Members
JIMMY
I was born in the Philippines and spent my pre-school years on the islands of Samar and Luzon. When I was five years old my mother, two sisters and I followed my father to Pittsburg, California. Sargeant Culang had been assigned to Camp Stoneman. One and half years later, father was assigned to Ryukyu Command and the family was off to Okinawa for three years. Back to the states for the end of grade four. Jimmy, Sr retired at the Presidio of San Francisco after two consecutive tours of duty. He was slated to do a tour with the Advisory Command, Republic of Korea, but this assignment was nixed by a sympathetic Sargeant Major. Final elementary years through high school were spent in San Francisco. Then to Chicago for college.
Judith and I moved into to Wolf Creek Lodge, full-time, June 30th, 2016, the day I retired. Our unit was the first available resale. We purchased it September, 2014 and generally occupied it one weekend a month while I was still working in Richmond, California. I was running a credit union at the time.
Prior to my job at the credit union, I worked for the Social Security Administration. First, in San Francisco. Then, Richmond. Before that I was a primary school teacher with the Chicago Urban Teacher Corp.
I started training in Shotokan karate in 1968 with the Japan Karate Association of Northern Illinois under Sugiyama sensei. Upon returning to the Bay Area, I studied Wado Ryu under Ajari sensei at the Berkeley Dojo where I became an assistant instructor. I still do kata. Before covid, I did tai chi at the Zone, the local gym.
I enjoy cooking and sometimes offer up Filipino dishes at pot lucks and common meals. Though a clumsy musician, I practice piano and the ukulele. I select and stream the Wednesday night movies in the common house. I am a member of the maintenance team, marketing and membership team, and the common meals team. For a spell, I served on the finance and legal team.
“The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.” wrote Omar Khayyam. Look out your windows and you find pensive peace amongst the tall trees. Open your door and walk to the common house and join the commotion of community. That’s what makes Wolf Creek Lodge a nice place to live.
MATT and KELLY
My partner Kelly and I have lived at Wolf Creek Lodge for a few years now. Both of us moved to California from the Midwest and have never looked back.
We believe in living a healthy lifestyle. Our morning routine consists of either qigong or yoga followed by a one hour walk on the Wolf Creek Trail. Some other activities we take part in include weight lifting, hiking, cross country skiing, and kayaking. What we eat is equally important to physical activity so we follow an organic, gluten free, primarily plant based diet.
When not engaged in outdoor activities I enjoy a few longtime hobbies. 
Painting with acrylics is something I do daily. This includes the painting of miniatures, work on canvas, and larger projects at Wolf Creek Lodge. I also enjoy board, video, and role playing games.
My contributions to the workload in our community includes time spent on the spa team, and assisting the landscaping and maintenance team when asked. I recently joined the art team and will help with gallery installations.
Wolf Creek Lodge is the home Kelly and I have been looking for where members are active and enjoy participating in community building. Most importantly we are happy to be part of a group that cares for the earth and are responsible stewards dedicated to sustaining our physical environment.
GAYLE
My husband Richard and I moved to Wolf Creek Lodge after many years of living in Southern California and were among the early group of residents who arrived in October of 2012. We were attracted by the Cohousing lifestyle of knowing our neighbors and sharing in the care and management of the property together. In addition, we were ready to leave the large metropolitan area and live in historic Grass Valley with its small town environment and slower pace of life.
I retired from working in the News Research Library of the Orange County Register newspaper. After spending years working in front of a computer screen, being able to work on the Landscape Team in the gardens at Wolf Creek Lodge and learn from more experienced gardeners has been a lot of fun and good exercise for me!
I also enjoy being part of the Membership Team, welcoming and hosting folks who are interested in finding out about our community. Cooking common meals with neighbors and taking part in community potlucks and social gatherings has been another enjoyable part of living at Wolf Creek Lodge.
When it comes to vacation time, we look forward to taking road trips to visit our large family spread across the country. Those travels give us opportunities to tour parks and botanical gardens along the way.
JUDITH
I am Judith Van Herik
My husband, Jimmy and I, bought our home at Wolf Creek Lodge in 2014 and moved in, finally, in June of 2016.
We lived together in San Pablo in the Bay Area since 2002, for me. Jimmy had been there much longer. Before I moved to California to marry Jim in 2002 I had lived in: Rochester, Minnesota, where I was born and kind of grew up, East London and Johannesburg, South Africa where I was an astonished exchange student, the South Side of Chicago where I happily got four degrees at The University of Chicago (political science, education, Religion and Psychological Sciences in the Divinity School). Then for almost 25 years I was on the faculty of Penn State University in State College, PA. For a couple of those years I had fellowships at the Harvard Divinity School and in Freiburg, West Germany. I have traveled extensively, though not recently!
