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Lately, Chris has been reflecting on how she wants to spend this next chapter of her life. At 63, she’s been forced to endure on more than one occasion the passing of friends she had spent decades surfing with – water women who she competed against and laughed with, cried with and grew up with.

As Chris continues learning how to embrace changes happening within her own body, she chooses celebrating life over fearing what could happen next.

And the most critical celebration she partakes in religiously? Surfing.

“Surfing is the thing that makes everything in my life fade, all the worries and stress, and what’s left inside me is peace,” Chris said.

Born over the hill in San Jose and moving with her family to the area in the mid-1960’s, Chris was a true water baby. Her Italian mother was so in love with the ocean that Chris can’t remember ever going more than a few days without spending time at the beach. It was her mom who pushed the family to make the move to Santa Cruz, and Chris is forever grateful for that.

“Capitola is a special place for me and my family, it’s where my parents first met,” Chris said. “It’s the main reason why it’s also my favorite place to compete each year at Women on Waves.”

Her Italian father was attracted to the water and the earth as well, having ancestral ties to fishing, hunting and farming. Together with her siblings Chris was splashing in waves and rough tumbling in foam from such a young age that there was never time to fear the power of the ocean.

“My father used to throw me in the water at Harbor Beach and then we’d ride surf mats at the harbor mouth and it would just beat the crap out of us,” Chris said with a laugh. “So I was never afraid of the water.”

Now as an adult, Chris is nothing short of a hardcore local Santa Cruz surfer who had to fight her way into a revered position within the surf community. She is respected by most for her fierce competitive spirit and commitment to the hobby (or lifestyle, depending on who you ask). While her introduction into surfing would be traumatic to most, to Chris she was told it was the only way.

The first core memory Chris has of seeing a surfer was when she was 13-years-old. She was at 24th street with her family when she saw a female surfer paddling into and then standing up on a wave. Chris turned to her mom and said, “I’m doing that.”

It took over three years before Chris actually got onto her first board and tried it out. Under the tutelage of her brother, Chris paddled out to Pleasure Point leashless without any formal introduction as to what she should do. It was the epitome of needing to prove herself first before actually being taught how to surf a wave. She took sets on the head and lost her board more times than she can remember, all without much support from others in the lineup.

It was a six-month crash course before Chris actually stood up on her first wave.

“It was gnarly back then trying to get out into the surf. There were no girls in the water except for me and a few others and it was highly competitive,” Chris said. “I learned without a leash, so I would fall and I would cry and everyone would yell ‘swim!’ and it taught me how to hang onto my board, that's for sure.”

With little support of the men in the lineup, and no female surfers in sight, Chris was somehow not deterred in her pursuit of becoming a surfer. When she finally did stand up and surf her first wave it was at Jack’s, on a day when no one was out in the lineup except her and her brother.

“No one surfed Jack’s at that time, it was looked down upon as a place where only kooks surfed, but it didn’t matter to me,” Chris said. “It’s so much different today: the east side is almost always crowded and the west side, like Steamer Lane, has thinned out. It wasn’t like that at all when I was first starting out, it was the opposite.”

From that first wave Chris’ life was forever changed. She took off chasing waves on boards of all lengths from the east to the west side, and eventually in Hawaii where she fell in love with more than just the surf culture but the Aloha spirit as well.

Although Chris had grown up as a competitive horseback riding athlete and enjoyed the adrenaline she got from competing, she didn’t start seriously participating in surfing competitions until she was about 35-years-old. It was the original iteration of Women on Waves 1996 that catapulted Chris onto the competitive circuit. After her first few local events, Chris was pursued by Big Stick Surfing Association to join their club in an effort to win more competitions.

“I started competing regularly in ‘96 and was finishing first or second almost every time, so the local surf clubs started trying to snatch me up,” Chris said. “Big Stick is what I joined and that's how I met my husband, Tom. His big blue eyes got me when I borrowed his board in a Logjam competition.”

The couple married in Maui in 2002 and have been surfing continuously together around the world ever since.

“Tom is an amazingly supportive husband and has been my surf partner for 22 years,” Chris said.

Since 1996, Chris has competed and won countless events – WOW, Call to the Wall, Logjam and many more hosted by clubs along the California coast.

Although Chris loves competing, she said the surf community she’s been part of for decades is so much more than the events they host.

“Everyone is so involved in the surf community and is there for each other when we need it most. The people I've met in this community are just so crucial to my everyday life,” Chris said. “The competitiveness has worn off for me because I no longer feel I have to prove something.”

In recent years it’s been Waikiki where Chris has developed a renewed love for surfing and deeper gratitude for life. Although Santa Cruz will always be her true home, Hawaii brings Chris even closer to the ocean – she said of course it helps that the weather hovers in the 70s, the morning walks she takes are surrounded by colorful flowers and when surfing in those blue, warm waters she’s called “Auntie”.

“They call me Auntie in the Hawaiian water which is such an honor. Any wave I paddle for they yield to me as a sign that I am welcome among their lineup,” Chris said. “I get up in the mornings in Hawaii, walk along at the base of Lēʻahi Crater and I look up and it's just overwhelmingly beautiful. Sometimes I cry at it all.”

As Chris continues pursuing a life full of surfing, community, love and gratitude, she’s made radical changes in recent years to preserve her health, like going sober at 60.

“I realized once I hit 60 I needed to give my body a little head start into my next decade and going sober was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Chris said. “It led me to releasing so many demons and now things that used to matter no longer do. What’s important to me now is living everyday like it’s my last, that's my mantra at this age.”

Women on Waves still holds a special place in Chris’ life. She has only missed one competition in 2023 since first joining in 1996, and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

“It’s women celebrating women and gives me an opportunity to mentor the next generation of surfers,” Chris said. “It’s such an important event in my life for those reasons and so many more.”