I'm such a moron, I get the Sunday paper and I skipped right over the Citizen of the Year page and didn't realize that our friend (and neighbor), Jia, was a finalist! At least not until Alex sent me an email the he got from Jia's wife, Melissa, yesterday.
Jia Liu's life graced by his generosity
It's hard to meet Jia and not remember him. He's kind to everybody he meets, he's helpful, and he's generous 100% of the time. My mom met him once at a party last summer and her and my step-dad still talk about how nice he was and how much they enjoyed talking to him. At our Chinese New Year party last year, Jia and Alex worked away in the kitchen making food for everybody most of the evening. I actually told Jia that he should let me do it and go have fun at the party but I think he was having too much fun helping out. I don't think he could stop doing things for other people even if he tried.
You will never meet another person like Jia...he certainly deserved the nomination and the recognition!
As a side note I want to say that Jia also works for Pfizer, we're not sure if he'll be sticking around Ann Arbor but if he doesn't it'll be hard to think about him leaving. I saw Jennifer Granholm on television talking about making sure that we keep the jobs or create new ones to offset the Pfizer loss. When she spoke though, she spoke about numbers and jobs and not people. Numbers and jobs are important but people like Jia are one of a kind and extremely hard to replace.
