Jennifer Owen | John Herman | Tom Finch By Craig Smith
JENNIFER OWEN Asked what she likes about Napa, Jennifer Owen had a ready answer. “Topography,” she said. “That the hills are blue in the evening and the sky is pink. The color of the vineyards in different seasons. The two mountain ranges that form the Valley feel like a great big hug. I just did a Table Rock hike. It’s beautiful here.”
“Place” has always been important to Jennifer. She grew up in Seattle. “The weather was hard. In the 90s, summer were like, eight days long.” After high school graduation, she moved to Orange County to attend Chapman University, majoring in theater. “I had dreams of fame and fortune.” After graduating, she moved to LA, got an agent and a manager, and landed a six-word part in the TV series “The West Wing.” “I was a big deal. I even had a trailer,” she said, laughing as she did. She has an acting resume filled with “a lot of bad films and plays.” Ultimately though, she hated LA. “I was depressed. To me, it felt dirty, had no identity, and the traffic…” One positive takeaway was that she realized, “It’s important to love where you live.”
After a year back in Seattle, Obama was elected President, and Jennifer moved to DC. She landed a job with a government contractor, and found in DC, a place she loved. “All the distinct neighborhoods. Walkability. Free museums. Power. Proximity to the ocean.” Love led her to Charlottesville, Virginia where she and her then-boyfriend opened Virginia’s fourth hard cidery (It’s still going strong fourteen years later.) The boyfriend, unfortunately, decided to marry Jennifer’s friend, which meant another big change.
She got a job working remotely, and began visiting cities that she wanted to check out. In the eighth month of that journey, she was staying in Sebastopol, and while there, came to Napa for wine tasting. It was practically with a wine glass to her lips that she thought, “I need to move here.” Finding a place to live – the perfect place, actually – virtually fell into her lap. Next came getting a job, and in her words, she “bullied” her way into Fontanella Family Winery. She loved it, and was there for seven and a half years. Still, after a while, she found that she had a desire for experiencing more of what Napa had to offer than the wine industry allowed.
In 2015, she grudgingly attended a party, planning on staying for an hour only. Leaving, she looked for her dog and found her sitting in a guy’s lap. “I’d seen him when I walked in, but didn’t pay attention.” Now she did, and she and Dustin, a winemaker for Joel Gott, eventually married. They have a six-year-old daughter, Marley, and that same now thirteen-year-old matchmaker Schnoodle, Burt Reynolds, who used to accompany Jennifer to her job at Fontanella Family Winery has become a Joel Gott wine dog.
After cold calling a lot of people for career advice, she was hired by the City of Napa two and a half years ago, where she serves with the Economic Development department.
“While I’m grateful for the introduction to Napa that my time in the wine industry gave me, today I get to be a part of conversations that will impact Napa’s future. When Burt and I walk through downtown, I look around at our beautiful city and think, ‘Who are you now?’ I can’t imagine leaving here. Place is everything to me, and this one is perfect.”
JOHN HERMAN
For a guy who grew up without a clue of what he wanted to do, John Herman’s life has worked out pretty darn well. “I may have a bad day every once in a while, but it’s nothing. This is a dream life.”
John was born at the Glendale Memorial Hospital in Southern California. When his dad’s job took the family to Northern California, John went with them, moving to Napa on his 18th birthday. In his words, “I had no direction.” He spent two years at the junior college, studying and playing a lot of one-on-one volleyball. He worked as a dishwasher at De La Salle Winery. After a few years, he moved on to Peter’s Rentals, which offered him more opportunity. John has a great work ethic, which people noticed. A regular customer asked him if he’d like to be a carpenter, and without really knowing what all a carpenter did, he said, “Sure.” That turned into a 34-year career. He’s built houses, schools, churches and warehouses, both in Napa and San Francisco. For ten years of that time, he was a foreman.
Carpentry is a hard job, but John loved it. “I treated it like an athletic event. I didn’t walk, I ran. Plus, there was the satisfaction of a job well done. I got to stand back and look at whatever I just helped build, and it felt great.”
