Cheree Edwards An active member of the Board of Realtors, President of the Ojai Rotary Club, and the Music Festival Women’s Committee as well as the Ojai Valley Community Hospital Guild. Austin Widger | awidger@ojaivalleynews.com
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t’s quicker to list the Ojai Valley organizations that Cheree Edwards has not volunteered for. Since moving to Ojai around 1988 – and even more so in the last 15 years – she has become an integral part of the community. Edwards met her husband Don working in a local restaurant in Ventura in the early 1980s. They fell in love with Ojai coming up to hike and enjoy the warm weather. She said: “We got married up here on Sespe, actually in Rose Valley at Howard Creek. Then we took a 78-mile backpacking honeymoon from the headwaters of the Sespe all the way into Fillmore. So it was pretty spectacular. It definitely toughened me up early on.”
Edwards is active with the Ojai Valley Board of Realtors, and was honored with Realtor of the Year a few years back. She is also involved in a great deal of volunteer work in the community, including Ojai Rotary Club, Ojai Valley Community Hospital Guild, Ojai Music Festival Women’s Committee, and more.
“For me it was just natural for us to get involved.”
Some of Edwards’ most memorable work with the Rotary Club – which she is currently president of – came at the local schools. She helped form the new Interact Club at the school last year. “I was invited to the Rotary Club and I just fell in love with it immediately. It’s just a great group of people. Their motto is ‘service over self,’ and just a really incredible group of people that do a lot of good over and over. It was and is inspiring. So I joined Rotary about 10 years ago, and I became president last year. And there’s just so many avenues of service that you can pursue in that club, whether it’s youth or international or just community-based grants, scholarships. During my presidency, I was really proud to be part of the steering committee that built the Matilija Pavilion.”
After moving around a bit, the two decided to come back up to Ojai and plant their roots as their daughters grew up. While Don built a real estate business, Edwards worked as a corporate trainer and area manager at a Fortune 500 company for about 25 years. This job had her travel quite a bit. She said: “As the kids got older and our daughter was finishing high school, I finally decided to just come back to Ojai in a sense. Then in my work time here I joined onto his real estate business. My father was a broker too, so they had been tugging at me for a long time to join. I finally did, and I wish I had done it sooner, because I love it. I love working with my husband and we’ve continued on. It’s probably been the last 15 years that I’ve been in real estate with him. It’s just a really gratifying career with helping people find their homes. It’s usually the biggest transaction a person makes, and I’m really proud to work with him and facilitate that.”
Her work with the OVCH Guild happened organically. One of her twin daughters had an unfortunate and difficult bout with leukemia when she was younger. She was in remission for many years, but succumbed to a brain tumor at 13. She said: “So for me it was just natural for us to get involved with the hospital guild, and just continue to support. Even though we had to go out of town, we went down to Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles for treatments. We still had quite a lifeline with our doctors and physicians here. So that was kind of my tug toward continuing to support the guild and getting involved.” Edwards is also president of the Ojai Music Festival Women’s Festival Committee, and is excited to bring back the event in person in September for its 75th year. She will also help bring back the Ojai Holiday Home Tour for its 25th anniversary this year. “We’re really looking forward to being able to do something in person again, as everybody in town is,” she said. She said: “I’ve gotten active with Rotary on a district level, so I’m helping with other clubs. I’m an assistant governor. Rotary is kind of like a family. They call it family of Rotary. It’s pretty hard not to imagine being in it forever. We’ve got some members that have been in the club 50 years. We’ve got a lot of awesome new younger members that have a great energy that they’re bringing. Several under 40, and doing good things in town. So I don’t anticipate any changes. Same with the music festival. I’m so involved with just leading as president, but I hope to have more time to work on the BRAVO committee, which brings the music into the schools.”
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