ORANGE COUNTY STYLE : 10 TO WATCH : These dynamic achievers are on the move and making their mark

Gaddi H. Vasquez, the first Latino to serve on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, is young and enthusiastic, a Republican leader with impressive credentials.

“My career has been a resume preparing me for this job,” says the newest supervisor, representing the east county. Gov. George Deukmejian apparently thought so, too, when he named Vasquez in March to the 3rd District seat on the nonpartisan board left vacant by Bruce Nestande’s resignation.

Vasquez was a police officer in Orange for five years and then a community-relations officer for the City of Riverside. He was a county supervisor’s aide in 1980-84, and for three of those years was also a city planning commissioner in Orange. He worked in Deukmejian’s gubernatorial campaigns and in early 1985 began commuting from his Mission Viejo home to Sacramento, where he was on the governor’s staff, first as Latino liaison officer, then in the appointments department.

“What’s exciting about Orange County is that the median age is 30, 31,” says Vasquez, “33. “As a young supervisor, I represent not only a large portion of the county, but contemporaries. It’s just tremendous to have a chance to help map out the county’s future. I never want to become an ivory tower leader.” His immediate goal is to prevent construction of a 6,000-bed jail in his district, slated to open in 1999.

Vasquez won’t talk about his own political future. But at a time when the other four Republicans on the supervisorial board are probably at the peak of their careers, Vasquez is only beginning to make his mark.

Janet Evans is a girl who has FAST written all over her--and not merely because of her royal-blue swimsuit bears the acronym of the Fullerton Aquatic Sports Team.

Barely 5-foot-4 and 95 pounds, Evans a 16-year-old from Placentia, has been likened to a tiny wind-up toy. Before the 800-meter freestyle event at last year’s Goodwill Games in Moscow, some chunky Soviet swimmers took one look at their wisp-like U.S. rival and burst into belly laughter.

Evans beat them all. “After the 800, they weren’t laughing,” she says. And the fastest American is even speedier now.

Evans’ diminutive stature leaves her behind the others after the starting dive. But her strokes are so swift and so powerful hat she often stands waiting full seconds at the finish line for a runner-up to arrive. When Evans smashed a record held by Olympic gold medalist and U.S. record holder Tracy Caulkins, her coach said the teen-ager was swimminga full year ahead of schedule. Caulkins herself told Evans: “Brush up your butterfly and backstroke and you could have it all.”

She nearly does. Swimming at the U.S. Longcourse Nationals in July, Evans set a new world’s record of 8:22.44 for the 800-meter freestyle, shaving more than two seconds off the standing nine-year record.

Wind up the toy and watch her go for the gold at the 1988 Olympics.

Count the new buildings going up on the Cal State Fullertoncampus. Compute the increase in private donations to the school. Tally its rising number of active alumni. And keep your eye on the dynamic young administrator behind the expansion--ANTHONY A. MACIAS, vice president for university relations and development.

The charismatic Macias, 39, was hired away from Stanford three years ago to beef up fund raising and community relations at Orange County’s largest four-year institution. In that short time, annual private donations to the university have risen from about $200,000 to close to $3 million, and the number of alumni addresses in the university data base has quadrupled. A privately funded building, the Continuing Learning Experience’s Gerontology Center, is under construction on the campus.

No one would have expected less from Macias, whose signature is achievement. Both cerebral and fit--he is a member of the California Bach Society and a weightlifter--Macias is a graduate of Stanford and of Harvard Law School. He worked as an attorney in Chula Vista before joining Stanford’s legendary fund-raising team in 1978.

Born and reared in Ventura County, Macias speaks proudly of his Mexican-American origins. “Being of Hispanic background means many things,” he says. “It means understanding both sides of cultural issues. It means knowing what it’s like to live on the periphery of the mainstream.”

Now very much in the mainstream, Macias is a man who translates that knowledge into action.

Not long ago medical researchers believed it hopeless to dream of repairing the intricate network of brain cells once any part had been damaged by disease or injury.

Then along came CARL W. COTMAN and a number of neuroscientists who are convinced that the day is near when certain brain functions may be restored to thousands of paraplegics, victims of strokes and Alzheimer’s disease and others with brain damage. That day drew closer when the 47-year-old UC Irvine researcher discovered that the brain orders healthy nerve cells to generate new sprouts to make up for those that die.

