Apr 28, 2022
Lynn and Virgil Nelson have had 17 different people live in their home over the past several years. They don’t run a boarding house. They are home sharers, people who offer unused space to those who need a place to stay.
“It’s not a weird idea, it’s a proven model,” Lynn says, citing 47 home-share organizations across the U.S. “We’ve had the personal experience of how enriching it can be.”
The Nelsons have always been ready to help others. Virgil is a retired American Baptist pastor and the couple traveled the world as missionaries. When they settled in Roseville seven years ago to be closer to grandchildren, they saw the need for affordable housing and realized they could make a difference.
Mar 28, 2022
Tracy Tayama Brady lives by a maxim from one of her favorite writers, Elizabeth Gilbert: “Art is not one magical thing—it’s the act of creating.”
Though Tayama (who uses her maiden name as an artist) has made art since she can remember, it’s only now with two kids and a career as a child psychologist that she’s in a place to understand what it means to be an artist.
Mar 28, 2022
As she lists her proudest achievement, Semarhy Quiñones-Soto doesn’t mention her Ph.D. in microbiology or her published coloring book depicting diverse women in science, tech, engineering and math. She doesn’t even cite her job as a biological sciences lecturer at Sacramento State.
Instead, she returns to when she was a teenager and her mother allowed her into a lab at the University of Puerto Rico and let the youngster clean the autoclave—an expensive sterilization machine.
Mar 28, 2022
For the first time in a long while, Lili Bach feels like she’s in the right place.
After spending 14 years on the East Coast as a union organizer, the Napa native is back on her home turf as United Way California Capital Region’s new labor liaison director.
“Activism runs in my blood,” says Bach, a Downtown resident. “I love doing work with labor and changing lives on the frontlines.”
Mar 28, 2022
When people see a bonsai plant, they’re amazed and want to touch it to see if it’s real,” Lucy Sakaishi-Judd says. “They’re flabbergasted by how small it is. The viewing of it is to see the beauty.”
Sakaishi-Judd is president of the Sacramento and Sierra bonsai clubs and a member of the American Bonsai Association, Sacramento. She is also a member of Bonsai Sekiyukai and Satsuki Aikokai, which specialize in Japanese Azaleas. She oversees one of the most impressive bonsai collections in California. Her Rocklin property is a labyrinth of greenery, with hundreds of bonsai plants crowded on workbenches, shelves and swiveling displays.
