Darci Arthur:
CLASS OF 1987
Monte Vista High SchoolClass of 1987
Spring valley, CA
San Diego State UniversityClass of 1991
San diego, CA
Carrollton High SchoolClass of 1987
Carrollton, OH
Gulliver PreparatoryClass of 1987
Miami, FL
Miami Palmetto High SchoolClass of 1987
Miami, FL
Darci's Story
(Updated 4/25/2011)
I joined Classmates.com to reconnect with old friends and specifically my old friend Stephie J. from Miami.
Below is a quick "catch up" for those who knew me in Miami, Florida before 1984 (Stephanie, Mathew, Karla, John, Joanna, etc.), for those who knew me in Ohio 1984-1986 (Diane H., Kay, Heidi, Sonja, Mark, Brenda, Vanessa, etc.) and those from San Diego, California 1986 and after (Stacey T., Mike A., Christie D., Travis, William B...
In the middle of my 9th grade yr. at Palmetto, my mother moved us from Miami, Florida to Carrollton, Ohio. It was 1984. So I am not a Palmetto graduate although many of my friends are.
Carrollton looked a lot like the charming town of Hazard (Dukes of Hazard) - right down to the gazebo in the center of the town square. The folks were friendly and at first mighty curious about the girl from Miami. I made many wonderful friends in my short 1 1/2 years there.
Unfortunately, about a year and a half after we arrived, my mother had a nervous breakdown (my Ohio friends may recall this). After a protracted legal process my father gained custody of me and he and I moved in with my paternal grandmother in San Diego, California at the age of 16.
I can only describe her home as a "mini-mansion." It was a beautiful 5-bedroom, rambling red-brick home set on an acre on top of Mt. Helix in La Mesa, CA. anchored by a rose garden on the South end and a citrus orchard on the North end with a 180 degree view of both the El Cajon Valley (in front) and Spring Valley (behind). I felt as though I'd stepped into a Horatio Alger story, you know, "rags to riches."
In San Diego I attended Monte Vista High School where I made friends with (Christine N., Christi D., William B., Stacy T., & Michael D.), dated a sweet guy in band (T.B.), & later another great guy who played football (M.A.).
I graduated in '87 and headed to Europe for three months with my father. We visited the usual places (the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain) as well as the Mediterranean (Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, North Africa (Egypt), Scandinavia (Finland, Norway, Sweden)and Russia (under Gorbachev).
Returning to the States, I attended San Diego State for 1-2 years. I quit in frustration (like many of my classmates) after three semesters of fighting to get classes. (My last semester I had signed up for six classes & only got one - by "crashing" it & begging the instructor to let me in. SDSU was/is way overcrowded!)
After leaving State, I attended Grossmont Community College part-time while working as an administrative assistant (everything from a glorified receptionist to a secretary to an officer manager).
Then, in my early 20s, (circa 1993) I dated a very sweet, easy-going guy, who surprisingly turned out to be a millionaire. He owned a three story yacht, a three story home in San Diego (Coronado) and a three bedroom home on a golf course in Kaua'i. (He'd made his money selling his CAD software company to Autodesk in '89.) And he was one of the sweetest guys I'd ever met. We'd dated only a few months, when he told me he missed the soft green of the tropics so was returning to Kauai. Then he asked me to come with him. It was actually a hard decision: I was attached to my life in San Diego: my home, job and friends. But after he left, our first month's phone bill topped $450 (he joked the phone company should send *us* a xmas card for being great customers) and I agreed to come out "for a visit" (i.e. a trial). I ended up staying 10 years.
For the first eight months, I shared his Kiahuna Golf Village home on the South Shore of Kauai (Poipu). I got over my initial homesickness and embraced island life which turned out to be really pretty amazing. The people are as warm as the weather, and I formed several life-long friendships there.
A short eight months later my boyfriend went bankrupt. How do you do that when you're a multi-millionaire? I'm not sure. All I can say is he'd made some bad investments and some equally bad business decisions over the years and it finally caught up with him - a brilliant software code writer he was, a good money manager he wasn't. So we sold the house on the golf course, paid off the mortgage, and moved into a four bdrm rental. He traded his red Porsche for a baby blue Geo Metro, and went back to work as a computer programmer, looking to hit paydirt again, if he could. I continued working for Wyland Galleries (Wyland paints sea life and whale murals) and later on managed the office and residence of a battered women's shelter for the YWCA for 6 1/2 yrs.
Three years after my boyfriend went bankrupt, we broke up amicably, he left the islands to pursue his fortune on the mainland and I stayed another seven, working for the Y, for a total of ten years in Paradise. It was an amazing ride...