Since 2001 I have been a certified massage therapist with much continuing education. I am still certified but my practice is paused because of Covid.
My current interests are predictable from my history: reading, learning, wondering.
At Wolf Creek Lodge I have been loyal to the weekly yoga class, the monthly book group, the Process Team which tries valiantly to oversee how decisions are made by consensus and how people feel about that, and most importantly, friendships.
In the end it’s all about people here, as always. I am deeply grateful to the people who take care of our amazing gardens and our ever-changing building needs. I try to help them as I can and clean the laundry room, etc. I could go on but this seems like plenty
NORMA and STEVE
Norma and Steve made the decision to move to Wolf Creek Lodge shortly before Covid-19 upended everyone’s lives. Living with support from your neighbors turns out to be a good strategy for coping with a worldwide pandemic.
Norma was raised in New York but is an enthusiastic migrant to California. She is retired now but practiced dentistry for 35 years in a public health clinic in Oakland. Steve grew up in northern California and worked as an energy consultant before retiring. They now have family scattered from California to Oregon to Vermont – wonderful reasons to travel the continent in their pop-up camper.
Hiking, swimming, backpacking are favorite activities. Grass Valley is a great jumping-off point for outdoor adventures. Norma took up piano as an adult, studies language, and loves gardening. Steve volunteers as a board member for CalWild, a nonprofit supporting wilderness areas in California. He is an avid reader and interested in world and American history. He also tinkers with gadgets and enjoys supporting neighbors with their electronic challenges.
Both find Wolf Creek Lodge to be an engaging and supportive neighborhood community – a great blend of private home, friendly neighbors, and supportive “family.”
LYNDA
A Seattle native, I came to California for college and never left. I spent 30+ years living and raising my children in Berkeley as well as enjoying a career in non-profit management before retiring to Healdsburg in Sonoma County.
I moved to Wolf Creek Lodge in June 2018 to be closer to my sister who lives in Grass Valley and have enjoyed introducing my three children, grandchildren and friends to my new community. I enjoy hiking, reading, volunteering with the Nevada City Rotary and AAUW as well as enjoying the many cultural opportunities offered in the area.
I’m an inveterate traveler who has filled her home with pictures and objects from throughout the world with a focus on Africa where I lived for six months in 2006 and have visited and volunteered on multiple occasions.
At Wolf Creek Lodge, I keep myself busy working on the FireWise, Welfare, Membership & Management Teams, taking Minutes every other month at the General Meeting and participating in Common Meals and other social activities at the Lodge.
JO
It is hard to imagine this coming October 2022 we will celebrate ten years of building completion and moving into Wolf Creek Lodge. The decision that I made a long time ago to sell my house and move into Cohousing has certainly been the best that I made for myself. I am British born. No family in this country. My three sons live quite a distance in several different States. I have been able to make close friends within our Wolf Creek Lodge community. I was a Registered Nurse for many years so my medical background has helped in many different scenarios to assist the community. In Cohousing we work in teams to make decisions, maintain, service and to take care of our investment.
I have been part of the Maintenance Team since before moving in. We look after the building. Everything from elevator inspections to heating and air conditioning servicing. Also, I’m a member of the Common House Management Team. We make decisions about sitting room refurbishment, cleaning, stocking the laundry room , maintenance of the washers etc. As I can sew I was able to save us considerable number of dollars by making the bedspreads for the three guest rooms, and multiple covers for cushions and pillows for the sitting room and dining area. There are many jobs to do to keep us up and running.
For fun we have Movies, Social time, coffee hour and potlucks. Just to name a few. I have found the niche needed for me to stay home . For many years I have traveled the world. Lived in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. I am now quite content with our day to day living of making sure we thrive. The sunsets are wonderful to behold from our balcony’s. I’m lucky to be able to sit and watch the story unfold.
CLAIRE
My husband and I have lived at Wolf Creek Lodge since January 2013. We relocated from Truckee, CA – where we had retired 10 years previously from near Boston, MA.
In past lives I was a bank clerk, a registered nurse, a stay at home mom when my two children were little, and then the owner and sole member of staff of a kitchen design and remodeling showroom.
