Now, the adventure will come in the form of Oregon, as she will be leaving the area she calls home in the upcoming days. Leaders, the program and project manager for the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association (BKBIA), is moving to Bend, Oregon on Aug. 6 due to personal circumstances.
She has been living in Long Beach for nearly 50 years, but she embraces what she calls a big change in her life, and described how on the one hand she is sad to leave, but on the other, she is also excited about the little dose of adventure that is coming her way.
“It’s bittersweet, you know?” Leaders said. “But I feel like it’s the right decision right now. I’m not depressed about it, I’m happy about it. It’s moving forward.”
Leaders is leaving the area due to a health issue her partner has, going on to say that she is choosing to concentrate on living a life at a slower pace, allowing more financial freedom, as well.
They both agreed to move up north to concentrate on the things that are really important, she said.
[aesop_image imgwidth=”300px” img=”http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Screen-Shot-2015-07-24-at-12.13.26-PM.png” align=”left” lightbox=”on” caption=”Handling one of many responsibilities in her position, Krista Leaders, BKBIA program and project manager, cleans a sign in the Long Beach community.” captionposition=”left”] “That has caused us to focus on her living a quality life, and we felt it was time to, rather than just work to live, really concentrate on her health and her being able to take care of herself, and for her to do that it just plain and simple came down to the point that we just couldn’t afford to stay here and have her take care of herself,” Leaders said.
As far as that decision goes, those close to Leaders have been supportive about the change— specifically, her parents.
“They’re all for it. Both my mom and dad live out of state, and once they understood the reasoning, they were like ‘you only live once,'” she said. “They both have left Long Beach and left to their new lives and places and have said it’s the best thing they ever did.”
“Change is good,” she added. It’s especially good if that place comes in the form of Bend, “a beautiful place,” according to Leaders, and one that Blair Cohn, executive director of the BKBIA, said is her “favorite place on Earth.”
“There’s a great spirit up there with a whole bunch of people,” she said. “It’s very entrepreneurial. Everybody is just about living and having fun, and work is not the priority. It’s a nice balance between living life and work.”
Life and work tend to blend in together with her position as project manager for the BKBIA, a position that Leaders described as “the world’s longest job description,” as she is constantly meeting with business owners, putting on events, removing graffiti, trimming trees and picking up trash, among other responsibilities, to make sure the community of Bixby Knolls is clean and taken care of.
She called it the definitive “outside-the-office” kind of job, appropriate for someone often identified as an adventurer. Just ask Cohn, who had a part in hiring Leaders to the position she is in. He praises her work ethic and personality.
“She would consider herself a reserved, ‘watch-from-behind-the- scenes’ type of person. That’s true. But I would also say that Krista is logical, methodical, concerned, caring, conscientious and hard working,” Cohn said. “She has a rare work ethic shared by few these days. Always on time, works late. Concerned about getting things done and doing them the right way. She may be quiet, but her bag of tricks is overflowing.”
Referring to a popular character in mystery fiction, Cohn added, “I call her my ‘Nancy Drew.'”
[aesop_image imgwidth=”500px” img=”http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Screen-Shot-2015-07-24-at-12.14.42-PM.png” align=”center” lightbox=”on” caption=”Krista Leaders, program and project manager of the BKBIA, is pictured working on art during a First Fridays Art Walk event. She said First Fridays originated with her former stained-glass design shop, Chroma Glass Designs, and a nearby coffee shop.” captionposition=”center”] A project that resonates with Leaders is that of the First Fridays Art Walk, which originated from a stained-glass design shop that she had, Chroma Glass Designs, along with a coffee shop in close proximity, with the sole purpose of strictly trying to connect like-minded people— those who could appreciate art, especially in a shop that was doing artistic things.
Leaders closed down her shop in 2008, calling it a victim of the bad economy at the time, and had no purpose for her First Fridays event after that, but the community continued on with the tradition, and it has grown ever since.
“To see it go from the very first time with 40 people that came out, and in one little store, and now to see the thousands that come out each month and the distance that it goes from Bixby to San Antonio— that’s probably been one of the greatest pleasures,” she said.
Chroma Glass Designs stemmed from Leaders’s love for art, and she said that she has always had an interest in art and being creative, even having an educational background in the discipline, having attended Long Beach City College and majoring in illustration and then transferring to CSULB, where she received a bachelor’s degree in art education, as well as emphasizing art as an elementary teacher.
The shop represented her “creative outlet” and used to occupy the spot where Blackbird Cafe is now on Wardlow and Orange avenues, before relocating to a spot on Atlantic Avenue for its bigger space and store-front look. Its closure in 2008 isn’t necessarily a sore spot, however.
“I think the shop did what it was supposed to do,” she said. “Looking back on it, I don’t believe the shop was meant to be a long-term thing. I think it was meant to be a catalyst. Had the shop not happened, First Fridays wouldn’t have happened, and that kind of sent Bixby Knolls on a trajectory that it so needed.”
Aside from art, Leaders is also a physically active person, as she leads the Kidical Mass bike rides every month for the BKBIA, in addition to previous years when she would ride a bike to and from work and various places without having access to a car, a lifestyle she had to embrace after selling her car for financial reasons upon closure of Chroma Glass Designs.
Between all the First Fridays, Kidical Mass bike rides, stained-glass designing and general involvement in the community, Leaders is going to miss one thing the most about the Long Beach area— the people.
“I can’t go to Trader Joe’s sometimes without running into everyone under the sun,” she joked. “A simple trip sometimes turns into an hour ordeal. The fact that I can go pretty much everywhere in Long Beach, as well as Bixby Knolls, and run into somebody I know is probably the thing that I’m going to miss the most, considering that we don’t know anybody in Bend. We have no friends, we have no family there. It’s a big adventure.”
An adventure with a lot of unknowns, as even what occupation or hobby Leaders will pursue in Oregon remains a mystery. “As of yet, that part has not revealed itself to me,” she said. “I will be making the transition from living in a very urban place to a rural, slower-pace way of life.”
It’s all a part of the adventure, one that will surely bring her back, she said.
“I just have loved living in Long Beach. Life is dictating that we now go somewhere else,” she said. “I’m looking forward to new adventures, but I will be back. We do have friends and family still around.”
