Meeting President Bill Clinton was one of the great honors of my life.
The photograph was taken at a cathedral benefit where I was auctioned off as a nutrition and fitness coach to raise money — an unusual thing to volunteer for, and one I'd do again in a heartbeat, because of what the money was for.
President Clinton has been unusually serious about childhood obesity. Through the Clinton Foundation and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation — the foundation's partnership with the American Heart Association — he pushed the beverage industry to pull full-calorie sodas out of American schools and got real nutrition standards into school cafeterias. That is not a talking point; it changed what tens of millions of kids eat every day.
Supporting that work, in whatever small way I can, remains something I care about deeply. Kids do not choose the food environment they are handed. Adults do.
And then he met my boys
When President Clinton came to San Diego, my sons Parker and Owen got to meet him — suits on, hair combed, standing on either side of a former President of the United States.
They will have that photograph their whole lives. Whatever else happens, Parker and Owen met President Bill Clinton, and they were treated with real warmth and attention by a man who had every reason to be somewhere else.
It's also why the Alliance for a Healthier Generation still matters so much to me. My work is with adults in midlife now, but the childhood-obesity fight is upstream of all of it — help a kid before the weight becomes their identity, and you change the entire arc.
Photo: Jorge Cruise with President Bill Clinton.