I am learning to play the violin as my Covid project. I love all things outdoors – especially hiking the many local trails, as well as more adventurous hikes in the nearby mountains. In wintertime snowshoeing is a half hour drive from Wolf Creek Lodge.
I have been very involved with the life at Wolf Creek Lodge. In early days I was part of the Construction Interface team, and for many years I worked hard on the Landscape and Open Space. I was the HOA bookkeeper. Currently, I am a member of the Marketing and Membership Team with a special role responding to enquiries.
SUE
I grew up in London. After graduating from university in England, I taught at international high schools in Switzerland, Holland and Italy. I met my American engineer husband in Italy. We married in England and continued to move within Europe for his work, living mostly in Italy and Germany. We settled eventually in Silicon Valley, with our two children. We lived for over forty years in the South Bay, where my husband continued his engineering and I worked as a travel agent.
After we both retired, we had no reason to stay in the Bay Area. Our daughter and son-in-law by this time were living in Nevada City with their two children and they persuaded us to move to the area. Our daughter suggested we check out co-housing and we immediately fell in love with Wolf Creek Lodge and moved here in 2014.
Of course, it was sad to leave our friends of so many years, but we realized that WCL was the perfect situation, close to our family, yet with a built-in community of our own. It was easy to become involved with the work and fun on the Lodge. I am on the Membership Team and the Common House Management Team. I am part of our book group and the morning “coffee” group, and I am one of the go-to minutes takers for meetings.
Our co-housing social life changed dramatically during Covid, of course, without the common meals and other gatherings. Meetings were all conducted by Zoom. Yet there was still a strong sense of community, and chance encounters on the way to pick up the mail or drop off the trash allowed for some much-needed conversation and laughter.
Even compared to the Bay Area, the GrassValley/Nevada City area is filled with the cultural outlets I enjoy. We have two music organizations that put on concerts throughout the year. We have opera “Live from the Met” at one of our local cinemas and “National Theatre Live” from London.
I walk with my daughter regularly, but even though I am now widowed, she never has to worry about my feeling lonely or bored!
BOB B.
I’m fortunate to be retired. My career included stints with the State of California, Wells Fargo Bank and United Behavioral Health. After 30 years in the Bay Area, I “came home” to Grass Valley, a place I’ve visited often in the past, in 2013.
I enjoy outdoor activities, photography, and travel. My travels have included rafting trips and a photography trip to Ireland. I enjoy being active in our local camera club, which is recognized as one of Northern California’s most active and talented clubs.
One of the things I enjoy about Nevada County is the small population. This allows people to get involved in the local community and have a real impact. Since being here, I have been a Master Gardener, a volunteer at the local hospital, and a regular attendee at local water district and city council meetings. My experience at Wolf Creek Lodge has been helpful in my current role as a Grass Valley City Council Member.
JACQUE
I am Jacque, 
a born adventurer who originated in Cleveland, Ohio (hence my environmentalism) and moved across the continent via Route 66 at a young age. I had an idyllic youth growing up in Redondo Beach, sailing, canoeing, and boogie boarding. Moved to northern California where I earned a degree/ teachers’ credential in Speech Pathology/Special Education. Married/raised two wonderful daughters in rural Placer County while pursuing a career with Placer County Office of Education. This is where I became enchanted with the Sierra Nevada with backpacking, kayaking, white water rafting and snowshoe hiking escapades.
Since retiring, I have enjoyed a new adventure in the form of cohousing. I love the Grass Valley/Nevada City locale for it’s rich cultural and historical life along with outdoor accessibility. I admire the philosophy of sustainable housing and how it relates to both structural and sociological community development.
Aging is possibly our last adventure in life. Having witnessed the death and declining health of my parents and the heartrending care provided by hospice has made me mindful of how important a supportive community can be in providing a dignified closure to this part of our adventure.
In the meantime, I’m off “adventuring” wherever and whenever. I recently traveled to northern Italy where the hiking is wonderful. I volunteer at Hospitality House and the nearby State Parks. I am a member of the Marketing and Process Teams at Wolf Creek Lodge.
The adventure goes on!!
PAM
I’m originally a Connecticut Yankee but have long been a California dreamer, interested in group living. So I made my move to Wolf Creek Lodge in 2013 and have never looked back.
While I’m retired now, I’ve mostly been a writer/editor and have been involved in social worker type things (Meals on Wheels, for example). My checkered career has taught me skills I use daily in cohousing, such as being a reed in the current, not a board.
