Covenant House California Honor Mickey Segal, Wayne Ratkovich At Spring Awards Dinner April 23, 2010

“Imagine! Our Youth. Unlimited Possibilities.”
Covenant House California (CHC) will honor former Arcadia mayor and long-time resident Mickey Segal at their Spring Awards Dinner on Friday, April 23, 2010 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
The celebratory annual event, which will feature live and silent auctions, and musical entertainment by popular swing band Royal Crown Revue, will raise much-needed funds for CHC and its outreach and residential programs serving homeless teens. Through comprehensive services –including street outreach and residential programs with supportive services– CHC provides homeless youth with a complete range of programs from Crisis Care to Transitional Living and every step in between. Wayne Ratkovich, founder and President/CEO of the Ratkovich Company, will also be honored, with Kelly Electa and Jamie Lescher serving as event co-chairs.
Segal is Managing Partner of Nigro Karlin Segal & Feldstein, LLP. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the California Society of Certified Public Accountants. In 1997, he was inducted into their Accounting Hall of Fame and received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the business school at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona.
Segal has served two four-year terms on the Arcadia City Council, has served as Mayor twice and has also chaired the City of Arcadia’s Financial Advisory Committee. He is involved in numerous philanthropic activities; he has chaired and completed the $27 million capital campaign to raise funds for the new North Tower at Arcadia Methodist Hospital and also chaired and completed a $6 million capital campaign for CHC.
Segal also co-chairs the Heartbeat of Hollywood Golf Tournament, a one-day event that raises over $700,000 to benefit the Motion Picture Television Fund. He is a board member of the Unified Educational Trust at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, and is the Vice-Chair of Planned Giving for their $150 million capital campaign.
Segal and his wife, Lee, have three children, Allison, Matthew and Andrew, and live in Arcadia. They are members of the Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center, where Segal is a past President. He has chaired the major gifts committee for the Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys.
Fellow honoree Ratkovich founded The Ratkovich Company, a Los Angeles development firm whose mission is to profitably produce developments that improve the quality of urban life, in 1977. His company, whose projects range from large-scale urban planning and entitlement endeavors to retail, office, entertainment and mixed-use projects, engages in both new development and the imaginative reuse of existing buildings including eight buildings that are historic landmarks.
Nationally, Ratkovich is a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and an Emeritus Trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In Los Angeles, Ratkovich is a Founding Board Member of the Downtown Women’s Center (DWC), his firm having served as the volunteer developer of DWC’s first residence for the women of Skid Row. He has served on the boards of the Central City Association, the Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and as Chairman of the Dean’s Council of UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning. Ratkovich and his wife, JoAnn, are the benefactors of the Master of Historic Preservation Program Suite in the Robert H. Timme Architectural Research Center at USC’s School of Architecture.

Past CHC Awards Dinner honorees include a mix of high-profile, philanthropically minded individuals from across the business, corporate, and entertainment industry spectrums: Scott Vincent Borba, Lawrence Bond, Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Dean and Shannon Factor, Andy Garcia, Nigel Lythgoe, Sharon Osbourne, William Shatner, Patricia Serio, Nikki Sixx, Charlize Theron, Valerie Van Galder, and Strauss Zelnick.
Covenant House California serves youth ages 18 to 24 at its campuses in Los Angeles and in the Bay Area. Since 1988 when it first opened the doors of its volunteer-led outreach center on Sunset Boulevard, CHC has helped more than 150,000 homeless youth who suffer from the trauma of trying to survive on the streets and the physical or psychological abuse, neglect or high-risk behaviors that led them there. CHC’s mission is to “protect and safeguard all children of the street” with “absolute respect and unconditional love”.
CHC is part of Covenant House International, the largest privately funded agency in the Americas, whose primary focus and mission is to eradicate youth homelessness by providing food, housing, immediate crisis care, and an array of other important services to homeless and runaway kids.
For more information, including how to purchase tickets to the event or to support CHC, please visit the website at www.covdove.org

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