Prior to his entry into law enforcement, Hunter graduated from St. Johns University with a double major in Criminal Justice/Pre-Law and Accounting and an impressive GPA.

Hunter says the NYPD has been facing some common issues lately, the nature of which will likely come as no surprise to most New Yorkers. NYPD officers have been working hard to raise awareness about the major risks associated with unattended property, particularly in Hunter’s Upper East Side precinct.

Examples of this include the well-worn story of leaving items unattended at a coffee shop, or draping bags over the backs of chairs in restaurants, only to later discover missing items.

Hunter told Our Town earlier in the year that while thefts are subject to spikes around certain times, like the holidays, this year’s numbers generally mirror last year’s.

Some of the most popular items among thieves are flashy electronic devices.

Hunter says the NYPD is also trying to encourage New Yorkers to register these personal electronic devices so when these items are stolen, the police can be more helpful in retrieving them.

In the past year the NYPD has also been involved in some major accomplishments, according to Hunter. They have worked with community members to solve safety problems posed by delivery bikes, including combatting sidewalk riding, riding through stoplights and riding the wrong way on streets. The NYPD’s crackdown on delivery bikes, beginning over the past summer, is an important safety measure for everyone, from pedestrians to motor vehicle drivers.

Hunter also describes increased communications over the past years with various community organizations.

“These [communications] help the NYPD direct the proper resources to areas of concern and helps us get information to the community involving crime patterns,” he says.

While Hunter is lauded for his crime-fighting prowess, he hopes to someday go back to school and get his law degree to round out his career.

When he’s not on the job, Hunter devotes his spare time to family—his wife, Allison, and their teenage daughter, Brianna.

Historian Kathy Jolowicz remembers like it was yesterday when she couldn’t walk down 86th Street without hearing people speak German.

 She remembers when she could get authentic German food at mom-and-pop shops and when Christmas time meant the streets were ambushed with music, the polka and the waltz. She remembers when the Upper East Side was Yorkville, where everything from the old country was either imported or recreated to feel like home.

“It’s my passion, its my heritage, it’s my childhood,” Jolowicz said, who was born and raised in Yorkville. “It was my Disney Land.”

Jolowicz lived the memories that are now in picture frames on her walls and are written in massive books on her shelves.  But she shares those memories in exhibits and lectures and displays over 40 pictorial panels that are 30 by 40 inches wide, decorated with Yorkville facts and photos.

During her lectures, her topics shift according to what her audience wants to know.

“If it’s a young group, they all want to know about the war, what was it like for Germans in the war,” she said. “If I have an older group, they reminisce.”

Jolowicz has been writing a book that covers German roots in New York City from the 1600s to the 1960s. It also covers the German’s contributions to New York City and the Upper East Side when it was German Town, or Yorkville/Kleindeutschland.

When she started the book in 1988, she originally wanted to write a six-chapter book about Yorkville. However, the book has grown to 20 chapters as she continues to research and add information about Germans in the city.

“It’s not that you just sit down and write a book,” she said.  “There are so many details that have never been put together and that’s what I’m trying to do now. It’s not easy.”

She also writes about her family. Her parents Ruth and Paul Jolowicz were Yorkville pioneers and moved to New York City in 1932 from Leipzig.

“When you write from the head, the chapters about my family and my experiences, and how they adapted to this country and how I grew up in the adaptation of their life, that was easy,” she said.

Another topic she touched on was her family’s experience adapting to America during World War I and II. At the time of the World Wars, Jolowicz said Jewish kids picked on her for being German American when she was younger.

“Germans still have a bad connotation, not so much the younger ones, but the Holocaust is kept alive, and rightly so,” Jolowicz said. “I would have never condoned such a thing. What I’m trying to do with my book is to bring out the positive side to Germans.”

Jolowicz started the German Language Learning Club in 1990 where she teaches children and adults German at P.S. 169 between Park and Lexington Avenues. Her students and their families march in the German American Steuben Parade every year. Jolowicz, who has two Bachelors of Fine Arts degrees, is currently working on her German Language Certificate from the Goethe-Institut in Germany.

