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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Replacing burned-out bulbs and stringing miles of tangled Christmas lights up stairways, over arches and around eaves is a holiday chore most homeowners can do without. But Jerry Coziahr of Coronado has taken to doing it for a living.

Right up till Christmas Eve, Coziahr and her band of “elves” will scale tall ladders and string lights around trees, poles and chimneys for homeowners who either cannot climb ladders or detest the holiday ritual.

Coziahr, who has multiple sclerosis, is on medical leave from teaching eighth-graders in the Sweetwater Union High School District until January to try the business. Coziahr, 42, was found to have the disease seven years ago.

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After 19 years of teaching physical education and family living, she gets a little teary-eyed talking about the 13- and 14-year-olds she left behind.

“Students see me at the grocery store and ask me how I am and when I’m going to come back to school,” she said.

But dealing with 180 students a day fatigued her so much that her doctor advised her to look for a different career, she said. With her business, Coziahr can space appointments, meeting one or two people at a time, rather than dealing with nearly 200 personalities a day, she said. Coziahr bought a Dekra-Lite franchise in September to learn tricks such as how to make lights stick to metal, stucco and wood. Coziahr and her 12 helpers have since decorated about 40 homes and businesses in Coronado, Bonita and Chula Vista.

Some clients are wealthy and look at holiday decorating as just another service, Coziahr said. Others are elderly and cannot climb ladders to put up lights. But, in her first season in business, most of her clients have been friends, she said with a laugh.

Coziahr, a single mother of two, said she does not expect to gross more than $25,000 this season but hopes to increase her income each year. After school is out, she will contact potential clients and plan for the holidays, she said.

“I’d like to keep doing it forever,” she said.

Homeowners started calling after Thanksgiving, and installers have been dispatched to as many as eight homes a day, she said.

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Each job takes from two to five hours, and so far she has seen nothing but smiles from her customers, she said. “It’s really a fun business,” she said. “It’s not a service I have to push people to buy.”

The cost, which includes designing, installing and removing the Dekra-Lites, has ranged from $165 for lights along the roof of a small home to more than $1,000 for a home on a hill in Alpine whose owner wanted it lighted from all sides, Coziahr said.

From a Chula Vista warehouse lined with bulbs and coils of lights in red baskets, Coziahr coordinates the work of the designers and installers. They include a college professor and a former commodities broker.

Most people just want lights on arches and in places they cannot reach, she said. But design combinations, from twinkling white lights to strings shaped like stars and Christmas trees, are almost endless, she said. “The idea anybody can hang lights is true, until you look at the quality of the work,” Coziahr said. “One lady hired us because she didn’t like the way her husband put the lights on an outdoor tree.”

Some people add lights after she is finished, but she doesn’t mind. “I’m not possessive about the design. I want people to be happy.”

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