In this week's story, we learn from Castro Rotary's President-Elect, Joe Adkins, about the upcoming SF Rotary Needle Walk and how combining some of his passions for serving others developed this project.  
"Last February, our club had a visioning session where we spent 4 or 5 hours talking about everything we want our club to be, and do. Only a few months prior, in December, Mayor Ed Lee unexpectedly passed away. By February, 8 candidates had entered the race.  I envisioned our club being one of service, first and foremost, and also a club that was recognized by city leaders. I am also quite passionate about homelessness. So, at the visioning session I thought "why not combine service, homelessness, and city leaders by inviting folks to do the cleanup work with us?" We invited all 8 candidates for mayor, and both candidates for District 8 Supervisor. Of those 10, four candidates joined us for an hour in Dolores park. During each candidate's hour, I asked them a series of questions about homelessness, and how they would try to solve this huge problem if they were elected. 
For this year's walk, we are moving to a different location. I've talked to the director of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services, and he gave me a stretch of about three blocks where the city has received a large number of complaints about needles. Mayor Breed was very interested in joining us. She wanted to join us last year, but couldn't due to scheduling conflicts. Unfortunately, yesterday I was notified by the Mayor's office that she has scheduling conflicts for this year's walk as well. I've invited District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney (our route is in district 6), and I think that he will be joining us."