So, who is Dee and why did she pursue a career in real estate? Well, the answer will help you understand Dee and how she treats all of her clients. Back in the 1970s Dee worked as an office manager at Davis, Skaggs & Co. a stock broker based in San Francisco. Dee recalls when the Dow hit 1000 and reading the stock ticker tape from a Teletype machine. Not long after, a competing investment firm, Kidder, Peabody & Co. solicited Dee asking for her help with opening a new office in San Jose to expand their operations. Dee accepted the offer and embraced the challenge. She selected the property and then designed the office environment, ordered all the materials, and had the office built the way she thought best. It was a successful project but Dee found herself at a crossroads after that. As she put it, “The problem in moving up the ladder at the firm was I couldn’t become a stock broker because I didn’t want to handle other people’s money, too much risk. I wasn’t comfortable losing other people’s money. Instead I felt like real estate was a better fit because you’re helping buyers and sellers to their benefit every time and it feels great helping people.” Dee had already been thinking about real estate when she had gone through the process of finding and buying her first home. Dee recalls the experience, “As a buyer telling my agent everything I wanted in my home, a sunken dining room, pool, a view, lots of light, close to schools, my agent came up with a list of 10 properties and none of them were even close to what I was looking for. I remember finishing another showing with my agent when I saw a different house around the corner with a ‘for sale’ sign in front and after taking a quick look at it I said, “I want this one” and I bought it! I said to myself, if I ever became a realtor, I’m going to listen to people and find exactly what they want and satisfy their needs”. Speaking of how she treats her clients since becoming a realtor Dee says, “Never sell, always help. The customer is always right. You don’t work on your time, you work on their time”. One of the things Dee dislikes about realtors is that many of them don’t answer the phone, they want you to leave a voicemail so they can listen to your message to decide whether it’s worth calling you back. Sometimes, Dee gets callers that say, “you're the third agent I called and you answered your phone”. Dee says, “that’s a part of how you earn someone’s business, you pick up the phone”.
It all came together…
Dee met her husband of 56 years, Jesse, at The Pink Poodle on Bascom Ave in San Jose. Back then The Pink Poodle used to be a comedy, live music, dancing and entertainment place, before becoming a strip joint. Jesse was a bartender and talented piano player and Dee was a cocktail waitress. Later on Jesse became a custom cabinet maker and started a successful cabinet business, Legacy Custom Cabinets. Their son, Jonathan, became a co-owner and learned the craft from his dad before becoming a general contractor and realtor later. The cabinet business was very successful and did a lot of homes in Saratoga, Blackhawk and even as far as Ireland. Even Dee knows cabinets well from the family business. In essence, much of the family has been involved in real estate in some fashion for a long time. These days Jesse takes care of the house and Dee. Dee fondly quips of Jesse, “He makes me breakfast and he gives me a Lindt candy and a kiss every night before bed.”. For Dee and Jesse, family is #1. They have 4 boys, 7 grandchildren, 8 great grandchildren and 1 soon to be great great grandchild.
