More than half of the 70 million Americans in Medicare choose Medicare Advantage. It's popular because it covers services like vision and dental, often with lower premiums than traditional Medicare. It also often folds in the "Part D" drug benefit, simplifying that decision.
But a downside of Medicare Advantage is that companies can pick and choose where they offer plans. If a certain community is not profitable, a company can leave that market. And that has been happening on an increasingly large scale the last three years, according to research published in JAMA.
Who is affected
Big swaths of rural America are losing Medicare Advantage choices and so are some major metro areas.
Last year, 2.9 million seniors were in Medicare Advantage plans that closed up shop, according to JAMA. This year, an analysis of insurance company announcements by An Arm and A Leg podcast, shows at least 2 million people will be affected. Other preliminary estimates range from 3.2 million to 5 million seniors. About 35 million people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage.
According to an analysis of federal data by the health policy research organization KFF, the 193 counties that will have zero Medicare Advantage plans are mostly rural. Last year that number was about 120 counties without a plan offered.
KFF's numbers also show that there will be far fewer plans offered in some metro areas. Dallas, Minneapolis, Seattle, Houston and Portland all have between a quarter and a third fewer Medicare Advantage plans for seniors.
What happens next
If your plan is ending, and you don't choose another, the insurance company will assign you to another Medicare Advantage plan or the government will enroll you in traditional Medicare — but without a supplemental or drug plan.
If you want to switch from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare and your plan is ending, you can enroll in a Medicare supplemental plan — also known as Medigap — without the same restrictions that you would normally have. If you have a pre-existing condition that has prevented you from enrolling in Medigap before, that could be good news.
Another wrinkle this year is that insurance companies can cap enrollments on some of the Medicare Advantage plans that they do offer.
Which means: If you wait to sign up, a plan you want might already be full.
The companies are supposed to enroll people on a first-come, first-serve basis — and not cherry-pick customers based on health conditions, age, or demographics.
Another reason not to delay is that with so many people on the hunt for new plans, it may take longer than usual to get help.
How and where to find help
Here are some tips for navigating Medicare open enrollment this year:
Find out if your plan is still offered: First, check your mail. Medicare Advantage plans that are closing should have sent letters the first week in October. You can also log in to your account on Medicare.gov to check your plan's status for next year.
Try calling your SHIP: There's a State Health Insurance Assistance Program — known as a "SHIP" — in every state to help seniors with Medicare. The name's not easy to remember or particularly descriptive, but it's free, mandated by the federal government, and the staff and volunteers are required to give you unbiased information on all available options. Find your state in the directory at shiphelp.org. Your county may have a specific number that you can find on your state's SHIP website.
Look for local Medicare counseling services: Friends, family, leaders at your place of worship, and the constituent services of your local elected officials may have the scoop on where you can get one-on-one help. The nonprofit Medicare Rights Center also has a national helpline, and a well-organized library of online guides.
Brokers can be helpful, but be savvy: You want a broker who's going to talk with you about all your options — including switching to traditional Medicare and a supplemental plan. Ask if they sell plans from all available insurance carriers. And ask if they answer questions about your plan year-round, because insurance never stops being confusing.
Double check what you see on Medicare.gov:Medicare's Plan Finder allows you to search plans online. But lists of doctors and drugs that are covered can sometimes be wrong. To be safe, double check with your doctor's office or a SHIP counselor, broker, or other Medicare assistor.
Don't share your personal information with services you find online: Be careful where you share your personal information like your phone number. Some online agencies will sell your information, leading to spam calls and potentially even scam artists.
Be mindful of the deadlines: Open enrollment for Medicare runs October 15, 2026 through December 7, 2026. The coverage starts January 1, 2027. If your plan is ending, you qualify for a "special enrollment period" to give you a little more time — until February 28, 2027. (For coverage that starts January 1, 2027, enroll by December 31.)
People wait in line to cast ballots during early voting at a polling station in Black Mountain, North Carolina, on Friday.
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Allison Joyce
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AFP via Getty Images
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Topline:
Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday demanding that local officials set aside and verify ballots that the Department of Justice said may belong to noncitizens, according to the Los Angeles County registrar and a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
Why now: The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Data shows illegal voting by people who aren’t U.S. citizens is incredibly rare, difficult to prove and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.