My interests include things of a spiritual nature, the mysteries of animal, especially human, behavior, ecology (especially of the oceans); and my two favorite places, other than Wolf Creek Lodge, are the library and the pool.
At Wolf Creek Lodge I do chores, participate in meetings, socialize and help folks out when needed.
It’s a good life.
RICHARD
I have been a member of Wolf Creek Lodge since 2008 and have lived at Wolf Creek Lodge with my wife Gayle since the building was completed in 2012, moving from Orange County,California.
I was trained as a civil engineer, served as an Army officer in Berlin, and was a registered professional engineer in four states. My career assignments have included laboratory coal analysis, testing and inspection of materials for commercial and industrial building construction projects, design work on foreign and domestic petroleum pipeline projects, managing remedial investigations and feasibility studies of hazardous waste sites, developing industrial waste minimization plans, injury and Illness prevention plans, and spill prevention countermeasure and control plans, conducting environmental assessments of contaminated properties, and writing user guides for wireless communications devices In computers.
My interests include learning about how the world works at both the macro and micro level, human behavior, geology, history, technology, and science. I like to drive, listen to music, and take cross-country road trips in our Tesla Model S, collect and hand polish rocks and fossils, work out, travel (I have traveled to 14 European countries, Australia, Central and South America, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Pakistan, Jamaica, and the American Virgin Islands), tend and propagate succulent plants and miniature African violets, and visit and dine with family and friends. I am an early adopter of new technology, being among the first to buy an iPhone, Apple Watch, and a battery electric vehicle.
At Wolf Creek Lodge, I serve on the maintenance team, electronic communications team, the art subteam of the common house management team, and the library team. Until recently, I participated on the landscaping team. I have served on several ad hoc teams, including the
Donations for Common House team, Patio Environment Review team, Solar Voltaic team, EV Charging Network team, and the Power Outage Response team. I routinely help residents set up, maintain, and troubleshoot problems with their electronic devices, and replace light bulbs, batteries, and toilet flush seals. I also distribute to each household packets of sink and drain cleaner, change the common house furnace filters every quarter, monitor and maintain the four air purifiers in the common house, and arrange for and oversee the annual inspection and cleanout of wastewater drain lines and the maintenance of overhead garage doors. My specialty is deep cleaning in the common house kitchen. And, I keep the community printer supplied with paper and toner cartridges.
BUTCH & VIRGINIA
Video of Virginia
Butch grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and joined the Air Force out of high school. He married and had 2 children and then returned to the Bay Area to attend college and obtain his elementary teaching credential. After many other endeavors including running a mountain resort and owning a gas station and tire shop in Modoc County, Butch moved to Nevada City to teach special education at an alternative high school.
Virginia grew up in southern California and Sacramento, attended college in Long Beach, married and had 2 children. She moved to Nevada City in 1967 and worked at a Quaker boarding high school for many years.
Butch and Virginia met after the death of their spouses and were married in 1998. Volunteering for Music in the Mountains, hiking, riding bikes as often as possible and travel fill much of their time in addition to the work necessary when one lives on 15 acres.
We have chosen to downsize and simplify our lives in our retirement years and are enjoying being active participants in developing the Wolf Creek Lodge community.
SUZANNE
Suzanne has been a member of Wolf Creek Lodge since its inception in 2006. She was actively involved in the formation of the community and served on the Process Team and the Marketing Team. She is currently a member of the Firewise Team which works to keep our community safe from wildfires. Suzanne’s column, Letter From 104, appears every month in the Wolf Creek Lodge Newsletter.
Suzanne is a native Californian who grew up amid fruit and walnut trees on her parents’ farm in Brentwood. In the mid ‘60s, she graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in English and a Secondary Teaching Credential. After teaching English in Oakland for three years, she dropped out to live the hippy life in Berkeley. This phase culminated in buying a backpack and traveling throughout Europe for four months. Back home again, she earned an MS degree in Education and a Reading Specialist Credential, after which she began teaching in Newark, California and earned an MA degree in Transpersonal Psychology.
Suzanne’s interests include transpersonal and spiritual studies and experiential work, travel, personal writing, being in nature, and gathering together with friends.
She is currently working with the hybrid publisher, SheWrites, and anticipates the publication of her memoir, Watching for Dragonflies: A Caregiver’s Transformative Journey, in June of 2023.
Click here to access Suzanne’s book on Amazon.
Other writings:
The Making of Senior Cohousing: The Story of Wolf Creek Lodge (pdf)
written by Suzanne in Communities Magazine.
