RSVP at the Torrance California Highway Patrol Office (Text by Pete Porter, Photos by Margaret Porter)

Commemorative Plinth in honor of fallen officers.

The volunteers that donate their time through the Torrance RSVP organization are truly a special breed. None more so than Aran Vaznaian! Due to celebrate his 90th birthday on June 17, he still manages to volunteer twice a week at the Torrance office of the California Highway Patrol. Aran has been involved in this activity for the past three years, ever since his friend, RSVP volunteer Norm Hill, suggested that it would give him something constructive to do in all the spare time that he now had on his hands. Norm puts in four hours every Wednesday at the Torrance CHP office and Aran started doing four hours there each Monday. However, he found that he enjoyed it so much that he now donates time there on both Monday and Tuesday mornings. He says that he changed his schedule because he also meets someone for lunch on those two days but I think that is just an excuse for doing something he likes. Aran is looking forward to going on a ride-along in the near future, but is primarily involved at the moment in doing "fix-it" inspections (i.e. lights, registrations etc.) prior to these being signed off by one of the officers. However, the officers also told me that they would welcome any further volunteer help on Thursdays and Fridays, so please give them a call if you are interested.

Aran says that he is in pretty good health apart from a bit of arthritis and his good health is very evident if you look at the accompanying photographs. He made the very valid point that being involved as a volunteer in this way certainly helps to keep his mind off any health problems he might have and is definitely to be recommended.

Aran's father emigrated to the States from Armenia in 1895 and had a successful farm in the Fresno area where Aran was born in 1913. However, when the economy went sour in 1922, his father lost the farm along with many other ranchers at that time. They then moved to Sacramento where Aran attended the local grade schools. They finally moved to Los Angeles in 1931 and Aran attended Poly High. During WW2 Aran worked as a machinist at one of the local aerospace companies and then ended up owning his own machine shop until he sold it twenty five years ago and retired. Not one to sit around, he ended up helping in his son's machine shop for the next twenty years before finally "retiring" for good. However, Aran found that he was getting bored just sitting at home and was very happy to find that he could be useful in his present volunteer activity.

I wish that I could have spent more time with Aran as I collected information for this article and hope to see and talk to him some more at the Volunteer Recognition Banquet later this month.

If you want to volunteer like Aran please call the RSVP Office at 320-3322.

Get More Info on the CHP here.