Throughout the years, John continued playing volleyball, but the years of construction caught up with his body and he had to stop. He bought a road bicycle and later a mountain bike, started riding at Skyline Park, and fell in love with riding. “Bicycling is how I socialize. I like to be doing something physical.”
At age 55, he retired from construction, and started to relax. “That lasted four months,” he said. “Trader Joe’s looked like a fun place to work, plus I could wear shorts and tee shirts.” He’s been on the staff at TJs for ten years.
A couple of years ago, a regular customer, the wife of the head coach for the National Interscholastic Cycling Association suggested he speak with him about coaching. The Rebobs, a group of a dozen or so riders, practice at Skyline a couple times a week, and John became an assistant coach. “I thought I was ‘all that’ until I started riding with 13 and 14-year-olds.” He was once asked to ride with the coach’s daughter, and John asked if he should lead her up the trail. The coach just smiled. “She left me in the dust, beat me to the top by eight seconds. I’ve started to do leg work to put new muscle around the old stuff.”
John tells the kids, “Have fun, don’t take it too seriously, and be safe. I’m out there to have fun, too.” He’s now in his second year of coaching.
John’s two sons are both with CAL FIRE. He loves Napa. “It’s a beautiful place to ride bikes, and TJs is a great place to work.” John’s life has had rough patches, but he’s been very involved in the Napa recovery community for years, and appreciates all that they have done to support him. “Make sure you thank them in this article. They are amazing people.”
TOM FINCH Tom Finch grew up working for the family business. His grandparents opened a deli in Little Italy in San Diego in 1950. They were proud immigrant Americans (they only allowed English to be spoken at home) and hardworking entrepreneurs. Many of the deli’s customers were fisherman, and Tom’s grandfather began to make pasta for them, serving it at a table he set up outside. “Mama,” Tom’s grandmother, supplied recipes and the food side of the business took off. The business name was changed to Filippi’s Pizza Grotto and Cash and Carry Italian Foods. Tom’s first job, at age ten, was stocking the shelves inside the deli, for which he was paid a silver dollar. He loved it, but what really motivated him was seeing people enjoy a good home cooked meal. From the beginning, his goal was to one day be in the kitchen, flipping pizzas.
“Freddy Storniolo , my uncle, taught me the business. He always had a feather duster in his back pocket and a pencil behind his ear. He was amazing at what he did, and I used to follow him around all day,” said Tom. Within a year, Tom reached his goal, and was flipping pizzas.
By the time he was 12, Tom went to work for one of his uncles at the Pacific Beach location. He still stocked shelves and washed dishes, but when he had finished with those chores, he got to make pizzas. “I was a happy kid.” By the time he was 17, he was managing a Filippi’s in Lemon Grove. He spent the next 15 years with Filippi’s. He was passionate about the food business, and wanted to learn as much as he could. When he turned 28, he decided to go to culinary school in San Francisco. His family was surprised, but supportive. After graduation, he was at Four Seasons when Marriott recruited him.
Tom worked at several Marriotts as Executive Chef, working his way up to Food and Beverage Director, before being asked to join the team that opened the new Napa hotel in 1994. He loved his career with Marriott, and gained a thorough understanding of the restaurant business. He moved his family here, and was later assigned to San Ramon. The economy was in a slump, the Marriott was cutting back, and Tom offered his resignation in August of 2004. Marriott begged him to stay to the end of the year, and then until April of the following year. “I’m on record for the longest resignation in Marriott history,” he said.
Tom talked with his uncles at a family business meeting, and said he wanted to open his own restaurant. His uncles asked him two questions: “Do you have the money? Do you remember how to make meatballs?”
Filippi’s is a family run business in every sense of the word, still using some of his grandmother’s recipes and offering a family atmosphere and pricing. Today, his oldest son, Michael, is the restaurant manager (son Matthew is at Robert Mondavi.)
Business has been very good at Filippi’s. “I invest in Napa, and Napa has invested in me,” said Tom, adding that this has been a great place to raise his sons. In return, Filippi’s has been very generous to the community. “If I’m asked to do something and kids are involved, I’m in.
“I like it here. My friends are here and I am involved in the community. If I go to the grocery store, I allow myself a little extra time so I can visit with friends. This year we will celebrate 20 years of our family feeding yours.”
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