Jay Yerkes

 Doing just that, Jay managed to finagle a Tuesday/Thursday-only block schedule at UCLA for 3 of his 4 years, with the help of units earned at Solano during the summer.  Fellow teammates on the UCLA Waterski Team, after tiring weekend tournaments, were jealous of Jay's "free day" to recuperate on Mondays!  Bonus, classes with UC-transferable potential were available at Solano in areas that either didn't exist or you couldn't get credit for at UCLA, like swimming, photography, and guitar.  While those courses at Solano were fun and engaging, being in a "real course," a 25-person English class, sure was preferable to being lost in a 300-person impersonal lecture hall.  Jay ended up meeting several other UC students during those Solano summers who had gone to Vanden, Vacaville, Armijo, and Fairfield High Schools, who also returned home and were eager to earn transferable credits.  

 

Upon making his planned return to Vacaville in 1998, Jay became immersed in the community, joined the Vacaville Chamber of Commerce, and quickly rose to Ambassador of the Year.  He was excited to be a founding board member of the Vacaville Public Education Foundation to try and bring financial relief to the struggling budget of the local school district.  Seeing an opportunity to step into politics, he ran successfully for a seat on the Vacaville School Board in 2003, where he spent 8 years, and was thrilled to be part of the team helping to establish the program where local high school students could co-enrol in Solano courses to get their high school diploma and AA degree simultaneously.  Tying in well with his now nearly 30-year career as a "personal financial guru," Jay was elected as Vacaville Treasurer in 2012 and has been there since.  

 

In 2014, Jay joined the SCC Educational Foundation and served as President from 2015 to 2020.  He remembers fondly working to help further the Foundation's mission of helping anyone attend Solano, from raising funds, starting with the inaugural crab feed in 2017, to community outreach at mixers, to scholarship ceremonies where he handed out checks to deserving students.  

 

In his free time, Jay enjoys cruising all over the world and relaxing summers with wife Wendy and daughter EllieAnn at the family home on Donner Lake after an almost 50-year tradition of taking the first waterski run of the day at 6 AM on the beautiful glassy water.