The race for Costa Mesa City Council

Jennifer Kho

COSTA MESA -- As a Boy Scout, City Council candidate Dan Worthington

said he gained values that have stayed with him all his life -- a sense

of responsibility to himself and others, experience at teamwork and an

awareness of the “great outdoors.”

When he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1958 during his senior year

in college, Worthington said he felt well-prepared, because “there was

nothing the military exposed me to that Boy Scouts hadn’t already.”

Worthington said he carried those values with him beyond the military

into the work force, first as a representative for Munson Sporting Goods

and later as the head of his own business, Worthington Reunion

Photographers.

“I have a strong [sentiment] developed in Boy Scouts and it is: ‘I

have taken from the community for a great amount of my life and now it is

time to put back into the community what I possibly can,”’ he said. “My

service in the sanitation district and other organizations have been

attempts to do that. My service in City Council would be the apex of my

career in community service.”

Worthington said that sense of responsibility and service -- which led

him to serve on the sanitation district, volunteer at a number of

community service organizations and run for City Council -- also pushed

him to start his own business.

“I liked the idea of having my own business, because when you have

your own business you are responsible for all the decisions,” he said.

“When you work for someone else, the ideas you want to inject into the

business are not always accepted and consequently, some of the rewards

you might want to enjoy are reduced.

“I can’t push off decisions to someone else, and that decision-making

experience should be valuable in holding a City Council position. I am

the person responsible for the welfare of my employees and making sure

they are gainfully employed.”

Part of the reason Worthington and his wife chose to start a high

school reunion photography business is because they “saw a need for the

service,” but the other part is purely sentimental -- they met at their

high school reunion.

“A friend of both of ours reintroduced us at our 25th high school

reunion,” he said. “Four years later we were married and, as a result,

decided we liked the idea of being in the reunion business. I consider

myself a sentimental person. We hark back to that moment, when we met at

the reunion, many times and we’ve worked together for 17 years. People ask how we work together and the answer is, ‘very carefully.”’