For five residents of a Sacramento rehab center, this Memorial Day represents a personal battle won. Of 1185 registered participants, five members of the recently formed running and walking program One Step Forward completed their first race as a team this morning at the “No Excuses” 5k run at William Land Park. The members were recruited just over two months ago from Sacramento’s Clean & Sober program, dedicated to helping disadvantaged people overcome drug and alcoholic addictions. For the past six weeks, One Step Forward trained twice a week in preparation for the race. One Step Forward was formed by local organizer Makiko Yamashita, who wanted to provide a sense of community, accomp

Meet 34-year-old local entrepreneur Makiko Yamashita from Kobe, Japan. Makiko has been living in the United States since 1999 and is freshly graduated from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago. Traveling, business smarts and networking have inspired her to incorporate her exotic fruit wine business, Radee Wine, Inc. She is not only the first person to introduce the wine from Thailand to the United States and is the only distributor in the country—she has brought the exotic potion right here to Sacramento. Yamashita incorporated Radee in August. However, she said she just received her first shipment of the products and began operating just over two weeks