Rotary Club of Torrey Pines (La Jolla)

About Our Club

Founded in 1964, the Rotary Club of Torrey Pines is a small but effective club located north of San Diego near the campus of the University of California San Diego.  A major hallmark of this club is the relaxed fellowship enjoyed by all the members, both at Wednesday lunch meetings and a number of evening social events shared with spouses and friends.

Perhaps unique among Rotary Clubs, this club has within it a Wine Club that offers a variety of wines for members to sample with their lunch each week. Several members have travelled to France and been awarded the prestigious designation as Chevaliers du Vin in Burgandy. 

Like all Rotary Clubs, Torrey Pines is part of the worldwide fellowship of Rotary International, with over 1.2 million members in hundreds of countries and territories around the globe.  The signature service project of RI since the 1980s and continuing today is the eradication of polio throughout the world. This dread disease has continued to cripple and kill children in many countries, even decades after North America was declared polio-free.  Innoculating millions of children in developing countries has been a major undertaking in recent years.  We are now very close to our goal of a polio-free world but must continue to pursue this disease in the few remaining countries where it exists.  Rotary has played a leadership role in this effort for over 20 years, in cooperation with the World Health Organization, the US Center for Disease Control, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and others. 

Torrey Pines Rotary is also active in other service projects, both locally and internationally.  Hosting Ambassadorial Scholars from other countries who come to UCSD for graduate study, collecting and distributing toys for needy families, assisting the City Park staff at their nursery operation, building homes and a medical clinic for destitute residents of Tijuana are a few examples.

Visitors are always welcome at our Wednesday lunch meetings at the Rock Bottom Restaurant in La Jolla, just one block west of the I-5 freeway.  Join us for a glass of wine and a tasty lunch.  We gather shortly before noon, start the meeting and lunch at 12:10 and are done by 1:30.  Most meetings feature a speaker who presents a program of local or international interest.

 

Meeting Highlights


Extraordinary Programs - As an adaptation to the restrictions placed upon us by the COVID pandemic, the Torrey Pines Rotary Club has developed a very successful and popular "hybrid model" of meetings - where we meet on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays on Zoom, and in-person on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays. On those rare months when there is a 5th Wednesday, we are "dark."
 
The zoom format has been a blessing for our members and our Club because many of our members are elderly, or are caring for imuno-sensitive family members, and accessing our weekly meetings via zoom is their only opportunity to participate in weekly meetings. Additionally, zoom eliminates geographic restrictions, and allows us to invite speakers, and have programs, from anywhere in the world. During the past couple of years, we have enjoyed fascinating presentations from the Aviation Museum in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico, a malaria researcher from Tanzania, and even from the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C.
 
Our hybrid zoom format has become so popular among our members that we have adopted it as our standard meeting format, and will continue to reach out speakers from around the US and the world to bring our members the most interesting, intriguing and fascinating presentations.

The Wine Club - they say "In Vino Veritas", In wine there is truth... here is where it all comes together when assigned members bring a variety of wines each week to share and discuss.

 

100% Paul Harris Fellows

The Torrey Pines (La Jolla) Rotary Club has always ranked among the top clubs in the District in per-capita giving to The Rotary Foundation; we ranked first in the District twice, with a highest giving of $374 per member in a Rotary Year, and ranked in the top 1% in the world.
 
The Club has 5 charter members of the Paul Harris Society of District 5340, recognizing Rotarians who give one Paul Harris Fellowship per year, and has had 5 Major Donors, recognizing people with 10 Paul Harris Fellowships or more.
 
Twice the Club achieved the 100% Paul Harris Fellows recognition, as ALL of the Club members had been recognized as Paul Harris Fellows. This distinguished achievement gives the Club the honor of being listed on the "100 Percent Paul Harris Fellow Clubs" plaque in the main hall of Rotary's headquarters in Evanston, Illinois. See the picture of the plaque on the right.