Reporters' notebook

The first partnership gives adolescents at the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula immediate and affordable access to mental health care in a safe, private and confidential manner. On Thursdays for five hours per week, ACS will staff a bilingual/bicultural therapist at their Redwood City site and provide 50-minute counseling sessions for a set fee of $5 per session.

ACS’ partnership with the EPA Youth Court will bring both of ACS’ outpatient programs on-site at the Phoenix Academy to serve EPA Youth Court clients. ACS’ Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program will be administering a three-part assessment to clients. Clients assessed to need treatment will be referred to the ASAT Program or to a suitable alternative meeting their needs. ACS’ After-School Counseling Program will be offering individual and family counseling sessions to EPA Youth Court clients who commit violations such as petty theft or curfew violations. Services for both programs will be offered in the afternoon and evening hours on an as needed basis by Spanish bilingual/bicultural therapists. Referrals to each of ACS’ outpatient programs will come through the EPA Youth Court Program Director Toni Stone.

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Turns out gambling doesn’t pay — especially on the job.

Former South San Francisco battalion chief James Anthony Selvitella Jr., one of four men accused of running an illegal betting ring in part of a South San Francisco fire station dating back to 2006, sued the city for wrongful termination. This week an appeals court denied Selvitella’s appeal noting the city had sufficient evidence to part ways with the employee.

On Nov. 18, 2010, Selvitella was sentenced to 18 months probation, 30 hours of community service and a year of weekly Gamblers Anonymous meetings for his part in the gambling ring.

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Happy about the nice weather? Not nearly as happy as the students at Woodside High School. The school recently completed a new 60-seat, amphitheater-style classroom.

The new outdoor classroom occupies a 700-square-foot section of the half-acre portion of campus devoted to outdoor learning and support of the Green Academy, a small-learning community established at Woodside in 2009 to help prepare students for college and environmentally focused careers.

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Employees of San Mateo’s Insperity will be dressing down today. As part of the company’s Collars4Dollars campaign, company employees have the option to sign up for a minimum donation amount to receive a Soles4Souls T-shirt and the right to wear it on their company’s designated dress-down day. Soles4Souls, the international shoe charity dedicated to providing shoes to people in need, partnered with Insperity to raise funds for the relief efforts in Japan.

Insperity’s Collars4Dollars campaign raised enough funds to sponsor the shipment of more than 90 pairs of shoes. Today marks the end of a two-week shoe collection. Shoes collected will go toward restocking the charity’s supply following distributions to Japan.

For more information on Insperity’s Collars4Dollars campaign visit www.Soles4SoulsFundraising.org/Collars4Dollars_Insperity.

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Sequoia Hospital Heart and Vascular Institute this week announced the first implantation of the Subcutaneous Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator System in Northern California. Cardiac electrophysiologist Hardwin Mead, MD, performed the procedure on Thursday, March 17. The S-ICD technology, developed by Cameron Health, Inc., of San Clemente, Calif., detects fast and disorganized heart rhythms, known as ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation and provides a jolt of electricity to restore the heart’s normal rhythm, preventing possible sudden cardiac arrest.

The reporters’ notebook is a weekly collection of facts culled from the notebooks of the Daily Journal staff. It appears in the Thursday edition.