If you are a Y, only 13 cities are better

You'll hear members of the 20-something crowd complain that Santa Rosa is deader than the water rat, or whatever that thing is, around the neck of grandma's fur stole. But have you been downtown at night lately?

To this geezer on a rare late-nighter, it looked like singles in their 20s were having a pretty good time. I'd have approached a few to ask what they think of Santa Rosa as a place to live and work, but I didn't want to creep them out or get maced.

However, maybe you saw that Business Week just found that among members of Generation Y seeking to launch their careers, Santa Rosa is the 14th most popular city in the country.

That's 14th out of 364 metropolitan areas across the United States. Pretty good.

Business Week said that among cities more favored by young people, Boulder boasts lovely scenery, D.C. offers real-estate bargains, Santa Barbara is wonderfully diverse, Madison welcomes lesbians and gays, Bridgeport comes alive at night and New York is, well, New York.

One attribute that sets Santa Rosa apart for young people, the magazine said, is that it "has a high number of creative professionals." We most certainly do.

COFFEE GROUNDS, DRIPPING: What a lovely poolside party famed landscape artist Jack Stuppin and his wife, Jane, hosted to celebrate the emergence from bankruptcy of Palm Drive Hospital, and to raise some money for the beloved health center.

Guests sipped and tasted, of course, but there also was poetry, a singalong and a demonstration of the impact of the bedside robots Dr. Jim Gude has introduced to Palm Drive and other rural hospitals. Stuppin strung some of his favorite paintings by himself and Bill Wheeler along the fences of his Coffee Grounds estate -- long ago the home of Charles "Peanuts" Schulz.

Before it was over, the question was posed of how much someone might pay to toss the fully dressed Dan Smith into the Stuppins' pool. John Dierke said he'd pay $600 and James and Rosemarie Pacatte said they would, too.

Smith, an angel to Palm Drive and a workhorse on its board, asked only to remove his wallet and shoes.

Big splash.

LIVES TO SWIM AGAIN: Sonoma County native Jack Lance figures that if his heart had to stop on him, it picked the ideal place.

The 66-year-old Sebastopolian sprung for lunch at Santa Rosa's Finley Pool the other day to thank the aquatic center employees and city firefighters whose instantaneous, expert assistance saved his life.

An avid swimmer, Jack was doing laps with some pals on May 8 when his heart went into ventricular fibrillation and quit pumping blood. He doesn't like to imagine what would have happened if he'd been home alone at that moment, or almost anywhere else on Earth.

But the semi-retired business consultant was in the Finley pool and a Rincon Valley firefighter, Miguel Inong, happened to be swimming just feet from him. Miguel and a lifeguard were on him in a flash.

"If it had happened anywhere else, I wouldn't be here," Jack said.

His rescuers commenced CPR and within four minutes were joined by a crew from the fire station a stone's throw away, and minutes later by ambulance paramedics.

Jack's heartbeat was restored when he arrived at Memorial Hospital, where doctors discovered the blocked artery that would have killed him but for the professional lifesavers at Finley Pool.

"I'm a very, very, lucky guy," he said. He marveled at being able to buy a sandwich for someone to whom he owes his life.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.