Ricardo Macias Jr. of Soboba Parks and Recreation coordinated the event and said last year’s fair was held shortly before the pandemic shut things down. He added that the purpose of the event is to let Tribal members and Soboba employees know what is available in the local area and to also ways they can get and stay healthy. Each vendor supplied a raffle item and more than 50 were given out to those that attended, although they didn’t need to be present to win.

“It was just so nice to be able to get out and see people again,” Macias said. “I thought it went well considering some behind-the-scenes hiccups, but our staff is amazing and were able to get things done. I liked that it was outside and felt others did as well.”

One of the vendors included members of Riverside San Bernardino County Indian Health’s Native Challenge program. They said they have been able to present their educational classes virtually, so all programs have continued throughout the pandemic. Health Educator Lila Vicente said the program serves Native youth at any location but also offers courses at school sites such as Noli Indian School at the Soboba Reservation.

“Our classroom programs teach youth how to make healthy decisions and recognize healthy relationships,” she said. “We also teach them about the importance of self-care and how they can improve their own.”

High school clients are given pre- and post-surveys to see how well they are learning the curriculum for “Discovery Dating” and “It’s Your Game” courses. This feedback assists the health educators in making adjustments for future classes.

“We try and take away the stigma of being embarrassed to talk about sexual health,” Health Educator Jennifer Diaz said. “But the kids are usually not shy about asking questions about birth control methods and things like that.”

Native Challenge also offers its Tribal S.T.A.R.S. program, that has high school students mentoring middle school students, so they have someone to talk to that can help them make positive life choices and develop healthy relationships.

Naomi Silvas shared all the benefits of Monat haircare and skincare products. As a representative for the company, she shared that Monat (Modern Nature) is a fairly new company that has pioneered a unique blend of natural ingredients for its wide array of products for men, women and children.

“Our Rejuveniqe oil is great for sunburns, acne or any other skin problem,” Silvas said. She also provided samples of the Total Greens drink mix, a proprietary blend of 37 fruits and vegetables. The ultimate daily superfood boost supports digestion, immune health and healthy skin.

Silvas, of the Soboba Reservation, said all sales are done online and she doesn’t keep an inventory. This ensures all products are shipped fresh.

Personal trainer Desiree Guachino explained how she helps clients achieve a holistic lifestyle which improves physical, mental and spiritual health.

Altura Credit Union Sr. Business Development Officer Karena Zermeno shared information with visitors to help them gain financial wellness. She has been a vendor at the fair every year.

“I like to educate and/or provide assistance about financial health and the steps they can take to be financially successful,” she said. “To be financially healthy means maintaining a bank account and credit score that is in good standing as well as eliminating high debt and interest rates.”

Zermeno said Altura helps customers achieve that goal by providing no cost checking accounts, low rate loans and low interest credit cards, as well as free services to help repair negative credit accounts along with a loan to help rebuild credit.

A few local gyms offered information about the safety protocols they have put in place before reopening after the pandemic. Planet Fitness’ Jack Osuna said during the shutdown, everyone’s account was frozen and as of March 18 have been 100% reinstated.

“We have the cleanest gym in the Inland Empire and our prices are good,” Osuna said. “We have our treadmills spread out and in our locker rooms, only every other one is available.”

Powerhouse Gym district manager Reese Caramico said he mainly works at the San Jacinto location, which is family oriented and offers childcare for families and Silver Sneakers for seniors.

Alma Lopez with ZAO Athletics in San Jacinto shared how the goal of CEO Victor Cervantes is to help clients of all ages find and achieve their own personal fitness goals. With a focus on strength training, conditioning and weight loss, a variety of methods are implemented by trainer and head coach Cervantes to personalize a person’s workout.

Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians • Contributed

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You know we’re all going a tad stir-crazy when a parody of the title song from Broadway’s “Oklahoma!” (“Oh, Corona!”) gets almost 1.7 million views on YouTube. But it’s far worse for seniors: Not only can’t even their kids and grandkids visit them, but there’s the extra stress that comes with the nagging suspicion that they’ll be advised to remain on lockdown long after younger people begin trickling back to work.

Whenever that is.

In fact, the AARP Foundation has even come up with this dire comparison: Prolonged social isolation, for those aged 50 and older, “is the health equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” Fortuitously, some of the niftiest technology offers solutions both to keep us connected and protect against some of the miscreants taking advantage of the situation.

* Health Checks. If you are worried that all the anxiety is harming your loved ones’ overall well-being, the machine-learning algorithms that analyze activity data as part of Alarm.com’s Wellness solution can provide you with the very details you’ve suddenly found yourself obsessing about.

Did they open their medicine cabinet when they should to take their prescription? Have their sleeping, eating, and (yes) bathroom patterns changed? Are they up and about during the day?

