Celebrating A Milestone

The Crescenta Valley Weekly has been around nearly 15 years. To me, as its owner, publisher and creator, that is an incredible amount of time. When I think of the people who’ve worked over the years for the CVW I’m overwhelmed. For instance, we’ve had some writers (too many really) who have moved on to bigger things. I take pride that I helped them hone their skills so they would be attractive to other publications. (To be honest, it does pain me a little that these gifted writers left us but I am happy to have had them on our masthead.)

We’ve had some who wrote for us for a while then – poof! – they disappeared, never to be heard from again. Weird.

We’ve had some ding-a-lings, too; those who could barely write their own name much less write coherently for this paper.

We’ve also had some people who discovered that writing and photography weren’t things they were really interested in and they faded away. I can somewhat understand that; CVW covers a diverse number of topics and sometimes people don’t want to write about a non-profit’s event or about the accomplishments of local youth. They only want to write “juicy” stuff. But that’s not all we do; we try to cover as much as possible so our readers are up-to-speed on local happenings. Sometimes they’re juicy; oftentimes they’re not.

So while I reflect on our (nearly) 15 years, imagine how impressed I was to celebrate 55 years of J’s Maids and Maintenance.

Chris Waldheim, the owner of J’s, had a celebration on Thursday night commemorating 55 years serving the community – heck, the nation! The reach of J’s Maids and Maintenance is far and wide and I’m just so grateful that the company calls La Crescenta “home.”

During the celebration I had a chance to share with the vast audience that when I was first seeing if the Crescenta Valley Weekly was a viable product I approached local business leaders – Chris being one of them – to gauge their support for the paper.

After listening to my vision for the CVW, Chris pulled out his checkbook and wrote a (sizeable) check for me to start the paper. In many ways, his support has never waivered.

For example, during COVID he began taking out a half page ad every single week not only to promote his own business but the events of non-profits. He understood two very important things: 1) my revenue was hit – hard – because closed businesses don’t advertise and 2) non-profits typically don’t have a lot of money to advertise their events. By advertising every week (which continues today – see page 23) he helped stabilize my revenue and also provided to the community (that he loves) information on local events that were happening.

So congratulations to J’s Maids and Maintenance and Chris Waldheim for 55 years of success. Thanks for sharing.