She holds a Stammtisch that meets once a month in Yorkville to eat, drink beer and speak German whether native or non-native. Since 1973 she has run the East 83rd/84th Street Block Association. And she’s a member of Friends of the Upper East Side Historic District.

“My memories are still in my heart of walking 86 Street, the music, everybody knowing everybody,” she said. “This was a community, it was a family, it was a village. And it was all I knew.”

An emergency room might sound like a chaotic place to be, but to Shari Weisburd, RN, it’s exactly where she likes to be.

“When you’re actually physically in the environment there’s a very good flow, everyone knows what they are doing,” said Weisburd, assistant nurse manager of the emergency room in Beth Israel. “There’s a very good sense of how to care for the patient.”

Weisburd has worked in Beth Israel’s emergency room for 22 years and is director of their SAFE Program. She received an art degree at SUNY Purchase and originally wanted to pursue photography. However, she fell in love with nursing when she studied at the Beth Israel School of Nursing and did her externship in the emergency room.

Weisburd handles staff scheduling and directs where patients need to go on a regular basis. On average, Weisburd says Beth Israel sees about 320 to 350 patients a day. Yet, the busy emergency room was put to the test during Hurricane Sandy, and so was Weisburd. When the hurricane struck, Weisburd said they were seeing up to 450, sometimes 480 patients on some days.

“We’re pretty big, but we’re only so big,” she said. “With that huge amount of influx of patients we had to decide what areas can be changed and how one area might be used more efficiently.”

As soon as homes nearby started to lose power, Weisburd said elderly people who depend on electricity for oxygen and those who depend on dialysis started coming in. There was a makeshift area made for dialysis patients and they made arrangements to work together with a nearby methadone clinic that was open.

“I have to say I was shocked at the influx of patients that occurred pretty much immediately after the lights went out,” she said.

Weisburd said she and her staff developed a fast pass urgent care area for patients to be treated and released faster. The auditorium in Beth Israel opened up as a makeshift shelter for people to stay and they were offered food and services.

Weisburd said she and other nurses were working 15-hour shifts and were finding spots in the hospital to sleep in to avoid the commutes home.

“Unfortunately, since the hospital was so full, sleeping arrangements were hard to come by,” she said. “We were the only ones open in the area, so you could only imagine, serving the Lower East Side of Manhattan.”

Despite the long hours, the emergency room worked efficiently thanks to dependable generators and fast thinking by Weisburd and her staff.

“We were able to operate without jeopardizing anyone’s health in the emergency department,” she said. “Our patients were safe.”

Weisburd also dedicates her time to sexual assault victims with the Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) Program and has been a sexual assault forensic examiner for about 11 years. She started by assisting the busy nurses who were working with the patients. She saw that the patients weren’t getting as much one-on-one time, so when a SAFE Program came to Beth Israel she took a course to be an examiner.

Weisburd has been the SAFE Program director at Beth Israel for four years.

“It is upsetting to hear how often and how much sexual assault goes on,” she said. “But the idea that I could solely help a kid on my own and give them my undivided attention for those hours, it just seemed like a kind thing to do and the right treatment for someone who has already been through such a horrible experience.”

92Y is a cultural and community center which welcomes people of all ages, faiths and backgrounds.

“I’ve been here for more than 30 years,” says Adler. “Every year, I am so proud of what we accomplish at 92Y, and grateful to have the opportunity to lead this remarkable institution.”

Adler and his team at 92Y are ambitious about the prominent organization and constantly keeping an eye toward the future.

“We are always looking for new ways to serve our current community,” he explains, “and to reach out to geographically diverse communities here in New York and around the world.”

This year alone 92Y has witnessed some incredible programs, many of which have been livecast to extend their reach beyond the center’s walls. 92Y has had programs featuring fashion icon Marc Jacobs, former Mayor Ed Koch and many more notable names.