All that and more is done by connecting their home to yours via smart-home technology, with real-time smartphone alerts to let you know if something’s amiss. “You don’t even know it’s there, but it’s here to protect you and let someone know if something does go wrong,” said Margarete Pullen of Dallas, Texas, whose son had the system installed by an authorized service provider for her and her husband along with a Wellcam video camera with two-way voice capability.

* Movie meet-ups. Most of us are just trying to find novel ways to cope with a situation that Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and physician at Yale University, told Science magazine “calls on us to suppress our profoundly human and evolutionary hard-wired impulses for connection.”

Google’s new Netflix Party extension lets friends and family watch – and video chat their way through – a movie together on their computers. You’ll need a NetFlix subscription, but then you’re free to debate whether all the hype about Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” say, was justified. Plus, unlike in real theatres, not many people (if any) are physically there to complain if you’re making too much noise eating popcorn.

* Apps! Apps! Apps! No NetFlix subscription? With apps like FaceTime, Skype, Houseparty and Zoom comes more proof that social distancing needn’t mean social disconnecting. Mass virtual dinner parties. Mass virtual “happy hours.” Mass virtual gym classes. They’ve all become quite the rage, with one Vermont couple in their eighties even touchingly using Apple’s FaceTime to see and talk to each other after the husband had to be put in a nursing home that bars visitors during the pandemic.

And, oh, you say you want to be a hero in your neighborhood? Use an app like Instagram to share a video of someone that Alarm.com‘s doorbell cameras caught swiping one of the many, many packages you’ve been having delivered.

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A Different Point of View

It was at the beginning of this Social Distancing movement when I went to the bank and saw all the tellers wearing gloves and some customers wearing masks. There were huge—and I mean HUGE—bottles of hand sanitizer at many tables for people to use. While standing in line, I made a joke with my friendly banker, Ben. I said, “Hey Ben, if a bank robber were to come now, do you know how I would fend him off?” After a slight pause, I added, “I would shake his hand and scare the heck out of him.” We both laughed.

Only, I laughed a little harder and choked a bit. When Ben heard me cough, he screamed, “23-19, 23-19!” Like in the movie Monsters, Inc. Next thing I know, CDC agents are climbing down the walls, jumping down from the ceiling, and grabbing me aggressively. I was stripped naked; my clothes burnt in a special containment unit, and I was taken home to self-quarantine myself. I kid a little here. I know that a lot of celebrities and some world leaders are isolating themselves and exercising self-quarantine. These are people with money who don’t have to work for a living.

How does a person like me, who lives from paycheck to paycheck and who has maxed out all of his credit cards while buying the latest cell phones for the entire family, can afford to self-quarantine himself? I mean, I have to open my business every morning for non-existent customers. Our governor is telling us that people over 65 years of age should stay home and not go out anywhere. This is Hemet, and ALL of my customers are over 65 years of age. How in the world, then do I stay open? I also have to make sure that I am at work before any of my employees show up so I can hide the time-clock and keep them from punching in as per the schedule. I then make them wait a few hours, pretending to look for it, before sending them home, just in case I do get some business.

I then have to calculate how much money I have actually lost at the end of the day before going home every evening. If I were to self-quarantine, who would then see my business going down so fast, like most red-blooded Americans, I don’t have any money saved up. My backup plan is no good now that the casinos are also closing for the foreseeable future. I’ve given up long ago on winning the lottery. The only thing left for me to do is to try to hide my sinister undertones when I call the credit card companies and ask them to increase my limit. I don’t want to spook them and then not be able to charge all my utility bills. As it is now, my payroll checks are bouncing higher than all the basketballs now tucked away in storage, as the season has ended prematurely. What is worst, my kids are now at home because all the schools are closed.

Social Distancing protocol says that we must stay at least six feet away from each other. My wife and I sleep in different beds, in separate rooms, and almost in different houses. I dare not give her a kiss, lest we have to gargle with bleach. (Don’t try this at home. It is very dangerous.) I dare not hug my kids, lest my kids wipe themselves with Lysol. When my kids are sitting in a therapist’s chair, twenty years from now, whining about their father not showing any affection towards them, I hope the therapist is smart enough to tell them that their father actually loved them too much. It is just that he couldn’t touch them, due to, you know, COVID 19. My wife would be telling a similar tale, only probably in two months from now. Once we used to worry about STD’s. Now that seems mild compared to Coronavirus.

By the way, I told my wife about the bank tellers using gloves to handle money. She thought that it was a good idea since she also handles money at our business. She decided to use gloves as well. I don’t know how to tell you this when I saw those medical gloves on her beautiful hands and that beautiful smile on her lips; I had this sudden urge to bend over and have my prostate checked. Go figure!

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