Paul Pasero, of Arrigoni’s in Santa Rosa, dies at 100

For decades in Santa Rosa, a great many people did their shopping at the town’s Italian grocery stores.

And for years on end, all of the regulars at Arrigoni’s market knew Paul Pasero. He hired on as a kid in the early 1930s.

“I started there as a delivery boy,” the native Santa Rosan once recalled. Agreeable and engaging, Pasero worked at Arrigoni’s until 1976, when he retired to travel and enjoy more time with his wife, the former Julia Pezzi.

Pasero was approaching his 101st birthday when he died Jan. 7 at a Santa Rosa assisted-living residence. He took with him a load of finely detailed memories of his town, and in particular its historic West End neighborhood, long ago called Italian town.

“This guy had an amazing memory, a Gaye LeBaron-type memory,” said family member Tina Ornell of Santa Rosa. Ornell’s mother, Carole Starkey, and Pasero were first cousins.

“He knew the entire history of the Italian community,” Ornell said.

Pasero was born Jan. 22, 1915, at the Eighth Street home of his parents, Paul Pasero and Kate Arrigoni Pasero.

One of his many stories recounted the day in 1921 that he was selected to be among the schoolchildren who accompanied renowned horticulturist Luther Burbank at the groundbreaking for the new park that would become Santa Rosa Junior College. Young Pasero took home a commemorative shovel that he donated long afterward to SRJC, and that remains on display there.

Pasero was 17 and attending Santa Rosa High School when he lost both of his parents in an automobile crash. He moved in with a grandmother and soon thereafter left school to go to work at what was then Traverso and Arrigoni Market on Davis Street. His uncles, Frank, Peter and James Arrigoni, and partner Charlie Traverso had bought the shop formerly run by Nate Bacigalupi.

Pasero learned every function and nuance of the operation. Before long, part-owner Traverso went off on his own and the Arrigonis moved into a retail space at Fourth and D streets.

In 1940, when he was 25, Pasero left the store for the Army.

He put his culinary skills to work feeding the troops. He rose to the rank of master sergeant and oversaw mess halls in the Philippines and elsewhere.

After the war, he returned to Santa Rosa, to his Julia, whom he’d married in 1941, and to Arrigoni’s Market. As a member of the clerks union, he stocked shelves, made sandwiches, greeted shoppers, and did whatever else needed doing for another 30 years.

In 1975, Arrigoni’s was sold to brothers Raja and Jacob Naber, who would convert it into a restaurant. Pasero stayed on another year, assisting the Nabers with the transition.

“He shared with them his minestrone recipe,” Tina Ornell said. “He was a great cook.”

Pasero was 61 when he retired from Arrigoni’s, and he traveled, fished, got together with his many friends and cheered his Golden State Warriors. When Julia died in 2006, they had been married for 65 years.

Right up to the end of his life, Pasero stayed active and current. He was nearly 100 years old when he bought a new car, a Ford Focus, and made sure it had a Bluetooth connection to his cellphone.

Ornell recalled that just last October, Pasero underwent surgery for colon cancer and one doctor or nurse after another, amazed that he was 100, asked the secret of his longevity.

“You know,” he answered, “I’m an alien.”

There will be a memorial service at 11 a.m. Jan. 22 - his birthday - at the chapel at Santa Rosa Memorial Park.