 In January of this year, 92Y also offered their very first online class—a Molly Peacock poetry seminar on sonnets, which was conducted from Peacock’s home in Toronto for students all across the US and Canada.

Adler says online classes present opportunities that simply cannot take place in a physical classroom. “There is definitely more of that to come,” he adds.

 ”As always, our audiences here in the hall continue to enjoy talents like the incomparable pianist András Schiff and today’s most compelling authors, like Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith, who opened our Poetry Center season,” explains Adler.

Soon 92Y will celebrate the 75th anniversary of their renowned Poetry Center.

The institution will also celebrate the 25th anniversary of its educational outreach program, which brings teaching artists into public schools and brings students into 92Y’s concert hall. Adler says this program reaches about 8,000 students a year.

92Y tries to keep their vision of productive social change broad and openminded. “We also continue to find new ways to ‘scale our values,’ to be a catalyst for change and for ‘repairing the world,’ both here in New York and beyond,” explains Adler.

92Y developed the idea of Giving Tuesday, for instance, which would occur annually after Thanksgiving and be a day devoted to charity. The idea took off on a large-scale, national level.

“Creating this new kind of community, with tremendous collective potential for positive impact, is our mandate as a community and cultural center in the digital age,” says Adler. “And we are just getting started.”

 Like any nonprofit, 92Y also faces its fair of hardships. “Doing more with less is an ongoing challenge as is continuing to create programs that are new and relevant, especially in a rapidly changing world,” says Adler.

Nonetheless, the group “keep[s] a laser-sharp focus on [their] core values,” he says.

Looking ahead, Adler hopes to be able to help 92nd Street Y continue to be a leading voice in “the call to use the tremendous advances in technology to build new communities and forge new ways for people to join together for the greater good.”

 When he manages to steal a moment for himself, Adler enjoys spending time with his family, especially his young grandchildren. He notes he has also been getting back in touch with film photography, an old favorite hobby.

“When I want to ‘get away,’” he explains, “I try to read books that have absolutely nothing to do with my work at 92Y – and given the variety of things we do, that’s sometimes a challenge.”

For two years, Baney has been the administrative director at Mt. Sinai, overseeing their HIV services program. Prior to that, Baney spent 18 years doing similar work at St. Vincent’s before it shut its doors.

Baney speaks eagerly to Our Town about two significant grants the hospital has received over the past year while under his supervision. Mt. Sinai received a federal grant for women, infants and adolescents with HIV for the hospital’s uptown program, as well as an HIV prevention grant from the city’s Department of Health for their uptown and downtown locations.

Baney says formerly only two organizations had been funded in Manhattan, including the Mt. Sinai program, so the new grants are a major step forward for HIV prevention and care in the city.

“We’re doing our best to educate the community not only about HIV and prevention but also about the health status of the community,” says Baney, who notes hospital representatives attend community board meetings to educate people about HIV statistics and general health issues affecting the city.

“We focus on HIV,” says Baney, “but we emphasize other health issues too.”

These healthcare issues include major risks like obesity, hypertension and diabetes, as well as doctor shortages and the necessity of primary care doctors.

“The best prevention method,” explains Baney, “is to have a physician involved in primary care.” This has been shown to reduce the chance of getting HIV as well as promote general health in at-risk individuals.

“We want to get people into primary care services and we’re doing the best we can to make an impact,” he adds.

“The challenges we face are the ones everyone faces—shortages in funding and changes in medicaid reimbursement,” says Baney. “It’s a challenge to continue to provide and expand services for less money.”

There’s another issue Baney and his colleagues work to address: “The patient population is overwhelmingly black and hispanic,” he says. “It’s also challenging to recruit Spanish speaking providers so we work extra hard and we have been successful. Sometimes it takes longer to recruit [Spanish speakers] but I’d rather have someone who reflects the population we’re treating.”

Baney says the HIV services program has some projects underway for the future, but many of them involve continuing to make current practices even better and more effective. This involves evaluating testing programs, getting more people in the door for testing, spreading the prevention message, maintaining supportive networks for patients who are HIV-positive and more.