The backstory: The letters on Friday came on the heels of statewide sweep by federal authorities earlier in the week, where 28 people from the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could lead to years in prison.
Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday demanding that local officials set aside and verify ballots that the Department of Justice said may belong to noncitizens, according to the Los Angeles County registrar and a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Data shows illegal voting by people who aren’t U.S. citizens is incredibly rare, difficult to prove and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.
Earlier this month, the federal government targeted Los Angeles County and the California Secretary of State’s office in a lawsuit that aimed to block them from counting the votes of roughly 20,000 people who are “likely” noncitizen voters. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Tuesday.
The Trump administration asked the 9th Circuit court of appeals to rule on the lawsuit barring a decision from the district judge assigned to the case. They set a deadline for Saturday.
Now, according to the LA County registrar’s office, at least 18 counties across the state have received similar letters. They have been given a 48 hour deadline to provide identifying information corresponding with ballots that the federal government believes were sent to noncitizens illegally registered to vote. The letter requests that county officials also sequester any ballots where citizenship cannot be verified.
“Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.
The Justice Department is asking counties to send information about the voters it suspects are noncitizens including social security numbers, ID information, a copy of their registration and more.
That information can help the government and state quickly assess each person suspected of illegally registering to vote, said the letter sent to San Bernardino County voting officials. The letter says the government’s list of suspected noncitizen voters includes 1,133 people from the inland Southern California county.
California’s secretary of state and the Los Angeles County registrar have opposed the federal government’s demands. In legal filings, lawyers for California say the request threatens to delay the certification of the vote and undermine the legitimacy of the November midterms. They have also argued that the federal government’s data is unreliable and that their demands risk disenfranchisement of citizens.
Voting is underway in California, with the state’s more than 23 million registered voters receiving ballots in the mail earlier this month. The state said in legal filings that over 330,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted.
The letters on Friday came on the heels of statewide sweep by federal authorities earlier in the week, where 28 people from the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could lead to years in prison.
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A cyclist rides through campus at Cal State Long Beach in Long Beach on July 25, 2022.
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CalMatters
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Topline:
The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike.
Why now: This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”
Why it matters: The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.
The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike, as negotiations with the California State University system remain stalled.
This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”
If a majority of members approve the strike authorization, voting from Oct. 26 through Nov. 19, CFA leadership would be authorized to call a strike.
The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.
In recent weeks, CSU has reached tentative agreements with three unions: the Statewide University Police Association, the United Auto Workers Local 4123 and Academic Professionals of California. Together, the agreements cover 14,000 university employees.
The tentative agreements, which must be approved by union members and CSU’s Board of Trustees, include an 8% salary increase over two years, along with one-time raises negotiated by each bargaining unit.
Attendees of the 2026 Tall Clubs International convention in front of Universal City Walk.
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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II
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Topline:
There's an international club for tall people that started in Los Angeles. It's also a little bit of a support group. And yes, it can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.
Why it matters: Complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly, but height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.
Why now: Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it'll survive to its 100th birthday is in question.
Read on ... to learn more, including how to join.
It can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.
And yes, complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly. But height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.
Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it’ll reach its 100th birthday is in question.
Tall Clubs International is an organization spanning more than a dozen states and several countries that offers tall adults a chance to connect and commiserate. The original chapter, founded in Los Angeles in 1938, is called the California Tip Toppers.
Tall Clubs International
How to get involved
You can learn more about Tall Clubs International here, including the original 1938 article that sparked the organization.
You can find your nearest chapter and contact information here.
California Tip Toppers have higher height requirements than some of the other chapters.
You can learn more about becoming a “member-at-large” or starting a new tall club in your town here.
Tall Clubs International also does philanthropic work.
You can learn more about scholarship opportunities for tall students here.
Tall Clubs International raises money for the Marfan Foundation. Marfan syndrome is a genetic connective tissue disorder that club officials say typically comes with tall people. You can learn more here.
To get into the L.A. group, men have to be 6 feet 4 inches or taller, and women have to be at least 6 feet. One of the tallest members of the organization is 7 feet 2 inches, and honestly, I couldn’t help but perk up at the opportunity to feel short for once in my life.
