Letter from the Editor by Lillian Boyd

To my mother’s horror, my dad would sit me on his surfboard as a toddler and paddle along the coast of Strands Beach and Salt Creek in Dana Point. Like many novice surfers, I stood up for my first wave at Doheny with my dad helping to launch the surfboard. I remember counting each step up the stairway at Strands Beach at the end of my junior lifeguard days, wishing someone would build an elevator and never even fathoming that would someday come to fruition. I remember using two gentle fingers to feel the rigid surface of a sea star at the Ocean Institute day camps. I remember getting seasick aboard Ocean Adventures but feeling magically cured after a whale sighting.

I didn’t know it as a child, but learning the wonders of the ocean would eventually point me to marvel at the beauty, complexities, successes, failures, projects, traditions, setbacks and growth that together distinguish the community of Dana Point.

Having left South Orange County for the beginning of my career in journalism, I was given a unique perspective upon my return to Dana Point this year, as an outsider. So much has changed since my junior lifeguarding days at Strands. I want to thank the readers of Dana Point Times and the community as a whole for making me feel welcome, and for making me feel anything but an outsider. Your kindness, resourcefulness, constructive criticism and passion is what helps drive this newspaper, and I will not take that for granted.

Looking back on Dana Point’s 2018 in just the three months I’ve been with Picket Fence Media, I am in wonder of the strength and perseverance of this community. It’s my promise to you that I will do my best to continue telling important stories, establish accountability to our leaders and hold a mirror to the makeup of this city for what’s to be celebrated and what’s to be examined, as you will determine. Here’s to a new year for Dana Point.