“Mt. Sinai has an open door to these populations,” says Baney. “We really want to help them, we want to reduce any barriers people have to getting tested. We’re here to help.”

When he’s not actively fulfilling his administrative duties at the hospital, Baney likes spending down time at the beach or a house on Fire Island he shares with friends. He also runs a theater during the summer and on weekends, and works with other organizations involved with HIV prevention and care.

Baney says he also enjoys spending time with his large family, including his dog Bridget, whom he rescued. He hopes to “recruit” another rescue dog soon.

In general, when it comes to his tendency to always offer a helping hand, Baney says: “[his] personal life and professional life are the same.”

The consortium represents a group of high schools that have implemented a system of performance based assessment to graduate students, rather than relying strictly on standardized testing, by an agreement with the board of regents. Cook says the system is used in 28 schools across the state and 26 schools in the city.

High school students who are part of the consortium take one regents exam and otherwise complete performance based assessments. The consortium’s mission statement is that when it comes to education, “one size does not fit all.”

Cook describes the strides that have been made this year by the organization, including an evolving system of assessment that involves a great deal of professional development for teachers in schools.

“We just had a conference—a citywide staff development day, and we had our annual conference of about 600 teachers,” says Cook.

The conference incorporates workshops for teachers and speakers, including Cook herself, who presented at the conference.

“We’ve also been documenting the work that goes on in the consortium schools and put out a report with data that shows just how effective this way of assessing is,” she adds.

Still, Cook and the consortium have had some struggles this year.

“I think there are always challenges facing public schools and public education,” she says. “There’s still an overemphasis on testing.”

“We’re finding another way besides standardized testing,” adds Cook. “The tides may be turning, but even though we’ve designed a system that’s very effective there’s still a lot of emphasis on high stakes testing.”

The “other way” Cook describes involves performance based achievement that reflects specifically how well students would be able to function in college, for instance defending research papers, writing literary essays and performing science experiments. The consortium pushes classes that are more in-depth than mere test preparation.

“The DOE uses those test scores to measure everything from teacher effectiveness to school success and that’s a big challenge,” explains Cook. “It’s this sort of use and misuse of standardized test scores”

“There’s so much more to educational success than a score,” she adds. “Children aren’t test scores, they’re more complex.”

The consortium has been empirically successful. Cook says the kids in consortium schools are doing better in college than their peers, the schools have higher rates of teacher retention, lower incident rates and greater overall college retention.

She adds the alternative system has doubled the rate of graduating English language learners compared to the rest of the city.

“People have to ask what is it we want kids to be able to do when they leave high school,” she says. “We’re preparing kids to survive and get the most out of the college experience.”

In the coming years, Cook hopes other schools that have so far been pilot schools in the consortium will become full members, helping to sustain and expand the program.

When she’s not pushing for educational reform, Cook spends time with her children and granddaughter. She also helps with the publications put out by the consortium and writes children’s books, proving kids and the power of education are never far from her mind.

In 2012, CHN responded to Hurricane Sandy’s blow to the city by turning their Halloween Spooktacular block party into a fundraising effort. The block party is not usually a moneymaking endeavor, according to Coffey, just a “nice thing to do for a great neighborhood.” This year the group encouraged donations to the relief effort among party-goers and donated half of the profit the organization netted as well.

CHN also hosted their own relief event, ultimately sending a truck full of donated items to Staten Island.

“It was very impromptu,” said Coffey, “but we have a good network of volunteers. We have a really good spirit.”

In addition to their charitable work, CHN is responsible for helping beautify the Park Avenue mall above 86th Street by developing a template for planting, raising funds from Park Avenue buildings and planting and maintaining flowers and trees. Coffey said an organization was subsequently formed below 86th Street using CHN’s template.

“That’s why the malls look terrific,” she said. “We’re the instigators of it. We’re really proud of that.”

Coffey’s group is also making an effort to monitor and replace trees that came down during Sandy and the recent snowstorm.

