Several Cloverdale and Geyserville business leaders are pursuing successful careers today that are totally different from their original ones.
Fashion shows, event modeling and an appearance in Hot Boat Magazine once had Tranquillity Massage and Spa owner Stephanie Reitzell dreaming of a modeling career until her priorities changed.
Karie Kelder, owner of Cloverdale’s Dahlia & Sage Community Market since 2019, was a sheet metal worker for 30 years.
Three years ago, Ashlyn McLean left a budding real estate career to open Encore Dance Theatre.
Daniel Frankston was a civil litigation attorney for 35 years before opening Cloverdale Wellness dispensary in 2021. His wife and co-owner, Eleanor, a former Los Angeles Rams cheerleader, has been a wellness practitioner for more than 30 years.
Tim McDonald completed his theological and ministerial studies following a career in human resources leadership at top national and international corporations, including Paramount Pictures. Since 2019, he has been the Parish Priest at Cloverdale’s Good Shepherd Episcopal Church.
Four other local business owners who have made the leap into entirely new careers are Nikki Baxes, Jim Rickards, Diana Schraner and Mary Louise Bucher.
Punk drummer to ranch owner
Not many of Baxes’ horseback trail ride customers know she was a drummer in an all-girl punk rock band before co-owning the Ranch at Lake Sonoma with her husband.
As a child, she loved listening to her older brother play drums and wanted to be just like him. When she was five, she started placing pots and pans on the floor, and banging on them with wooden spoons.
Baxesplayed piano and flute in the school band, but she still gravitated toward percussion. A
She was about 17, and drumming with a punk band at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, when she was recruited by the singer of an all-girl band called Chix-Pack. She ended up touring with the group for the next 10 years.
“We played the Vans Warped Tour, so we opened up for the Real McKenzies and Joan Jett,” she said. “We also played for Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas, and numerous skateboarding events at places like Skate Lab in Los Angeles and Thrasher Warehouse in San Francisco. We even did a roller derby tour, playing roller derbies from state to state.”
She stopped playing full-time once she became a mother in 2007.
“I realized the lifestyle of late nights and many days away was not going to work with being a mom,” she said, before adding, “but when the day comes that both my kids are adults and moved out — well, that’s another story.”
Sometimes, Baxes performs with her dad’s band, the Railroad Express, and recently sat in with SoloRio for one song when they performed during the Ranch at Lake Sonoma’s Sunset Music Series.
Critical care nurse to winery owner
Rickards grew up wanting to be a farmer and at 11, he applied for a Homestead Act land grant, a law that allowed citizens to claim 160 acres of public land for living and farming. The application was denied and he told to reapply when he turned 18.
Rickards, 79, spent his first three years after high school assisting with autopsies in a hospital laboratory before heading to Vietnam.
“I volunteered for the Hospital Corps, then volunteered to get combat training before serving a two-year tour with the Marine Corps in Vietnam,” he said.
After returning stateside in 1969, Rickards began a 50-year career as a critical care nurse in Sonoma County and his farming dream began to take shape, too. He bought a cow, moved to Petaluma and began leasing property to run cattle until the 1976 drought forced him to sell.
That same year, he found a 60-acre ranch with an old vineyard on Chianti Road in Cloverdale.
Asked how he could afford the property at that time, Rickards said, “I couldn’t. It was a distressed property because it supposedly had no water. Only after I found water and dug a well, did it become viable for farming and later grapes.”
For years, he tended the property’s Zinfandel vines from 1908 and he planted new vines himself.
He also built his family home on the property.
Already established as one of the area’s foremost grape growers, Rickards and his wife, Eliza, opened J. Rickards Winery in 2005.
Today, the family-run winery crafts 16 red wines and six white wines, ranging from $30 to $64, that have won numerous awards including seven from this year’s Sonoma County Harvest Fair.
Painter-turned cannabis business owners
Schraner, 57, moved with her parents from California to Switzerland in 1980.
When it came time to think about college, she wanted no part of it.
“I had learned three languages, graduated Swiss high school and made a ton of great friends. At 17, I just wanted to be a painter,” she said.
link