Candidate for
Council Member; City of La Canada Flintridge

DATA

Barry Riedel Attorney, Private Practice 1977-present Resident, LCF 1991-present Single Father, Peter, 11th grade, LCHS

Education:

Harvard School
Occidental College BA Political Science, 1963
J.D. Southwestern University School of Law, 1977
Masters, Public Administration in progress) Golden Gate
University

Associations:

American Assn of Trial Lawyers,
Int'l Who's Who of Professionals;
California Network of Educational Charters;
Mexican-American Bar Association.

Other Positions:

CFO, Learning Dynamics Non-Profit School

Address: 1355 ½ Foothill Boulevard, LCF 91011 Phone: 818 790 2429 f 818 790 3696

PROFILE

From a desk whose surface is buried by orderly piles of legal documents as well as by computers, monitors, printers , and telephones, attorney and LCF city council candidate Barry Riedel picks up an intricately woven Navajo horsehair fly whisk.

"This was given by the Navajos to my grandfather, who was a physician at Fort Huachuca near Tucson, Arizona. He attended the Navajos there without charge. The story in the family is that his grateful patients gave my grandfather an entire beaded Navajo outfit, which we donated to the Arizona State Museum after his death. The whisk was part of that outfit."

The whisk is finely braided and attests to Riedel's pride in his Southwestern heritage as well as to his family's tradition of public service.

Riedel's parents graduated from Los Angeles High School in the 1930s. His father was a big band saxophonist retired from the road who studied dentistry at USC, his mother was a librarian. Riedel grew up in the Hollywood Hills, except for three years on Air Force Bases when his father was called up during the Korean War. As an eleven-year-old, Riedel remembers the jungle base of Okinawa, where "kids would swing on vines across streams, just like in the movies."

Riedel attended Harvard School in the San Fernando Valley, then Occidental College. He married, then studied law at Hastings College in San Francisco, taking torts from Prosser. His law studies were interrupted when he moved back to Los Angeles to work for the City of Los Angeles and then appraise property for the County Assessor while studying for a degree in government at Cal State Northridge. He resumed his law studies at Southwestern University School of Law, receiving his law degree while working full-time at night for several large law firms.

Riedel is both serious and robust. For a while he had a horse ranch in Northridge, then he renovated a 1913 California bungalow in Silver Lake. Presently his love of nature and being outdoors is directed to a vegetable garden in his yard. He says he should exercise more, but work gets in the way. When he can, he takes a weekend day off to hike up Arroyo Seco.

He is interrupted by a phone call. He speaks in rapid, fluent and colloquial Spanish that he explains he got from his maternal grandmother, a Georgia belle transplanted to Tucson, Arizona at the turn of the century. "She ran a pharmacy close to the border of Mexico and learned Spanish from the church fathers."

Riedel explains that both sides of family believed in public service. One of his earliest memories is of accompanying his father to a school for Downs Syndrome children, where his father donated dental services.

In that same spirit, Riedel has directed his energies in special education in LCF, helping to found PSSE (Parents Supporting Special Education), and actively pursuing the establishment of a charter school in LCF for at-risk kids. He serves on the Public Awareness Committee of CANEC, a charter school organization, where he is writing op-ed pieces analyzing educational legislation issues.

His faith in education is not reserved just for others. Riedel is again pursuing his Master's in Public Administration, studying through Golden Gate University with a concentration on school financing, special education funding and bond issues. As if that were not enough, "I'm getting a certificate in Purchasing through Cal State Dominguez Hills," he explains. "It's important to understand how municipalities can save public funds through smarter buying and contracting of services."