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Community Corner

Who's Who: Catherine Krueger, Realtor and Vice Chair of City's Crime Prevention Committee

We regularly feature short interviews with those who live or work in El Cerrito or Kensington.

Name: Catherine Krueger

Age: “I turn 40 on July 4th”

Occupation: Realtor with in El Cerrito, vice chair of the El Cerrito Crime Prevention Committee

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How long have you been in El Cerrito? I’m originally from France; I moved here in 1996. I used to live right by Hubert Park. It’s interesting, because when I first moved here, I lived in Berkeley, and we moved from Berkeley to Kensington to El Cerrito. When we arrived in El Cerrito, one of our neighbors said, “You’ll never leave – this is God’s country.”

Did you grow up in France? Yes, I was born and raised in France.

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That sounds like a big difference. It is a big difference. But there are a lot of similarities between the South of France and here. The weather is a little bit different – we have hotter weather from where I am – but if you go on the other side of the (Caldecott) tunnel you get the same kind of weather. San Francisco is a very European city. A lot of the architects and city planners were actually from Europe who built it. That’s why a lot of people love it and a lot of Europeans who come here go, “Oh wow, this is so nice,” because it has a lot of the same feel as some of the European cities. I really like it. Sometimes it’s hard, because a lot of my family is there, but I enjoy it.

Do you get to visit on vacation? Yes. My kids spend two months every year in France. That’s pretty nice. They’re actually leaving in a few days.

And you’re involved with the City Council? I’m involved with the Crime Prevention Committee for the city. It took a long time – they implemented this new policy where you have to be fingerprinted — so it took almost a year for me to be finalized – but I’ve been doing this two years and I love it. It was nice for me. Not only as a Realtor but also as a resident in El Cerrito, I wanted to know what was going on, and I wanted to know what I could do to make it better. It’s been a great thing to meet with people. We have a great police department who are really active and involved. They love this city and they really want to help out. It’s nice to see other volunteers from the city.

What are some of the things that you get to do with the crime committee? We get to meet people. Our big thing is National Night Out. That’s our main event. It’s the project to support neighborhood safety – to get all of the community outside on the street and just get to know you’re neighbors. Also, based on that, we’re doing a lot of neighborhood watches. Basically we are trying to get all the neighborhoods together. Once you know your neighbors, you really limit the amount of crime that can happen. If I know you and you live next door and you’re not there, and if I see someone I don’t know, I can call the cops. And they want you to call; it’s not a bother. They would rather be called for something that is not urgent than when it’s actually happening.

It seems to me that El Cerrito is really a city where you can get involved. As a Realtor, I am on the local government affairs committee. The committee tries to bridge the gap between Realtors and cities. Sometimes the cities just have an opinion that we’re against everything. It’s not true; we really want to work with the city. We had Janet Abelson come and talk to us, and the City of Albany. And we work a lot with Berkeley – because the Association of Realtors is based in Berkeley.

A lot of my clients say, “Why would I come to El Cerrito? I want to live in Berkeley,” and then finally when they come here they go, “Wow, this is nice.”

What are your hobbies? I play soccer four times a week, and in the winter we go to Tahoe. I started skiing when I was three years old. My dad was a ski instructor, so skiing is in the genes. My husband is a very good skier, and my kid is actually going to be on the ski team as well. Well, the little one doesn’t like it, but the 11-year-old, she just loves it. And we go hiking in the summer time and that’s good too. We like to be active – and that’s another thing we like about El Cerrito – we’re in the flats so we’re close to the urban area and we can walk. I grew up in a village, like 500 people at most. We had hiking places, but that was it, I couldn’t do anything.

It probably felt like you were forced to hike. Forced to hike among the wild boars — that was fun. It gets really hot in the summertime and there’s nothing to do, so you have to take your car. Here, I can go buy stuff, but in France, I can’t. It’s all the way in the south. It's 15 minutes to the first store. It’s different, you have to be in your car, it’s annoying. It’s nice, because I have the woods on once side, I have the vineyards on one side and I have lavender fields all over, but I’m in my car looking at them. I like it much better (here). I just wish we had more land — that’s the one thing. Living here is like, “fish bowl.”

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