Meet Barbara Graves, a Community Activist in Our Midst

In my effort to get to know Capitola (How Do You Get Involved in This Town?), I wanted to meet a community activist. And on Tuesday, that’s exactly what I found. She was drinking a latte at .

Barbara Graves isn’t your run-of-the-mill citizen who makes sure she votes and attends a few community events. She’s a quintessential mover-and-shaker, a doer who doesn’t sit still for a minute.

Right now, she’s focused on flood relief for the Capitola Village businesses and residents of Pacific Cove Mobile Home Park displaced by the . She helped with the Revival Party and Benefit in April and the next weekend organized a May Day Celebration, complete with a Celtic maypole, Morris Dancers, bagpipers and a treasure hunt — bringing about $5,000 into the Village.

“This is a small town, and people are extraordinarily kind and helpful,” she says.

This weekend, she’ll throw her efforts toward the big white tent that’s been set up in the village ever since the cleanup began. The city and Capitola-Soquel Chamber of Commerce rented the tent so Capitola Mercantile businesses that had to move out of their stores could continue to sell their wares. The tent will be up just until Monday.

Capitola’s flood isn’t Barbara’s first cause, not by a long shot. In fact, if she made a Capitola Activist’s Resume of her community activities, it would go on and on, with school fundraising efforts, environmental memberships, committee and board service and awards— such as 1998 Capitola Citizen of the Year, 2004 Santa Cruz County Democrat of the Year and 2007 Bob Hattoy Environment Activist Award.

Of course, at some point, Barbara was new to Capitola, like me. She moved here as a young adult, after college, and the very first thing she did in Capitola was to walk down to Soquel Creek on the morning of the Begonia Festival some 30 years ago and ask if any of the float-makers needed help tying on flowers. Sure, they did! When the Wharf to Wharf came around, she volunteered to hand out water to runners. And she just kept offering her help.

She went on to lead Capitola Walks, an advocacy group that promoted walking and biking. While she was a representative on the Regional Transportation Commission, she got a grant to start Traffic Busters in Schools to encourage students to walk and bike. That led to something called a Walking School Bus and also Pace Cars, a campaign to get drivers to pledge to drive slowly around schools.

She joined the local branch of the Sierra Club and hosted community forums. The Eco-Village Forum featured local public officials and national experts on the subject of livable community design. The Sierra Club Water Resources Forum focused on climate change impacts on local water supplies.

Barbara was also a Big Sister, worked on political campaigns and co-founded WAVE, Working to Advance the Village Environment, which fought a proposed development at the Nob Hill shopping center on Bay Avenue.

Most of the time, she advocates behind the scenes, seeing projects to fruition. “I don’t look ahead at the results,” she says. “I just stay passionate. It’s doing the right thing, to the best of your ability, and then letting go of it.”

And if you do win, as she did with WAVE — when a judge ruled in favor of a conservation easement to the center of Soquel Creek — you celebrate.

“We partied for a week straight after that one,” she said.

Speaking of parties, Barbara has started a campaign to convince the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (formerly known as Prince William and Kate) to come to Capitola when they travel to California this summer. She’s placed a three-line ad in the Times of London and sent a printed invitation to the royal couple and letters to Buckingham Palace and embassies.

Oh, and yes. That photo of Barbara holding a tea cup? That’s her as Queen Mother during a recent party at the Brittania Arms in Aptos.

I call her the Queen Mother of Capitola.