“Our main mission since 1970 has been the preservation of the architectural history of the neighborhood,” explained Coffey. “Over the years we’ve added a lot of quality of life projects. Somebody goes around and checks everything that is wrong whether it’s graffiti or a malfunctioning street lamp or a pothole or anything.”

The group has also transitioned their twice-yearly newsletter to full color and continued to implement an electronic recycling program in the area.

Looking toward the future, CHN has goals both small and big. For one, Coffey said they’d like to revamp their website and make it more dynamic.

The group also hopes to continue improving on the status quo. “We have a lot of good programs going on and we try to improve them each year and bring on more young board members,” said Coffey. “Our merchants are getting more involved in helping too.”

Though retired, Coffey views her volunteer position with CHN as equivalent to a full-time job. When she has free time, Coffey enjoys frequent travel, both in the U.S. and abroad. She also takes full advantage of her natural surroundings, biking or cross-country skiing in Central Park whenever she gets the chance.

In certain respects, the rapidly evolving institution is just that. Instruction began at the school, which aims to attract the “best and brightest in technology” according to the University, in January of this year.

“On a daily basis we work on activities as diverse as designing significant academic programs to defining on-boarding procedures for new employees,” says Dove. She adds the school’s progress is due in part to its entrepreneurial culture—a spirit shared by the selective school’s student body—as well as the support of individuals and organizations in the community.

In the past year alone, Dove has overseen the hiring of new faculty and staff and the welcoming of the school’s “beta” class of eight full-time graduate students. These students will be the first to receive a one-year Master of Engineering degree in computer science.

Cornell Tech also moved into its Chelsea campus, a space donated to the University by the Google corporation. Dove says they have also made significant progress with campus plans for the Roosevelt Island location. The Roosevelt Island site, an ambitious, futuristic-looking establishment according to blueprints, is expected to see construction beginning in 2014. In 2017, Roosevelt Island will become the school’s permanent home.

“It’s been a very productive and rewarding year,” says Dove.

Dove looks ahead with great optimism for Cornell Tech. She says in the coming year the school plans to further expand its academic programs, hire more faculty and continue building relationships with industry partners and community organizations.

The school will also finish planning the Roosevelt Island site to facilitate the process of campus construction.

When she’s not hard at work at Cornell, helping launch a bold startup which is sure to change the future of New York City and even the world, Dove, a fitness enthusiast, fills her free time with her other great loves: dogs and photography.

Diana Byer gets to her studio on East 39th Street at 7 in the morning, every morning. She first catches up on paperwork then teaches her ballet company from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Then she rehearses the company from 11:45 a.m. until 4.

From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., she teaches children classes. And after completing some more paperwork, Byer finally heads home.

“It’s a very long day,” she said. “But for any small arts organization in a major city, the artistic director has very long days.”

Byer is the founder and artistic director of the New York Theatre Ballet, a company that performs classic and original ballet for adults and families and teaches ballet for children. Founded in 1978, the company has become known for its programs, such as the LIFT Community Service Program, that gives scholarships to kids who may not be able to afford ballet classes.

LIFT has been in effect for 24 years and is an outreach program that goes to shelters around the city for kids who are homeless or at risk. The children audition and up to 30 kids each year are awarded scholarships to help them enroll in the Ballet School NY, part of the New York Theatre Ballet. Byer said children also get clothing, mentoring and tutoring, whatever the individual child needs.

“It’s more than just getting ballet lessons, the whole child is addressed,” said the New Jersey native. LIFT also has a year-round Study Program. “We address the needs of a child on an individual basis. And the children are integrated into our regular classes, there isn’t a special class for scholarship students.”

Byer said that she sees a lot of talented young people come through her program and is currently working on raising money to send a 12-year-old boy to private school. “He’s extraordinarily talented,” she said. Because of the scholarship program, Byer said Ballet School NY is able to give talented kids the right tools to make it in dance.

“And there is a lot of talent out there. The children and the parents can’t begin to address their future because dancing lessons and music lessons and art lessons, all those things, are very expensive,” she said. “So we’re able to offer this program for talented dancers.”

