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ON THE JOB

Eye for Beauty

A former dancer returns to the family business to continue exploring his creative side. BY TIM PORTER

Lucas Priolo with his mother, Susan, and wife, Julie.

AT 34, LUCAS PRIOLO has already retired once. So it goes for a talented young man who left his Fairfax home as a teenager to become a principal dancer with the Texas Ballet Theater in Fort Worth and returned to work in the 20-year-old family business, Sofia Jewelry. How did you learn to design jewelry? From my father, and he learned from his father, so I am third generation. What did your dad teach you? He instilled in me the passion for creating something from zero and turning it into a beautiful thing. What was his important lesson? That you don’t have to know everything. What are you most passionate about? Right now, my favorite thing is fabrication, working with the actual metal itself. I like taking a sheet of metal and forging, hammering and shaping it into something that never went through any other Lucas Priolo, Jeweler, Sofia Jewelry, 80 Throckmorton Avenue, Mill Valley process other than what I did to it with my bare hands. What personal characteristics does a jeweler need? You have to follow your mind and your heart wherever it leads. Sometimes an idea evolves in a different way and as it forms you say, “Oh, man, that is awesome.” And then you have a whole new piece of jewelry that you didn’t see coming at all. I put out some pieces like that on my first day back at the store and they sold hours later. How did that feel? Fantastic. Such a high. It’s the high of performing. Do you miss dancing? Not yet. You’re still in great shape. Well, it’s only two months. Any overlap between being a ballet dancer and being a jeweler? This may sound cheesy, but in ballet I was a partner and I made women look beautiful with me behind the scenes. Now, I do that again by making something beautiful that makes them feel beautiful. In a way, I still get to take care of my partners. What’s it like to be back home? I could not be happier. Are you kidding? There’s no way to even compare it. Tell us about your family. My wife was a dancer, too. We danced all around the world. We did everything together. She was my Juliet. We have a 7-year-old boy, Jordan, and a 5-year-old girl, Olivia. Is one of them a fourth-generation jeweler? Jordan’s an artist. He’ll go wherever that art takes him. And Olivia? She’s a ballerina. She loves to dance and be a princess. We’ve got a happy life right now. m

ON THE JOB

Surf and Turf

On land and on the water, this local park ranger loves his job. BY TIM PORTER

XAVIER “ZAVE” SIMON has been keeping people safe for 30 years. A Stinson Beach kid who surfed his way through high school, he became a teenage lifeguard at his hometown beach and today, as part of his job as a supervisory ranger, manages the National Park Service rangers who patrol the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and still oversees Stinson’s lifeguard squad. What makes a good lifeguard? A lot of ocean experience. For me that just came from surfing and hanging out at the beach. That’s what we did in high school — go surf and hang out. With that you learn your water skills, like a sailor. You’re a Marin guy? I am. I lived in Stinson until junior high, then moved to Bolinas and then back to Stinson. I went to Bolinas-Stinson School — to every grade they had — and then to Tam High from 1980 to ’84. Always lived in Xavier Simon, ranger, National Park Service, nps.gov West Marin? Except for when I went to UC Santa Barbara and after college when I was supervisory lifeguard. I spent those winters traveling. I’d surf in Indonesia. I did it every winter from 1992 to 2000, when my daughter was born. Sounds sweet. It was. Still surf? I do, mostly at Stinson and Bolinas. Those are my spots. What’s the job like? I became a ranger in 2003. Now I’m more of a supervisor and it’s mostly administrative work — time sheets, scheduling, juggling all those things. I still go out and do the fun stuff, though, like cliff escues and water rescues. Cliff rescues? The Headlands are just notorious for the cliffs. People are always trying to find shortcuts or that special spot and they get somewhere where they can’t be and they lock up. Panic? Yes, they’re there with their sandals or their flip-flops and weren’t expecting to be on a cliff ace. Boat rescues? This time of year there’s a lot. Summer’s almost over and people are taking out old Cindy Lou for the first time and they run adrift off ocky Point or Duxbury Reef. You’re armed? Law enforcement is part of our job. What’s the biggest challenge there? The worse behavior on the Marin side is the drinking, the alcohol consumption at the beaches. And, of course, traffic. What do you like about your job? There’s so much, but mostly it’s being out there with the people. It’s working on those busy days at Stinson or up here at Battery Spencer and hearing people say, “Hey, thanks for being here today.” What kind of stuff do they ask you? No. 1 is “How do I get your job?” No. 2 is probably “How do I get to Muir Woods?” m