Another discovery by Cotman with potential benefits for Alzheimer’s victims is that the brain creates its own self-repair chemicals after an injury. Scientists must now learn how to regulate release of these chemicals, which are capable of destroying or rebuilding nerves.

“Some parts of the brain are so finely tuned that they fall apart if you push too hard,” says Cotman. “Within a few years, there will be tests on humans with chemicals called growth factors that we know help strengthen the (damaged) nervous system.” Regeneration could help restore the physical and mental abilities of brain-damaged patients.

Earlier this year, Cotman’s colleagues presented him with UCI’s Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award, the highest honor UC faculty members can bestow. Cotman’s career is solidly under way, and his future contributions to the burgeoning field of brain research seem certain to gain him other honors.

Madelon Maupin is a women who means business.

The co-founder and president of Orange County Businessweek bucked the experts who said there was no market here for a local business journal. “Everybody raised their eyebrows when we came to Orange County. My goal was to prove them wrong.”

Now, 56 issues later, the weekly claims a circulation of 20,000. Maupin says she expects that number to climb to 35,000 in the next 15 months. Keeping up the momentum, Maupin, 35, and her publishing team are about to launch the Inland Empire Business Journal.

Such challenges are nothing new to Maupin. At 25 she was executive director of a philanthropic fund, distributing $48 million to provide low-interest loans to deserving women entrepreneurs. Two years later she became the youngest-ever national sales manager of the Christian Science Monitor.

In 1983, she was hired as marketing director of a major Silicon Valley business paper and later was named publisher of a San Francisco-based business journal.

Maupin’s plan is to establish a chain of business publications in Southern California and eventually circulate them among businesses in the Pacific Rim.

Maupin founded Women in Business for Women in Development, a local off-shoot of the Overseas Education Fund in Washington. The group raises funds to support the economic development of Third World women.

A frequent speaker at civic and philanthropic events, Maupin says she wants to project a powerful--female--voice in the business community. So far, she’s coming across loud and clear.

If there’s such a thing as a sure bet in the world of pop music, where success is always a gamble, in 1988 it’s the WILD CARDS.

The Cypress-based band is now poised for the career upswing long predicted for this talented foursome--due in no small part to their recent teaming with hotshot producer Jeff Eyrich.

Eyrich--who has produced such acclaimed Southern California rock bands as Los Lobos, the Blasters and Rank And File--immediately recognized the richness of the Wild Cards’ music. It’s an irresistible sound as urbanely sophisticated as jazz yet as immediately exhilarating as the best rock ‘n’ roll; as classically classy as Ella Fitzgerald and as street hip as Run D.M.C.

They’ve often been called “the next Los Lobos,” largely because lead singer and guitarist Adrian Remijio, singer-guitarist Jesse Reyes, bassist Johnny Frias and drummer Jesse Sotelo are Latinos. “No one cares that we’re from Orange County. Everyone automatically assumes we’re from East L.A.” says Remijio.

But close your eyes while they’re on stage (if you can stand to miss even one split second of their hyperkinetic act) and you’ll hear little in common with the Southland’s best known Latino rock band other than their intensely spirited and thoroughly original musical vision.

So grab your bankrolls--the Wild Cards is a winning hand.

His older brother, Stephen, grabbed some publicity with the six-legged mobile robot he designed, but it is marketing whiz THOMAS G. BARTHOLET who’s on the move.

At 39, Bartholet heads his company’s key division--robotics--and has the rare responsibility of planning, engineering and marketing automatons for the 1990s. Most firms balk at giving that kind of authority to one department, much less to one man.

The future is bright for both Bartholet and his company, Odetics Inc., an Anaheim high-tech manufacturing company located, appropriately, near Disneyland’s Tomorrowland.

The growth of Odetics depends upon its advanced intelligent machines--or robotics--division. Thus, the company’s future is virtually in the hands of Bartholet, a Phi Beta Kappa who holds a Harvard MBA and a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from Penn State.