Other programs include one-hour shows for children and family audiences and the company shows new and classic works by choreographers such as Antony Tudor, Richard Alston and Jerome Robbins. Performances are held at Florence Gould Hall on 55 East 59th Street. “We also identify emerging young choreographers and produce their ballets as well, we call it Legends and Visionaries,” she said.

Byer attended Julliard and received her principal dance training from Antony Tudor and Margaret Craske. While Craske trained her, Craske asked Byer to help with fellow students who were having difficulties, which led to Byer’s teaching.

However, she still dances in walk-on and acting roles to what she refers to as the “old lady roles.” She appears in Antony Tudor’s Judgment of Paris and she plays the wicked fairy Caraboss in their Sleeping Beauty performance.

Byer is on the board of directors for the Dance Notation Bureau and she has been a guest faculty instructor at institutions such as Cornell University, New York University and the Cecchetti Society of Canada in Toronto.

Though the New York Theatre Ballet has been around for an impressive 33 years, Byer hopes for improved funding to continue expanding the program for many more years to come. Lately Byer said it’s been difficult to get people to come to shows since many are distracted by technology or limited money. But with her commitment, the show will go on.

“Ballet will never go away, it’s one of the universal art forms,” she said. “It will always be here.”

Beck has been a member of the Vanderbilt YMCA’s board since 1999 and is currently serving his third non-consecutive, two-year term as chairman.

While Beck enjoys his position on the board, his true passion lies with initiating the younger generations.

“The goal is really for me to bring some of our younger board members up to speed to make them managers of the board,” says Beck. “It’s exciting for me to mentor young people to assume these positions.”

While the board has grown strong over the years, 2012 was a particularly notable year for the Vanderbilt “Y”. Last year, the location was awarded for having the highest net operating income of YMCAs in the greater New York area.

“This is an accomplishment as far as chairing and being a board member,” explains Beck, “but the pay back for us is to see the staff witnessing their success.”

He adds, as the YMCA is a nonprofit, all the funds go back to subsidizing things like childcare and sharing financially with other locations which may not be doing as well.

The Vanderbilt “Y” and its other affiliated establishments have seen some setbacks in recent years as well. The biggest, according to Beck, was the recession and subsequent drop in membership. Competition became more strenuous between the “Y” and other health clubs in the city.

“People think about the ‘Y’ as being just about health but we have so many programs for youths and teens and senior citizens,” says Beck. “Besides just being a place to workout, there are classes of all types and childcare and Vanderbilt is one of the few afterschool programs for K-6.”

Beck says the “Y” also focuses heavily on its mentorship programs.

“I was there a few weeks ago mentoring the kids on what it is to be a CFO, what my passions were and I spoke to the kids for two hours,” he says.

“What we would like our legacy to be is mentoring the youth and teens about opportunities they have,” explains Beck. “We’re very actively trying to help inner city kids—for a lot of them the only place they can go is the ‘Y’ or school, their parents just don’t have time.”

Beck adds the group’s mission is not necessarily pushing college, but teaching kids to pursue their passions and what they want to do.

The “Y” does however help students who are interested in college. Beck says he hopes to continue the mentoring program that helps college-bound kids with essays, applications, personal budgeting and making them aware of what they will face in college.

Beck also hopes the board will see a rise in membership soon.

“We’re about 16 strong right now,” he says. “We’re very focused, we’re trying to figure out what it is that people can bring to the board to help achieve its growth.”

When he’s not actively serving the youth at Vanderbilt’s YMCA—which he does for about 70 hours a week—Beck enjoys going on cruises. He just completed his 23rd cruise and is already planning the next.

“I have to go into relaxation mode in order to re-energize,” he says.

Still, kids are never far from his mind.

“My outside activity is just about kids, it’s all about kids,” he says. “Youths and teens and senior citizens…sometimes we tend to forget about our seniors.”

Beck adds: “My passion is people.”