Sergio & JoAnn: Laughs & Great Stories from Fox Island, WA

(This blog is part travelogue, part advice on traveling with a dog, part discovery of what’s on the minds of Americans, Canadians and other nationalities, part commentary, and other musings.)

Where to begin with Sergio and JoAnn McLin Ortiz?

How about my bellyache? A good bellyache – the kind you get from laughing so hard. I visited them in their gorgeous Fox Island house outside Gig Harbor, Wash., and their hospitality was so warm and wonderful. But first, some back story. . .

JoAnn and I worked together at Santa Monica College – I for 25 years, she for 10 years. She was the executive director of the SMC Foundation and chief development officer. I was the public information officer. I got a sense of her salty Texas humor, but at the time our relationship was mostly professional.

Fast forward to 2019. She retired in 2010, I in 2012. I’m so glad I reached out to her on my trip from SoCal to Canada and spent a night with them.

JoAnn and Sergio met in the mid-1960s at Pepperdine University when it was in South Central L.A. before the campus moved to Malibu. She was a chaste (I think) small Texas town Church of Christ girl. He was an adventurous Nicaraguan immigrant who grew up in South Central. They were both journalism majors and worked together on the award-winning campus’ student publications.

“He was a rogue,” JoAnn says in her still-Texas drawl. “I accused him of taking all these blondes to Tijuana for immoral purposes.”

He worked with her because she was editor of the college’s magazine. He was a talented photojournalist (in fact, at the age of 13, he captured an image of President Kennedy coming out of the ocean water in Santa Monica that he sold to UPI and was published by newspapers all over the world).

After graduation, they went their own way – Sergio, who was working for the L.A. Herald-Examiner and waiting for the draft to snare him, ended up enlisting and serving as a combat photographer for the U.S. Marine Corps. JoAnn earned her master’s and doctorate degrees and worked in higher ed in many capacities.

(Sergio Ortiz with some of his award-winning photos in background.)

Twenty years later, he called her up out of the blue. His nephew wanted to get into Pepperdine, could she help him get an interview?

Ok, she told him, but it’s going to cost you lunch. “What was I thinking? I heard he was an alcoholic and lived a wild life. And I was dating a UCLA professor at the time. But when I got to the restaurant I thought, ‘He’s kinda cute,’ and I told him ‘I’ll have a martini and one of those cigarettes.’” She thought she’d show him she had “grown up" a bit from her early Pepperdine years. To her surprise she discovered, on her second martini, that he wasn’t drinking at all and had been busy editing a slick magazine in San Diego.

“Then he took me to Mexico for immoral purposes and I delivered,” she laughed.

(Newlyweds)

 They were married in 1992 in Hong Kong and have been together ever since. Sergio worked for numerous publications and as an editor for Recommend magazine, and JoAnn has held many administrative posts in higher education. Sergio has traveled the world as a writer and photographer, and the couple has been to many countries together.

It’s a long story how they ended up in Fox Island, but the short version is they have for many years loved Washington, and found their perfect home in 2012. They’ve become involved in their community in many ways and have gotten to know many of the island residents. Every year, they invite a bunch of people over to celebrate Sergio’s birthday, and the editor of Fox Island Living magazine, a former Miss Washington, comes over and sings Puccini opera arias for him. It’s part of the charm of island living. Neither admits to missing Southern California at all.