When Ana Valenzuela retired from teaching third grade in Lakewood after 32 years, she didn't need another job. She needed a reason to wake up.
The duplex her late husband bought in 1987 had been sitting mostly empty for four years. Her son lived downstairs intermittently when his work took him through Long Beach. The upstairs unit — three bedrooms, a sunroom overlooking Retro Row, the kind of floor plan nobody builds anymore — was gathering dust.
She called us in late 2023. What she said in that first call we still repeat in team trainings: "I don't want to turn my home into a business. I want my home to earn its keep while I go see my grandkids in Portland."
We rebuilt the upstairs unit over six weeks. Refinished the original oak floors. Restored the sunroom's built-ins. Stocked the kitchen with the kind of things Ana herself would have wanted on a first morning somewhere new — good coffee, real cream, a note that knew her guests' names.
In 2024, Ana's upstairs unit earned $68,400 in gross short-term rental revenue. She visited Portland nine times. When the unit was booked, she slept downstairs in her own quiet bedroom and read on the back patio. When guests were between stays, her son used the upstairs unit on the rare Long Beach weeks.
What Ana never mentioned to us directly, but wrote in a holiday card this past December: "This is the first year since my husband passed that I've felt useful to someone besides myself."