At 13, I was still growing at 5 feet 10, towering over almost every kid in my freshman high school class. One of the first questions people still ask me is whether I played volleyball or basketball, and I’ve learned to laugh at the look they get when I say I preferred theater.
“People see how tall you are, they expect ‘Oh, you're going to be great on the basketball court,’” said Michele Cripps, a 6-foot-1 member of the California Tip Toppers, who joined in 1996. She's married to William Walter Wiseman II, a fellow member. “Well, I'm sorry, white girls can't jump sometimes, and I'm one of them.”
Some of the tall club members are generational, encouraged to join by their parents or older relatives, which has started to pose its own problems as the chapters get older.
What’s the big deal anyways?
William Walter Wiseman II and Michele Cripps at the 2026 Tall Clubs International convention in Hollywood.
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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II
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The chapters became a way for tall people to trade practical tips, like which stores sold pants that actually covered your ankles or shoes that didn’t need to be specially made.
“I was always being kidded about my pants being too short or my clothes not fitting correctly,” said Wiseman, who's nearly 6 feet 9 and also wasn’t much of a basketball player. “And as I grew as an adult, people are a little bit afraid to approach people that are tall.”
Wiseman has a good sense of humor about his height, cracking jokes that I’ve added to my arsenal when answering “how’s the weather up there?” But he doesn’t gloss over the pain points either — Wiseman can’t fit into cars or roller coasters, hotel beds are never long enough, and airplanes can be an expensive nightmare.
“It's not just the socialization of being tall, but it's also the physicality of it,” he said. “It's almost a handicap to be tall.”
Members of the Tall Club of Orange County at the 2026 convention.
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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II
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Cripps said she was a skinny kid, but she couldn’t help but feel “huge” growing up a head above everyone else, which hurt her young self-esteem and made dating more difficult.
The clubs gave them both a chance to see eye to eye with a room full of people for the first time, and potentially even find a partner. Wiseman’s parents met in the Dayton Altitudians tall club in Ohio, decades before Wiseman and Cripps met through their own California clubs.
“The people that married inside the club stayed married,” said Wiseman, who lives in Torrance with Cripps. “The people that married outside of the club got divorced.”
A Dayton Daily News clipping of William Walter Wiseman II's father measuring tall teens in the Dayton, Ohio area from November 19, 1958.
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Courtesy William Walter Wiseman II
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Future of the club in question
But now, the California Tip Toppers is having trouble bringing in new, younger members — a recruitment crisis that’s essentially dissolved groups in other areas, Wiseman said.
Members of the California Tip Toppers at the 2026 convention.
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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II
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“We're facing the same challenges like all other clubs,” Cripps and Wiseman said, jumping in to finish each other’s thoughts. “Some of it could be generational. Some of it's that since COVID, the clubs have not been quite as active as they used to be. Some people [don’t have] homes to open up anymore … and we're all getting older.”
The club is at a crossroads: Get new members on board or fade away. The couple seems to have made it a mission to rejuvenate the California Tip Toppers, but Cripps was frank when she said they’re not sure how to get more people involved, whether it's fresh events or outreach opportunities.
At the end of the day, they’re hoping the club and the community it fosters can help others learn how to “stand tall” and be proud.
The clubs crown a new Miss Tall International at a formal pageant held during the annual convention. The former Miss Tall Clubs International that were at the 2026 convention from left to right: Susan Hopkins, 2019, from the Tall Club of Orange County, Martine Whitford, 1959, from the Los Angeles Higher Ups, Norma Forrest, 1996, from the Tall Club of Toronto and Mary Eleman, 2022, from the Central Arizona Tall Society.
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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II
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Members of the Tall Clubs International convention committee. From left to right: Barry Umbs from Milwaukee, William Walter Wiseman II from the California Tip Toppers, Jim Nelson from the Paramount Tall Club-Chicago and Michele Cripps from the California Tip Toppers.
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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II
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“It’s a challenge, but it’s something that was given to us,” Cripps said. “I say as I've aged, I should have listened to my mother, I should have stood up tall.”
Moms everywhere, mine included, rejoice.
“Everybody wants to be something different than they have,” Cripps continued. “So, try and embrace what you have. Life is too short, and it goes too quick.”
