Smith: Wine tasting spares retired Petaluma teacher from close call in a pool

Which is healthier, swimming laps or sipping wine?

Normally, master swimmer Judy Cramer would go with the former.

But the retired schoolteacher truly believes she may have been hurt or worse on March 13 had she not played hooky from her lap class in a Santa Rosa health club pool and gone instead to the barrel tasting at north Sonoma County wineries.

Just before noon that Friday, Cramer was with a friend at Blanchard Family Wines in Healdsburg. She was having a lark, using colored chalk to create an entry in Blanchards’ Barrel Art Competition.

Meanwhile, back in Santa Rosa, a black Lexus crashed through the fence at the Airport Health Club and rolled into the edge lane of the lap pool.

“Normally I’m in the lane where she landed,” said Cramer, who taught kindergarten and first grade for 41 years in east Petaluma’s Old Adobe Union School District.

From what she’s heard about the sunken-car episode, she believes that had she not ditched the Friday lap session, she would have been in the water and in that edge lane when the sedan took the plunge.

Now she’s grateful for herself and for the driver, whose rescuers included fellow swimmers in the 11 a.m. Monday-Wednesday-Friday lap session.

Cramer said, “How often does fate reward you for going wine tasting rather than swimming?”

And catch this: The folks at Blanchard Family Wines notified her Tuesday that they’d picked her art entry, the playful dog she drew on the end of a barrel, as winner of the weekend’s Barrel Art Competition.

She’s thinking this was her luckiest Friday the 13th ever.

THINKING OF ‘LUPE’: A grand idea sprang from Jim “Mr. Music” Corbett, producer of a Beatles Singalong & Dance in Sebastopol on March 28.

Corbett decided to make the Sonoma County All-Stars gig a benefit for Guadalupe Nunez-Solorzano, the 6-year-old critically hurt March 8 when a car struck her in a crosswalk on Petaluma Hill Road.

The band has a connection to the tragedy: All-Star guitarist/ vocalist Steve Barbieri drove the car that hit Guadalupe.

Santa Rosa police say he’s been cooperative. Corbett, who’s hosting the concert and dance at the Sebastopol Cultural Center, called Barbieri “a stand-up guy and a well-respected musician in the community.”

But Barbieri has received legal advice against having a role in a fundraiser for Guadalupe. It’s fairly standard for attorneys to steer clients or potential clients away from remarks or gestures that could be interpreted as admissions of guilt.

So the March 28 Beatles/British Invasion dance will not be a benefit for Guadalupe after all. Corbett promises it will be great show even so.

And he’s plotting a way to donate to the girl’s recovery that won’t further complicate the life of his friend Barbieri.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.