Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood advocate ‘a pit bull with a big heart’

Don’t be deceived by her kind eyes and beatific smile. Lani Jolliff is a pit bull, said her friend, Bill Northcroft, who then qualifies that characterization: “A pit bull with a big heart.”

Jolliff, 56, has been fighting since she came into the world. The daughter of a Las Vegas showgirl, she was born prematurely. Three pounds at birth, she spent the first six weeks of her life in the hospital.

She struck a few combative notes last week at a meeting she’d organized to help Kincade fire survivors recover. Addressing the room filled with some 80 people who’d gathered at the Christian Family Fellowship Church just east of Coffey Park, she urged them to do their homework and not let insurance companies take advantage of them, or close claims early. “They’re shorting you,” she warned.

For the last two years, Jolliff has made it her mission to scrap and scratch for resources and information that might ease the burden of residents whose lives have been disrupted by wildfire.

One of the ways she’s helped is by organizing and presiding over these neighborhood meetings of residents in Coffey Park whose Santa Rosa houses were spared by the 2017 Tubbs wildfire. She sets the agenda and wrangles experts - from Comcast, the city of Santa Rosa, and PG&E, to name a few - to come and answer questions.

For last week’s meeting, Jollitt had welcomed dozens of fire survivors from Healdsburg and Windsor whose homes incurred smoke damage in the Kincade blaze. They were welcome to pick the brains of Coffey Park’s residents, who’d been through all of this following the Tubbs fire.

She also invited a panel of guests including Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a nonprofit devoted to helping home insurance policyholders.

Don’t be misled by the warm and fuzzy television commercials, said Bach, who encouraged people to think of their insurance claims “as a business negotiation.”

After the Tubbs inferno, Jolliff joined the neighborhood support group, Coffey Strong. While active in the group serving as a block captain recruiting members, she also saw the need to advocate for residents like her who hadn’t lost their homes.

Considered lucky they didn’t lose their homes, they don’t always feel lucky. While the people whose houses burned moved elsewhere, those whose homes were spared found themselves living amid the rubble. Every morning, said ex-Coffey Strong President Jeff Okrepkie - whose house did burn down - “they walked out into a wasteland.” Now, with the ongoing rebuilding of Coffey Park, they live in a construction zone.

What Jolliff heard from neighbors, in the wake of the Tubbs fire, was because they didn’t lose their homes, they did not have a forum to express how they were feeling, she said. “We’ve lived with the soot and the PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). We’ve walked through hell for two years.”

For 13 years, until she retired in 2018, Jolliff worked as a residential care counselor at the Valley Of The Moon Children’s Home, a shelter near Oakmont for abused and neglected kids. The home takes in troubled teens up to 18 years old, making its name a bit of a misnomer.

“It’s super intense,” Jollitt said. “You never know when a kid is going to go off, or run down Highway 12 and try to hurt themselves. Kids have tried to kill themselves. It’s not a normal job.”

To arrive in time for her 5 a.m. shift, Jolliff would rise at 3:45 a.m., then drive through a pitch dark neighborhood.

Feeling unsafe, on account of the lack of streetlights, she’d get on the phone with PG&E and city officials, urging them to hurry up and install replacement streetlights.

“All these streetlights were out,” Okrepkie recalled, “and Lani would call PG&E and say, ‘We have to walk these streets, it’s pitch black, and we don’t know if there are dogs or rats.’”

“And she doesn’t let up,” he said. “She won’t let stuff go - in a good way. Where most people would say, ‘All right, whatever,’ she keeps pushing until she gets a straight answer, yes or no.”

Having demonstrated her effectiveness in this area, Jolliff became Coffey Park’s point person for anyone who had a question or complaint about streetlights.

Her portfolio kept growing. She became the neighborhood’s go-to person to ask questions or lodge complaints about Comcast, AT&T and other companies. “People call me, I call the company,” she said. “I follow up, and try to get the problem fixed.”

It’s a lot of legwork and follow-up. Does that wear her down?

“It energizes me,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye. “I’m tenacious.”

She brings problem-solving skills from her past career, to her role as advocate for the people of Coffey Park. Whether it was getting a jacket for a kid who was cold or helping them get in touch with their social worker, her philosophy was to “work the problem from beginning to end,” she said. “I’m not done until I’m done.”

On April 12, 2017, Jollitt got a bad news phone call: a growth in her neck was thyroid cancer.

She underwent surgery. Then came better news. The prognosis was incorrect. The mass wasn’t cancerous.

Jolliff retired from her Valley of the Moon job anyway. The stress of it was making her sick, she said. That misdiagnosis “was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “How many people my age can stop, take a pause, and ask, ‘Hmmm, who do I want to be now?’?”

More than ever, she wanted to be the person who helps and fights for her neighbors. Retiring from her day job has freed up additional time for her to be an even more effective advocate - “me on steroids,” she said with smile.

With the Kincade fire encroaching from the northeast, Jollitt and her husband, Troy, evacuated - along with their three cats, two dogs and two turtles - to the home of friends in Rohnert Park, where she monitored the blaze and asked herself, over and over: How can I help? After volunteering at the Local Assistance Center in Healdsburg, she hatched the plan to get these fire survivors - from the Tubbs and Kincade fires - in a room together.

Among those at Monday’s meeting was Santa Rosa Mayor Tom Schwedhelm, himself the owner of a home in Coffey Park that didn’t burn in the Tubbs fire. “Lani’s got a real passion for helping people,” he said. “And when she gets it in her mind to do something, it usually happens. I respect that.”

That’s why he recommended Jolliff and Steve Wadleigh, pastor of the Christian Family Fellowship Church that hosts her meetings, for the city’s Merit Award, which they received last month.

While that felt nice, Jollitt said, she doesn’t do what she does for praise, or recognition.

“Most everything I do is from my heart,” she said. “And I’m very determined.”

HHHHHH

Pop the cork

This weekend marked the release of Barn Raiser Red, a Zinfandel blend that will be available at Bottle Barn, the wine retailer in Santa Rosa, and on bottlebarn.com.

Proceeds from the wine, made primarily from zinfandel grapes from the Dry Creek and Russian River vineyards, will be donated to the neighborhood support group Coffey Strong.

Barn Raiser, which goes for $14.99 a bottle in the store and $3 more online (unless you buy six or more bottles), was made by Healdsburg’s Davis Family Vineyards. For this first run, 500 cases were produced.

The new release is already generating buzz, said Jason Schneider, general manager of Bottle Barn, which borders Coffey Park - one of the reasons he’s happy to help.

“These are our neighbors,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Ausmurph88