Unified, collaborative, close-knit. Bird Rock owns that image. The 2,000-strong neighborhood has perhaps the most active Neighborhood Watch program in La Jolla, with each street having a designated “block captain,” and the area sees substantial turnout at community meetings and events. Lately, residents have been using technology to take their collaborative efforts to an entirely new level. Close to half of the community subscribes to the Bird Rock “e-blast,” which has resulted in many success stories, from getting misplaced keys in the hands of their rightful owners to uniting families with lost pets. Bird Rock Community Council (BRCC) President Joe Parker said there was somewhat of a miracle case that happened about two months ago: a sheriff’s official in La Mesa contacted Parker to let him know a suspect had been apprehended in conjunction with a vehicle robbery in the Bird Rock area, and a number of stolen items belonging to Bird Rock residents were seized from the man, who had allegedly committed a string of robberies. Parker sent out an e-blast — basically a mass e-mail — telling residents whom to contact at the police department if they had recently been robbed. Within 45 minutes, he said, people were reaching out and about a half-dozen people were reunited with items such as vehicle GPS devices that had been stolen from them. “Most people are connected to their e-mail, so it’s an instant form of communication,” Parker said. Bird Rock resident Joe LaCava, who is also the La Jolla Community Planning Association president, steered the e-blast system in Bird Rock, and said there are about 700 people on the list and counting. This unity is nothing new for Bird Rock residents. In the past, the community has been very aggressive with old methods of collaboration. For years, there have been about 30 or 40 people who have been dedicated to publishing a monthly newsletter and hand-delivering it, La Cava said. “But something like a lost dog, you can’t put in a newsletter because it wont come around for a month. E-mail was the next logical choice,” he said, adding that the community has not let its newsletter fall to the wayside with the introduction of technological tools. “We’ve talked about going electronic,” he said, “but we agreed there is something so much more personal about having it hand-delivered.”