KIM BLACKSETH INTRIGUING ADVENTURE SEEKER
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Photo by Lowell Downey/Art & Clarity
s a certified access specialist, Kim Blackseth is an expert on the complexities of California Building Codes, Title 24, Americans with Disabilities Act, Fair Housing Act and HCD regulations. His proficiency comes as the result of 24 years in the business. The research and coordination necessary to advise consumers, employers, business owners, architects, municipalities and the legal community on ADA compliance has become a highly-specialized task, and Blackseth’s eponymously named firm has advised and consulted with more than 2500 companies nationwide. His expertise also comes from personal experience. Gravely injured in a 1979 motocross race, Blackseth is a quadriplegic intimately familiar with the challenges of physical limitation. Yet he hasn’t let his own limitations restrict his active and adventurous life. An airplane pilot, he’s in the process of buying a new plane, an ICON A5, which lands on both water and land. He has designed some of the flight panel controls to suit his particular needs. And he continues to race, having graduated from motorcycles to the super cars he collects. In his garage - a 355 Ferrari, a McLaren 12C Coupe, 2 McLaren 12 C Spyders, a GT3 Turbo Porsche and a 2018 458 Ferrari ESPECIAL. Blackseth has been married for 44 years to his wife and ‘best friend’ Tammy Blackseth, a Napa native who lured him to the area eight years ago. Their daughter Emily also lives in Napa.
SUMMER HEARTT DIRECTOR OF THEATER AT AMERICAN CANYON HIGH SCHOOL
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any taxpayers think high schools should focus on job-oriented education like technology. They consider music and drama fluff. Summer Heartt begs to differ. The director of theater at American Canyon High School points out that entertainment is big business in California. “Only a few people become stars but there’s a demand for writers, technicians and other people who work out of sight.” Mare Island has a sound stage, for example. Jobs aside, Heartt and her 85 students love theater and they’re adapting a play about teenage life for production. Last year, they presented Bye Bye Birdie and she vowed to produce a musical each year. This year, they’re doing a Bring It On the Musical by a co-writer of Hamilton. Fortunately, the school won a $10,000 grant from a TV series, Rise, and her students were invited to watch the pilot episode. There they received another $10,000. More recently, Heartt was able to reserve 90 tickets to Hamilton for her students. That experience is doubly significant for her students as they’re a very diverse lot. “Seeing people of color in those roles is life-changing for them,” she said. The school is only 12 percent white with many Latinos and Asians as well as mixed race students. Heartt herself grew up in Berkeley, but graduated from Vintage High School. Bitten by the theater bug, she got a theater arts degree from UC Santa Cruz with one year at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and an M.S. in Theater. She decided she didn’t want to act and taught elementary school in Los Altos Hills before returning to Napa to teach, then joining American Canyon five years ago. Photo by Paul Franson 46
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