For fun I "went beach" with my girlfriends Rachel, Cheri, Karla, Julie, Denny & Nancy. Cheri, Julie and I paddled out of the Kai'ola Canoe (Outrigger) Club for 2 yrs. Some of my fondest memories are of paddling with that team. For instance, one day we were paddling down the river from Kai'ol...Expand for more
a's canoe house and toward Nawiliwili harbor and bay, when the water underneath us erupted. After some initial alarm, we realized the disturbance wasn't anything harmful (we do have some large fish with pointy teeth in da islands), it was only a school of large eagle rays (3 ft. across) frolicking among our outriggers. They accompanied us out into the bay, and played around us for well over a quarter hour before moving off into deep water. It was truly magical. But eagle rays werenât the only wild life I encountered on da aina (the island).
I swam with the occasional Monk seal or Spinner dolphin (and under a few waterfalls - not quite as romantic as in books, you get *pounded* and I still have floaters in my left eye that can drive me crazy on a sunny day but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything). I also kayaked the Na Pali coastline, hiked tropical trails dotted with passion fruit trees, camped beside the surf and hung out "talkin' story plenny kine" with my friends and others. I was never happier in my life.
But just because I lived on a small island 3000 miles out in the Pacific didn't mean I was cut off from the rest of the world. I still traveled - I flew home to California every couple years to visit family (and shop - we didn't have even a Kmart until 2000, or a Starbucks âtil 2005, lol). And in 2000 my best friend Rachel and I completed an 8-state Southwest Road Trip in one month - grueling but rewarding (except for the bug infested - did I mention *infested* - teepee in Taos, NM, lol). We hiked under the giant Redwoods of Eureka, CA, and along the rim of the Grand Canyon, cruised Lake Tahoeâs waters and casinos, camped among the red rock arches and stacks of Moab, Zion, and Arches National Park of Utah, watched Sigfried and Roy train tigers in Vegas, and visited friends in Arizona and in the Rocky Mountains of Vale and Denver, CO.
Later in 2002 I journeyed to China for three weeks with my friends Cheri, Karla, Denise and our families. We climbed the Great Wall (no small feat: the steps are 18 inches tall but only 5 inches deep, so you feel more like you're climbing a stone ladder) and sailed down the Yangtze River (ours was one of the last cruises before they damned the river).
I was really blessed to have had all these amazing experiences. But after a while I began to miss my family so decided to move back to California. I arrived in the San Fransicso Bay Area just before New Year's 2003. And here I remain, minutes away from my cousins and aunt, two hours from my sister and eight from my father in San Diego.
I decided since I was back on the mainland I'd finish my postponed college degree so I enrolled in Mills College, (a small, all women liberal arts college in the Bay Area). It's sister colleges include Wellesley and Vassar (before it went co-ed) so it was significantly more challenging than San Diego State University and Kauai Community College from which I'd earned my AA. Besides the difference in workload, I discovered it had been a LOT easier to write papers and cram all night when I was "traditional college age" but coffee, coffee and coffee helped me earn my BA in Anthropology and Sociology in '05 (along with several new gray hairs).
To celebrate obtaining my long-delayed degree, my best friend Rachel took me to Australia for ten days with her family where I saw all the usual sights including âRoos, and got to pet a koala - its coat felt like steel wool beneath my fingertips.
Afterwards, I returned to the Bay Area and went to work for Mills College where I've been able to dedicate myself to the education and advancement of women, with a focus on those who are economically challenged.
I figured my traveling days were pretty much behind me, but in 2007 my father surprised me with a trip to Antarctica where we had more of an adventure than intended. But that truly is another story. I can tell you it involved a life/death medical emergency, followed by a hurricane, a power loss, a crash into the continent of Antarctica, another life/death medical emergency (neither of these involved my father or me) and a mad 36 hr. dash across some of the most violent water on the planet (the Drake Passage between Antarctica and Argentina) - topped off with a side trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina where the ancient 4-man elevator in our hotel fell one story with my father, me and the bellman in it to land 18 inches below the subfloor of the hotel's basement. Fortunately, we only suffered fright and a strong compulsion to take the stairs - all 8 stories worth - the remainder of our stay. It was a simply unbelievable trip - unbelievable that we came back in one piece, with all fingers, toes and belongings intact - and some really great photos!
I'm writing the account up now for publishing in a magazine (as part of a graduate magazine writing class I'm in). Next year we plan to spend a few weeks in New Zealand - I expect it will be boring and uneventful - a real vacation ;-)
Well, that pretty much brings us to present. I'd love to hear from any of my old friends, so contact me here when you have time.
Aloha,
Darci.
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