I was born in Santa Barbara, and raised in Carpinteria until the age of 10. My family then moved east to New Jersey to live near my Dad’s family. I attended middle school and high school in New Jersey, graduating from Mercer County Community College in New Jersey, then graduated from Delaware Valley University in Pennsylvania.

I obtained my degree in Ornamental Horticulture, and Bachelor’s of Science in Landscape Contracting and Management, graduating December, 2015. After graduating, I moved back to Carpinteria to join my family, who had returned to the west coast after thirteen years in New Jersey. I secured a job shortly after moving back at The Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens, and continue there at this time.

THE CJ5

Soon after arriving in NJ in 2002, we obtained a Willys CJ-5 from a gentleman who was giving it away for FREE. My uncle Jimmy trailered the CJ-5, later to be called ‘Dutch’, to our house. My Dad tinkered with it at times but it mostly sat in back of the barn untouched for about 6 years.

We eventually sold the Farm and moved down the street to the house my grandfather built. When I turned 16 and knew I wanted to have Dutch running for my senior year of high school. My Dad and I got to work restoring the Willys to get it running. The summer of 2006 we had a visit from Carpinteria’s Brad Stein Family where Jeremy and Eric Stein had come east to look at colleges for Eric. Both Eric and Jeremy helped push Dutch to its new spot in the backyard where ‘Operation Dutch’ had begun.

July of 2010, a month after my high school graduation, the jeep was running and road worthy! Over the course of the next 5 years Dutch saw everything from local east coast car shows, to the forests of the New Jersey pine barrens.

In June of 2015 Dutch was shipped out to Carpinteria on an enclosed trailer, unaware of his new destination. Now that both Dutch and I are here in Carpinteria, neither one of us will ever need to shovel snow again!