This wasn’t Amelita Dolorico’s first trip to Antarctica, but it was her first time entering the Palisadian-Post Travel Tales contest with ‘Stuck in the Antarctica Ice.’ Dolorico, who has lived in Pacific Palisades since 1975, wins a night for two at the Fairmont Hotel and Bungalows in Santa Monica and dinner for two at Ray Garcia’s FIG bistro. Her article (published on page 3 in this week’s special supplement) was one of 12 entries this year, competing against other well-written stories that transport readers to six countries and four continents. ’Our first trip [to Antarctica] was in 2008 and we went to the peninsula, but this was different,’ Dolorico said about the trip she and husband Christian Fronsdal, a physics professor at UCLA, completed last month. ’My husband is a passionate sailor and wants to sail on all the important oceans, and the Southern Ocean is supposed to be the roughest in the world,’ said Dolorico, who wanted a trip that would satisfy her husband. She consulted with Shane Paquette at En Route Travel on Sunset and he came up with a luxurious but challenging trip. The ship held just 88 passengers, served by 82 crew members, and included 24-hour room service, but the seas were so rough that Dolorico wore a patch behind her ear for the entire voyage and still didn’t feel good. ‘I missed the Captain’s dinner because I was ill.’ There’s a short window of opportunity for people to visit Antarctica, usually December through mid-March, but the weather often dictates a shorter season. (This year, the McMurdo Station closed a few days after Dolorico and Fronsdal left on February 17.) While visiting the continent, passengers endured temperatures around freezing and nonstop winds. Several freelance journalists and photographers onboard hoped they could record the trip and sell the adventure to a television channel such as Discovery. ’What a [risky] investment,’ Dolorico said. ‘There is no guarantee.’ (Trips on luxury ships to Antarctica can run from $10,000 to $40,000 per person.) The retired schoolteacher said that because the trip was so magical and meant so much to her husband, she decided to write the story for the Post’s annual contest. In 1961, when she was 16, Dolorico emigrated from the Philippines to Saratoga Springs, New York, to attend Skidmore College. After graduating with a degree in biology, she worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York before moving to Los Angeles in 1972. She married and had two daughters, Jenny Llacer, who graduated from Berkeley High, and Lillian Llacer, who graduated from Palisades High as the class valedictorian in 1984. While her children were small, Dolorico stayed at home, but eventually returned to the work force after receiving her teaching credential from Mount St. Mary’s. She taught at Hoover Street Elementary and, before retiring in 2006 from LAUSD, spent four years working as a literacy coach. In 1986, Dolorico married Fronsdal in Paris. After retiring, she was a trainer at the Palisades exercise studio Curves until it closed. She also joined the UCLA Faculty Women’s Club, which offers book groups and luncheon opportunities. This past week, Dolorico enjoyed a different type of trip: visiting her daughter Lillian, son-in-law Eric Anderson and grandchildren Tenaya, 6, and Julian, 3, in Nevada City to bake a butterfly birthday cake for Tenaya. A third grandchild, Isabelle Christine, 12, lives with daughter Jenny and son-in-law Paul in Santa Clara.
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