Read the article on Wolf Creek Lodge that features Suzanne in the LA Times
Read Suzanne’s travel blog: “New Life in the Yucatan”
See Suzanne’s website Transformative Caregiving
DELEAUA
Both Dick and Deleaua were born and raised in Santa Barbara where they met and married. They moved to San Luis Obispo where Dick attended California State Polytechnic University in Electronic Engineering and where they started their family of two daughters.
After graduation they moved to Palo Alto. Dick went to work for Hewlett Packard as an engineer and then as a manager, did graduate work at Stanford and got an MBA from Santa Clara University while Deleaua attended San Jose State University to get her B.S. degree in Occupational Therapy.
After ten years they moved to Petaluma and lived on 100 acres they built into a sheep ranch while Dick worked as a manufacturing manager and Deleaua worked as a manager for therapy services in a rehabilitation hospital. Both daughters married and there are three grandkids. One daughter lives in Vancouver, WA and the other lives in Grass Valley.
Twenty years later, in a quest for a simpler lifestyle, they moved to Auburn where Deleaua continued working while Dick pursued semi retirement working in the off-road 4 wheel drive business.
They both decided to stop working and look for the ideal place to spend their retirement years where they could enjoying activities such as 4 wheeling, kayaking, biking, hiking, wine tasting, traveling and attending the great cultural events available in Nevada County. They feel Wolf Creek Lodge is the ideal setting to age-in-place in a supportive community close to shopping and activities while still providing a balance of social and private living.
Dick passed away in 2018.
VICKI
I was born and raised in Chicago but moved to the Bay Area in ‘75 where I stayed until Cohousing came calling. I joined in 2010 and moved in with the first wave in 2012. I love the blend of community and privacy and found it solved one of the biggest challenges I had trying to create a supportive community in my Bay Area home – having all the responsibility. Nothing beats sharing!
After a very technical career as an actuary and retirement consultant, I discovered my real passion of psychology and have been busy making up for lost time. Needless to say, living in community is the perfect playground for study. However, my biggest area of study is me, myself and I, and I’m very engrossed with learning about myself through the Enneagram. I’m a Social One so, if you’re into the Enneagram, you just learned lots more about me. I also love nature and wildlife and one of my favorite volunteer gigs was raptor rehab and release.
I love the participation aspect of Cohousing and have been on several different teams over the years, even circling back for a redo. I stay clear of teams of a more technical nature though. This is the beauty of sharing responsibilities and doing more what you love. Challenges come and go but I find it all part of the learning adventure! I’m a better me for living here and I think the same may be true for many others.
And, oh yes, I’m the one with a dog – Sienna, my retired racing greyhound. She’s soon to be joined by Cady, but there’s room for plenty more!
JANET
I was born and raised in Vallejo, California… a third generation Californian. Although my families on both sides were staunch Christians, they were also very liberal. In fact the relatives on my father’s side were run off their farm in the Midwest by pro-slavery vigilantes, due to their strong anti-slavery position. And my grandfather, who was a fundamentalist preacher-man, had a friendship with a black preacher and invited him to preach at his church here in California, in the early 1900s, a risky thing to do at that time.
I was strongly influenced by the values of my church… the “love your neighbor” part.
My family was musical, and my mother taught me how to play the piano. I participated in church and high School choirs, and much later became a part of the local Music in the Mountains chorus, eventually becoming a soloist.
A year after graduating from college, in 1963, I joined the Peace corps, and worked in 2 orphanages in Turkey, a life-changing experience. Following the Peace corps I traveled through Europe, hitchhiking bicycling, for 4 months, on $2 a day.
I got a master’s degree in clinical social work but did not work much in the field due mainly to my introversion.
I adopted two children, as a single parent. In order to be home with them I got low paying jobs in nonprofit facilities such as John Woolman School (where Virginia and I worked together).
I bought fixer upper houses throughout my life, doing the work myself, and with others, to the point where I was able to own outright a house in Grass Valley.
Later in life I realized I was attracted to women as well as men; and (long story short) Kate and I went through a religious marriage ceremony (this was before same-sex marriages were legal) under the care of the Grass Valley Friends Meeting. Our marriage ended after 8 years, and we went our separate ways for a while, reconnecting as friends during the next 33 years. We both have Zen Buddhism practices, different ones; and that has helped this relationship a lot!
I took up art in my fifties.
I’ve arrived at Wolf Creek Lodge pretty banged up physically, much to my disappointment. But I’m getting better and hope to contribute more and more to this lovely community, as time and healing go on.