A year ago today, The Spokesman-Review acknowledged Shannon Sullivan, a concerned mom who overcame daunting political and legal odds to lead a successful mayoral recall campaign, as the Inland Northwest’s citizen contributor for 2005.

It was a sound choice, but the process taught us that this region is blessed with an abundance of dedicated citizens who make civic contributions in myriad ways. For 2006, we split the recognition up into five categories: citizen volunteer, business, nonprofit, government and lifetime achievement. We also came up with a new label for these exemplary citizens, who come from various walks of life but share a rare devotion to community: The Uncommoners.

Lifetime achievement: Ed Tsutakawa

In 1944, on his way to Chicago to attend a wedding, Ed Tsutakawa passed through Spokane and liked what he saw. He came back and made this city his home, determined, as he would put it later to Spokesman-Review columnist Dorothy Powers, “to be part of my community. I wanted to help it in all the ways I could.”

And so he did. For more than six decades, until his death this fall, this businessman, artist, civic leader and community activist poured his vitality into Spokane.

He was essential in fostering the community’s Sister City program, which began with Nishinomiya, the Japanese city where he received most of his schooling before returning to his native Seattle for his senior year of high school. The Japanese Garden at Manito Park, Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute, the logo for Spokane’s centennial celebration in 1981, and even the time capsule buried then and opened this fall for Spokane’s 125th birthday – all these had Tsutakawa’s dutiful fingerprints on them. As did a long list of organizational leadership roles and government appointments he shouldered.

Over the years, so many political leaders tapped his energy or sought his counsel that one of them, former mayor and county commissioner Jack Geraghty dubbed Tsutakawa Spokane’s “shadow mayor.”

Tsutakawa had plenty of reason to be a bitter man. His family had to give up a successful business for less than a dime on the dollar when they, like thousands of other Japanese-Americans, were hustled off to internment camps to live under guard and behind barbed wire.

But retribution wasn’t his style. He was into building bridges, not barriers, and Spokane has been the beneficiary of his lifetime of uncommon achievement.

Ex-Mayor David Rodgers summed it up following Tsutakawa’s death, calling him “the kind of fella we could use more of.”

Citizen volunteer: Tatyana Bistrevsky

Immigrants who settle in new lands often feel in exile from their language, their customs and their roots. If the immigrant community is a large one – as is the Slavic community here with an estimated 20,000-plus people – it’s easy to remain isolated.

But mainstream communities need the talents of immigrants, and it takes “bridge people” to help these talents emerge. Tatyana Bistrevsky, a Ukrainian woman, is such a person.

As a program coordinator for Washington State University’s Spokane County Cooperative Extension, she does education and outreach, especially as it concerns nutrition. She is also paid by the Lands Council to explain fishing regulations and decontamination fish-cleaning techniques to the Slavic men and women who fish the Spokane River.

But Bistrevsky is the Uncommoner in the citizen volunteer category because she is never really off the clock when to comes to translating her culture to the mainstream – and vice versa.

“She doesn’t turn in timesheets. I have to remind her,” said Amber Waldref of the Lands Council.

The Spokane Regional Health District has relied on Bistrevsky’s volunteer work to translate and distribute important health warnings.

“She’s a 16-hour-a-day person, that’s for sure” said the health district’s Mike LaScuola.

The most successful new immigrants use their culture of origin as a strong base from which to venture out into their new world. Bistrevsky is showing the young people in her Slavic community how this can be done. It’s an uncommon gift that she proudly uses for the common good.

Business: Toby Steward and Barb Beddor

Almost a year ago, Toby Steward and Barb Beddor were energetically welcoming people to Spokane – in St. Louis.

They were in that city for the 2006 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. This month, thanks to Steward and Beddor, Spokane (with a metro area population about one-sixth of St. Louis6) will become the smallest city to host the event.

For Steward and Beddor, partners in marriage as well as business, the accomplishment has been four years in the making, but 2006 has been a 365-day whirlwind of rallying support, overseeing ticket sales, partnering with businesses and agencies, and attending to endless details involving everything from T-shirts to the event’s Web site (spokane2007.com).

Since 1991, when they came here and formed their sports-promoting business, Star USA, the couple has brought more than 20 Olympic-level events to Spokane, but the upcoming figure skating championships are their biggest coup – to date.

As many as 150,000 spectators are expected, half or more bringing their interest and cash from more than 100 miles away. Almost all hotels listed on the Web site are booked up.

This event will pay lasting dividends for Spokane’s tourism potential. National television audiences will see Spokane at center stage and get better acquainted with the name and some of its telegenic scenery. Skating fans will see us in person and many may return on their way to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.

In 2004, when Spokane was chosen as the 2007 host, a fan pumped former weightlifting champion Steward’s hand and told him, “You’re Mr. Cool!”

Indeed, Steward and Beddor of Star USA are uncommonly cool.

Nonprofit: Jan Martinez

Jan Bowes Martinez knows the way life can transform in an instant. She experienced it years ago when a rape diverted her from studying medicine. She encountered it again when a flash of inspiration helped her launch a community nonprofit.

One day in 1998 when Martinez was lamenting her inability to attract the city’s poorest women to a Bible study, she blurted, “I’ll bet they’d come if we paid them.”

That was the beginning of Christ Kitchen, a job-training program for women living in poverty in the West Central neighborhood. A handful of women began trickling in to a battered church kitchen, where they assembled dried soup mixes and listened to the words that had healed Martinez’s own pain.

Soon, thanks to Martinez’s remarkable energy and compassion, the kitchen was attracting former meth addicts, sexual abuse survivors and homeless women. They came for the $30 they’d earn, but they stayed for the community they found.

During 2006, Christ Kitchen grew dramatically. It moved into a former Taco Time building on North Monroe. It now stays open six days a week and stocks an inventory of approximately 4,600 food mixes and gifts with names like Benevolent Brownies and Blessed Bean Soup. As the program’s director, Martinez soon will help launch a multimillion-dollar capital campaign to construct an adjoining building for its companion program, Christ Clinic.

Those she’s helped agree. This former psychotherapist is one amazing woman.

Government: Sandi Bloem

When Sandi Bloem ran for mayor of Coeur d’Alene in 2001, she collected three out of every four votes. Four years later, she duplicated that feat in winning re-election. The Lake City obviously likes a leader who follows through on campaign rhetoric.

As a candidate five years ago, she said: “My strength is building consensus and seeing things get done. That drives me.”

So what’s gotten done?

Well, downtown has snapped out its slump with a modern skyline of condominiums and businesses. Exciting, mixed-used developments have sprung up along former mill sites on the Spokane River.

North Idaho College, the University of Idaho and Lewis-Clark State College have teamed up to form a higher education corridor that will help plant the seeds for an even healthier future in the region.

In 2006, a city that has long been trolling for a community center landed a whopper in the Kroc Community Center, which will be built near Ramsey Park. And a $15 million upgrade to the wastewater plant was completed.

Bloem didn’t single-handedly produce these stunning developments, but she took the lead in bringing people together to work toward common goals. Bloem’s lack of ego has made her the perfect mayor for Coeur d’Alene during a time of rapid changes.

During her first campaign for mayor, she said, “I am truly passionate about Coeur d’Alene.”

Her ability to turn that enthusiasm into results makes her an easy choice as the region’s top government leader in 2006.