She packed it up and moved to paradise, sort of
Traffic is mad, your nest egg is now the size of a pea and your HMO has stopped covering your blood pressure meds. You've thought about reeling it all in, selling what's left and trying something new in a distant hideaway.
But who really has the courage for such a move, I wondered while lounging during my vacation last week on a speck of sand between Cuba, Mexico and Jamaica. I called the newspaper office in George Town, Grand Cayman, and asked a reporter if he knew of any California transplants.
The reporter gave me two names. The first person was away on vacation. The second answered the phone at her real estate office across the street from 7-Mile Beach, one of the world's most spectacular stretches of white sand and turquoise sea.
Lisa Uggeri, who left Southern California two decades ago on what was supposed to be a six-week vacation, told me she hasn't a single regret.
"It's a nightmare for me to be on the 405," the Long Beach native said of her infrequent trips home.
So how did she make the break, you ask?
It began when a relationship blew up in 1989, leading to the revelation that she needed to reinvent herself at the age of 28. A friend named Laura Lovekin, who lives in Hermosa Beach, remembers the day Lisa announced plans to step out of her own skin.
"We were water skiing on San Diego Bay," Lovekin recalled, "and she said, 'I think I'm going to give everything up and go live on an island.' "
Huh? She was spending her days water skiing in San Diego, and she needed to shake things up?
Uggeri says she didn't intend to permanently relocate, and the only break she wanted was from the predictable routine she'd gotten locked into. She wanted to get outside her "comfort zone," and not having a specific plan was part of the thrill for the business major.
Uggeri, whose last name was Haagsma back then, took a friend's recommendation to consider the Cayman Islands. She'd never been, but after a bit of research, she decided it sounded perfect.
She quit her job in computer and software sales. She gave up a rented room in a nice San Diego home. And she packed her bags.
After saying goodbye back in Long Beach to her family, she flew away to the Caymans, a three-island British territory known for great diving and even better tax shelters.
Six weeks turned into 20 years.
