Easter Seal Gets Help From Pros

Some 180 people gathered at Le Meridien hotel in Newport Beach on Saturday to raise funds for the Easter Seal Society of Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The benefit was hosted by Newport Area Professionals, a four-year-old nonprofit networking group that calls itself, oddly, NAPPS. (P.S.: What’s the PS for?)

With a lite tariff of $55 per person, the gala netted an estimated $13,000, according to event chairwoman Christin Foreman, who works for Easter Seal.

No-host cocktails flowed at sunset in a glass-enclosed terrace by the hotel tennis courts. Striding to the check-in desk were waves of clean-cut young men in black-tie uniformity escorting pretty young women, an inordinate number of whom wore little black strapless cocktail dresses.

Among early arrivals were Peter and Cindy Stephan of Monarch Beach, a fit, tan and smiling example of black-tie/black strapless style.

Cindy Stephan recounted a recent trip to Hawaii during which she met tennis ace Roscoe Tanner--resulting in Tanner’s donation of his tennis time as part of a Palm Springs getaway package, one of the 20 items auctioned after dinner.

“He was just so great,” Stephan said of Tanner. “He told me he does a lot of charities, and if I ever have trouble reaching other (tennis celebs), I should just call him. So now it’s a great connection!”

Connections are what brought Flora Shirazi-Fard and Shayda Soleymani to the party.

“Networking is the name of the game,” said Soleymani, a free-lance graphic designer from Yorba Linda who said she planned to join NAPPS that evening “to make more business contacts.”

Shirazi-Fard, a corporate software engineer from Placentia, said she planned to join NAPPS, too. “I’m hoping to get into my own business someday, and I want to meet people to see what kind of business is available out there and how they made it. How did they survive?”

Rob Bowen, owner of a data-base company with offices in Newport and Huntington Beach, stressed the charitable rather than the business side of NAPPS.

“It’s important to me that this group gives something back to the community,” Bowen said. “Professionals should do that! We have the means and we have the responsibility.”

Cruz Estrada and Sandy Muir--neither of whom are NAPPS members--came to the party for the simple pleasure of “enjoying a nice meal with nice people,” said Estrada, who works as a legal secretary in Newport Beach.

After cocktails, guests hiked from the terrace to a banquet room at the other end of the hotel (past a wedding party reaching the sing-along-and-hug stage) for a dinner of leek and potato soup, garden salad, roast Cornish game hen and chocolate mousse.

After dinner, Angie Merkel-Hart--who co-founded NAPPS with Chris Copps and Jeff Wallack--gave a brief speech about the group’s roots and raison d’etre . Christin Foreman presented a check to Easter Seal representative Missy Mandel, an 11-year-old from Laguna Hills.