Allan Young

College Friend

“I’ve got ten people working for me right now who are going to SMC.”

“We love camping and whitewater rafting up in Oregon,” says Allan Young of himself and his wife, Sally, whom he met at SMC. “Our last trip we took 47 kids and friends along with us.” Any outing with the Youngs will likely be a major production. It’s just a natural result of the importance of people—children in particular—in their lives.

“I’ve been at the Santa Monica Boys and Girls Club 20-some years now,” says Allan. “I love going to work every day and I love this community. It’s a 20-hour a day job,” he continues, “that takes about a million dollars a year to care for about 2,200 children. And if I don’t have some kind of fundraising event going on, Sally sure will.”

Allan’s time at SMC was notable—in addition to his academic excellence—for the two sports he played: badminton and football. “I was on the State Champion badminton team,” he recalls. “And I guess combining that with football was a little unusual.” But it was the people he found that remain his fondest impression of the college. “It’s the teachers who make it all work,” he says. “They were always flexible with my professional schedule, challenging and stimulating. And I loved the class sizes at SMC. It’s a large school with just the right-sized classes in a huge variety of subjects. I’d be back there studying right now,” he continues, “if I didn’t have so much paperwork.”

Many of Allan’s people are enrolled in SMC to become better qualified to work with kids. “And that’s a decision on their part we always support,” he says. “If our people want to go to SMC, we’ll find a way to pay for their tuition and books.”

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