Now in its 14 th year, the Alta Bates Summit Foundation Celebrity Classic was an all-around success. The golf event was held Monday, September 12 at Diablo Country Club; with tennis events on Saturday, September 24 at Berkeley Tennis Club and Claremont Resort & Spa. The 2005 Classic will benefit Thunder Road’s Culinary Arts Program and over $255,000 was raised.

Thunder Road—an affiliate of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center—is a model program, and is the only integrated adolescent inpatient, residential, and intensive outpatient behavioral health care program in California for youth and their families struggling with the challenges of drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse. Thunder Road is also one of the few programs to regularly offer scholarships to youth whose families lack the resources or public assistance to pay for treatment. Since opening its doors in 1987, Thunder Road has helped more than 6,000 kids and their families.

The Thunder Road Culinary Arts Program was developed to support the many young clients who have limited family or social networks and need to establish self-sufficient lifestyles after leaving treatment. As legal adults, they must be prepared to find jobs, rent apartments, and negotiate for services necessary to meet their basic needs. With marketable job-skills, Thunder Road clients significantly improve their abilities to maintain clean and sober lifestyle as well as becoming honorable and contributing members in our communities and neighborhoods. Providing these clients with culinary arts experience and the skills needed for a successful career can sustain them throughout transitions in their lives.

Graduates of the Culinary Arts Program have gone on to successful food service careers. Significantly, Thunder Road alumnae have been employed in food service jobs at Il Postrio in San Francisco; and Denny’s and Olive Garden restaurants. As training for a demanding career in food service, this year clients in the Thunder Road Culinary Arts Program rose at 2:00 A.M. Saturday morning to again prepare the more than 1,000 delicious and wholesome box lunches served at the tennis event.

Last year’s tournament raised more than $250,000 for Thunder Road’s Culinary Arts Program and helped deserving young men and women learn healthy work habits and develop marketable life skills.