LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Aloha, Pacific Palisades!

In the fall of 1993, I got a magazine job offer that was too good to turn down. The only snag? The office was located way the heck in Westlake Village, and I was a born-and-bred beach girl living in the OC. There was no way I was going to move inland.

Somehow, I recalled driving down Sunset Boulevard during my college years at UCLA and passing through an idyllic spot called Pacific Palisades. I decided that was the ONLY place I would live. If I couldn’t find an apartment there, I wasn’t going to take the job, and I let my new employer know it.

That’s when he handed me a copy of the Palisadian-Post so I could check the classifieds for places to live. Within a week, I’d found an apartment and even better, a new home. I had made a vow that I would only stay for a year then move back to the OC. That year ended up being nearly three incredible decades.

The Palisadian-Post was my introduction to this hidden community—its long-standing homespun traditions (the parade, the teen contest and the spelling bee!), the remarkable people who made it so special, and even the little things that irked the people living in this paradise (hello, 2 Cents column!).

The paper felt like the glue that held the community together, and I loved it! Finding my copy of the Post in my mailbox each Thursday was like getting a little squirt of the feel-good neurochemical dopamine.

I couldn’t have been more thrilled 20 years later when I was asked to become the editor of the paper I loved so much. What an honor! I relished the features we did on our locals and am so proud of the deep-dive investigations we managed to do with a small but mighty staff—the Wednesday night motorcycle riders, the mysterious Tobalina house in the Huntington, and of course, the wild tale of Jeffrey Lash, the human-alien hybrid in the Highlands.

As exciting as those stories were, the 24/7 nature of news took its toll, and I eventually said farewell to my career at the paper.

The Palisades has been my bubble for decades, but when the pandemic hit, my husband and I realized it was time to move on. We’ve sold our house (you might have seen it on the Home Spotlight page of the Post) and are moving to Hawaii—trading one paradise for another.

I’ll miss you, Pacific Palisades! And it’s too hard to say goodbye, so I’ll just say aloha!

Frances Sharpe