The Cardiff Sidewalk You Walk Past Has Names in It, and Now You Can Search Them

In January 1983, a Vietnam veteran named David Szumowski pressed his name into fresh concrete on Birmingham Drive. He was the first person to sign Cardiff's new sidewalk. His German shepherd, O.J., was the first animal to leave paw prints in it. Szumowski later became a San Diego Superior Court judge. He told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2012 that he didn't remember much about the day, "But I know O.J. was a pretty big German shepherd and he left behind some sizeable paw prints."

Those prints are still there on the south side of Birmingham Drive, along with hundreds of other names, drawings and dedications. Since June 2026, every one of those panels has a digital copy you can search from your phone. That copy exists because the city has a street project planned for this stretch of road. The project is fully designed but not funded, and nobody has formally decided what happens to the original concrete when it gets built.

A sidewalk Cardiff paid for itself

The Birmingham Drive sidewalk was built before the city of Encinitas existed. In the early 1980s, Cardiff was unincorporated county land, and the county refused to pay for a sidewalk on a road that was getting busier every year. It did agree to cover the engineering work.

So the Cardiff Town Council launched "Own a Piece of the Walk" by the summer of 1981. Residents, families, businesses and organizations could buy a section for $15 and personalize it. North Coast Current describes the sections as 1 foot by 5 feet. The money went toward construction, which was estimated at about $17,000 at the time. Once enough sections were sold to line a full block, buyers were invited to sign and decorate the wet concrete. The labor was donated.

The timeline shows how slowly this came together:

• Summer 1981: the campaign is underway
• 1982: a second block of sidewalk is funded through the effort
• January 1983: the first inscription
• September 1983 and 1984: more blocks are poured
• 1987: the project is finished, nearly six years after it started

When it started, Cardiff was its own unincorporated community. Cardiff, Encinitas, Leucadia and Olivenhain incorporated together as the city of Encinitas while the panels were still being poured. Bob Macfarlane, a local attorney who was active with the Town Council, explained the need to the Union-Tribune: "Up 'til then, people had to walk out in the street in some areas." He described the first pour this way:

"It was a gathering of the community. It was classic Cardiff. Just classic Cardiff."

What's written in the concrete

Some buyers just signed their names. Others drew or wrote dedications. Here are panels that local outlets have described over the years, with locations where reporters gave them:

• The first signature: David Szumowski's name and O.J.'s paw prints, January 1983
• A "Happy Days" logo: inscribed by actress Marion Ross near her home on Montgomery Avenue
• A county supervisor's section: Roger Hedgecock, then a county supervisor and later San Diego's mayor, bought a section between Newcastle and Manchester avenues
• Local institutions: MiraCosta College, the Encinitas Rotary and the San Dieguito Woman's Club all bought sections
• A business ad: Sunshine Graphics in Encinitas etched its phone number, which no longer works, next to a sailboat, a desert island, seagulls and a whale
• Family dedications: "We love Teddy Hestilow, 2 years old, 1985," with a teddy bear drawing, and Lupe Perez's tribute to her three daughters, Lupe, Martha and Chris
• A memorial: a section for Ella R. Faucher, 1889–1983, citing Psalm 23 and Deuteronomy 33:27
• Drawings: Madison and Derk DeJong's handprints with "life's a beach," and a man floating into the clouds holding a bunch of balloons

In 2021, 10News talked with people who still had a personal stake in the sidewalk. Resident Suzie Mindlin recalled her family's panel, which has their names and a soccer ball. Former shop owner Karen Veneziano described a "Sunny Skys Bikinis" panel with her children's names and a palm tree. North Coast Current photographed Cardiff residents Jay and Haruko Meinhardt visiting their own tile on Birmingham Drive that April.

Ken Harrison was Town Council president when the campaign started. In 2012 he said that "most of the newer residents in Cardiff have no idea it's there."

Finding a panel online, then on the street

On June 11, 2026, the City of Encinitas announced that the panels had been recorded with high-resolution 3D image capture. The work was a partnership between the city, Cardiff 101 Main Street and the Cardiff Town Council. The results are in a public digital archive. The city invited people to search it for family names, businesses, organizations and other inscriptions from the original campaign. The city's Birmingham Drive project page says the archive covers "hundreds of panels" but doesn't give an exact count.

The archive is especially useful at the bottom of the hill. Back in 2012, the Union-Tribune noted that weather had already worn down names near Newcastle. A panel that's hard to read in person, especially in flat midday light, may be easier to make out in the scan. Search the archive first, note the name and the stretch it's on, then walk down and find it.

Why the archive exists now

The scan was done because of the city's Birmingham Drive Complete Streets project. The plan calls for new sidewalks on both sides of Birmingham Drive from Carol View Road to San Elijo Avenue, about 2,500 linear feet. It also includes a roundabout at Newcastle Avenue, underground utility lines, rain-garden landscaping, upgraded street lighting and an eastbound bike lane.

That means rebuilding sidewalk on the exact stretch where the 1980s panels are. The design has been finished for years. The city's project page, last updated June 12, 2026, gives the status as of that date:

Whether the panels themselves will survive has come up more than once. In 2012, the Union-Tribune reported that the city had agreed to preserve the sidewalk. If street work required it, sections would be removed in one piece and put back. In 2021, early work on the streetscape project brought the question back. According to North Coast Current, Cardiff 101's executive director said there was no specific preservation plan yet. The group wanted to keep the panels from being lost and was considering moving them to a new location. That same year, 10News reported that residents had suggested cutting out and relocating slabs, or preserving them in photographs or a mural.

The 2026 archive delivers the photographic version of those ideas. The city's current page still describes the panels as a matter of ongoing coordination, with no stated plan to salvage, relocate or reinstall them.

The concrete is still on Birmingham Drive

For now, the original panels are where they've always been. When North Coast Current covered the archive launch in June, it reported that "the sidewalk remains in place as of now." As of the city's June 12 update, construction was still unfunded and the city was seeking grants, so the roundabout and new sidewalks have no start date. The decision about the panels is a separate matter that the city describes as ongoing coordination with Cardiff 101 and the Cardiff Town Council.

Former Town Council president Bob Bonde called the effort "a landmark" in 2012. Marion Ross's logo, Roger Hedgecock's section between Newcastle and Manchester, and the first set of paw prints are all still in the original concrete, a short walk west of Interstate 5.

At Fontaine Realty Group, we follow projects like the Birmingham Drive streetscape because they shape the streets our clients walk every day. If you find your family's panel in the archive, or you have a story about the 1980s pours that you'd like to share, contact us. We'd like to hear it.