Bartholet believes that mobile machines combining electronic and mechanical engineering with computer science are the perfect helpmates for humankind. Robots can take the risk--and the heat, says Bartholet, in place of soldiers. They can stand in for astronauts on long-term projects such as the building of space stations and the servicing of satellites. They can perform routine maintenance chores at nuclear power plants. Robots can provide a way of “freeing men and women for more productive and rewarding tasks,” Bartholet says. “By using advanced intelligence machines, humans will be able to complete very unpleasant tasks--and do them very economically.”

So far, brother Stephen hasn’t designed a robot that can handle marketing and management. Until he does, it looks like no one will be taking over for Tom Bartholet.

TIMOTHY N. WILKES won’t design homes for just anybody. You want a Southern Colonial mansion? A French Normandy chateau? Wilkes can give you a list of architects who do that sort of thing. Wilkes produces contemporary architecture. Wonderful, creative designs--the Far West Assn. of Architecture and the American Institute of Architects are two important bodies that have singled out his work for awards.

Wilkes is in demand for residential and landscape design from Alaska to Arizona. One wealthy client has had Wilkes design all four of his houses.

His goal, the 41-year-old Irvine architect says, is to individualize the home for the people who will live there.

“People claim that no two of my houses are alike,” Wilkes says. “I respond that no two of my clients are alike. I get upset when I see blatantly period-facade architecture--where people build a tremendous big front face and inside it’s just another tract house. It bothers me that when people become successful, they want a French Normandy chateau. It’s such an obvious play for status it’s meaningless.”

A sixth-generation California, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, Wilkes chose Orange County as his base because “much of the architecture here is five years ahead of the rest of the country.”

His design formula: Listen long and hard to what the client wants. Pay attention to detail. Wilkes claims that gives him a chance to be dramatic. “The rest of it is artistry.”

CONSTANCE CARROLL, 42, president of the fastest-growing community college in California--Saddleback College in Mission Viejo--is invariably described as being “a strong leader,” even by her critics.

Since she took the helm at Saddleback in 1983, the college has increased permanently faculty, won national accreditation of its nursing program and garnered several statewide honors, including those for best community college newspaper and literary magazine.

Before coming to Saddleback, Carroll, who lives in Dana Point, was president of Indian Valley College in affluent Marin County, but she grew up in Baltimore’s inner city, where she attended segregated schools.

I can remember segregation vividly. Obviously it left scars. But scars, I like to think, can be both strengths and weaknesses,” Carroll says.

Education was a natural calling, she says, because her father was a school principal and her mother was a deputy superintendent in the Baltimore school system.

Her experience with segregation helped her forge an outlook that shapes Saddleback’s policies today.

Carroll says that she is “immediately skeptical of any lock-step system that might put people in categories” and that her caution extends beyond race. A particular focus is “making sure that equal types of opportunities are provided for both women and men, including in sports.”

Though she takes time out from work for relaxation--with a chess game or trips to San Francisco during the opera season--the reserved-looking Carroll takes her work seriously.

Few in educational circles will be surprised if she is eventually tapped for an administrative post at a university or a community college-chancellorship.

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A dedicated Huntington Beach pediatrician has diagnosed an image problem among the local Vietnamese-American community and is helping to cure it.

DR. QUYNH KIEU, 37, a former Vietnamese refugee, has instilled a pride of heritage that has been a true booster shot for her community.

She settled in Huntington Beach after fleeing Ho Chi Minh City in 1977. Once her Fountain Valley practice was under way, she joined the Historical and Cultural Foundation of Orange County. A desire to help other transplanted Vietnamese preserve their culture and showcase it prompted Kieu to become a founder of the foundation’s Vietnamese council.

Public activity of this sort does not come easily to Vietnamese, Kieu says.

“It’s a feature of the Asian soul that we are reluctant to open ourselves. The traditional hero in Vietnamese literature is very stoic, brave and generous ... but will not talk about his feelings.”

Art is one way of expressing deep feeling. The new Vietnamese council organizes art exhibits, concerts and receptions--which, Kieu hopes, will lead to greater interchange between Vietnamese-Americans and their neighbors.

“Vietnamese people often have been misunderstood as a group,” Kieu says. “The success of so many in business here has sometimes given rise to very antagonistic feelings.”

With a countywide population of nearly 50,000 increasingly dynamic Vietnamese-Americans, Kieu’s prescription for public visibility may perk up other organizers in the growing community.