Say Something Nice

Four years ago, my husband and I decided to leave behind the hassles of Los Angeles living and move to Leucadia.

Having come from a small town originally, North County seemed to fulfill our dreams of returning to a simpler life. We purchased a small motel on Highway 101 and started a seven-day-a-week, 24-hour-a-day commitment to transforming a roadside location into a full-scale, country-style inn.

Our mission was not easy, but has been accomplished through diligent patience and perseverance.

For this and many other reasons, I found it not only distressing, but infuriating, to see John Glionna’s recent article, “On Road to Change” (Dec. 2) churning out gems like “riffraff motels reincarnated from some spooky old Hitchcock thriller.”

We are the new blood in Leucadia, the young investors who came to town not to build strip shopping centers but to take existing properties and enhance the charm of a seaside community. There are young families investing in real estate, investors starting their own businesses, people looking for an opportunity to build a life and a community away from the maddening crowd.

Yet, the media continually choose to downgrade and destroy the whole population of this town based on a few isolated problems, which every community copes with.

The idea that you can walk into any shop in town and people are friendly and they know your name is something we take for granted. That you know your neighbors and can count on them to pick up a shovel and rebuild stairs to the beach when the city turns its back on you.

Leucadia is a good city with a spirit and a good future. How about spending half as much time bashing the problems and a little more time supporting the potential of the last of the great California surfing towns?

We’re on our way up, with or without the press knocking us to our knees.

SUZAN KALVODA, Innkeeper, Pacific Surf Inn, Leucadia