YOLO Spotlight - Lacey Hillard
Many people know Lacey Hilliard for her work as a real estate agent and property manager at Lyons Real Estate in downtown Woodland, but do you know she is also the driving force behind local non-profit F.I.R.E. (First In, Relief for Evacuees)? F.I.R.E. has helped numerous victims of California’s devastating fires and has been especially crucial the last few years with each year bringing a new “record breaking” blaze. Lacey began the nonprofit in 2015 and through a combination of meticulous planning and some crazy ideas has built the organization into the “go-to” for victims. You can learn more about F.I.R.E. here: https://firstinrelief.com/
But what else did we learn about Lacey?
FUN FACT #1
Lacey grew up in southern California, mostly in Costa Mesa. Her dad raced Indy cars, first based in Los Angeles, then relocating to El Dorado Hills. The family relocated when Lacey was 10 years old and it came as quite a culture shock. The shock lasted until she graduated high school and she promptly moved back down south to Seal Beach. She began racing spec trucks for a while before moving back up north to El Dorado Hills. Lacey thinks she grew up in an adrenaline junkie household; besides her father and herself catching the racing bug, her mother played competitive volleyball and her grandfather held records at UCLA for track and field. She met her husband, Josh, at a party in 2008 and eventually moved to Woodland.
FUN FACT #2
Over the years, Lacey has become experienced in several professions. She worked in finance for a while, ended not being excited about it and moved to Hawaii where she went to school for holistic medicine. When she moved back to California she worked for a repossession business for six to seven years, but that ended up not challenging her enough either. It also become more heartbreaking after the recession because the people being repossessed all of a sudden became just average people who had merely gotten in over their heads. She went to school at night and became a neuromuscular therapist, but this eventually became too hard on her body. (At one point she had wanted to become a professional snowboarder and had an accident where essentially everything from the hips up was broken, making leaning over a table and using strong pressure was not something her body was willing to do anymore.)
FUN FACT #3
Not surprisingly, considering Lacey has done a huge variety of activities and jobs throughout her life, the way she winds down (I think it may be too much to say she actually relaxes?) consists of a broad number of things. She loves exercising her brain with Sudokus, puzzles, reading, and solving mysteries. (She is now intrigued by the idea of an escape room.) She loves to study things she is interested in and will study them to death. Lacey loves all crafts and also has two mini Bantam chickens (who live in Cluckingham Palace), ducks (who live in Quackington Pool), a saltwater fish tank, dogs, cats, and a huge garden. She feels best when she is creating. She also does lots of running and has an amazing therapist who helps her keep her mental health in good shape.
WHAT ABOUT WORK?
1. At one point, Lacey met a realtor who talked her into starting real estate classes. She found the classes yawn-inducing, but she was bored and needed something to do so she stuck with it. She found a part-time job with Lyons in Davis and discovered she loved it. She was able to socialize and being around other professionals pumped her up. She finished the test for her real estate license in 35 minutes and passed. She also embraced property management because she found it appeals to her problem solving side, every day she gets to help people and must work to make both home owners and tenants happy. The pandemic didn’t even put a blip in real estate. In fact, the number of people looking for homes is at a record high. Lacey knows that people need a place to live where they feel safe and stable without price gouging pushing them out of the market. She believes you must show compassion while still making money.
2. Lacey’s motto is to go for your dreams. If it seems impossible, just break it down, get to work, and stop worrying about the obstacles. She believes many things began as a wild idea and became reality. (One example: how people probably thought the Wright Brothers and the idea of human flight was nuts at one time.) In high school, Lacey was both a jock and a theater kid and even now acting is kind of a wild dream for her. After going through the typical “would she ever be good enough?” agonies, Lacey decided to pursue acting. She landed an acting gig in a political commercial, and while the director seemed impressed with her work, it wasn’t until she watched the commercial that she realized she could be good at this.
3. Lacey quickly recognized that the only person holding her back was herself. She wants to be so many things in life-attorney, gymnast, FBI agent-but she also wants to be the best at everything she does. She realized that acting allows her to be all of those things, and more, in the various roles she can play. She signed up for a six week acting course and vowed to do at least one class. She describes the first class as mortifying because each person had to sit in a chair alone in a spotlight and answer questions. But she stuck it out and is still taking the course. Like everything else in her life, when she decided to pursue acting, Lacey has gone all in, taking voice, piano, and acting classes. She is proud to say she has booked some paying gigs. This is not surprising because at KLJ Studios she is known as Miss Fierce since she looks so fierce in all of her head shots.
As if all of that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, Lacey is aware of the housing crisis around the country and is looking for ways to solve it in Yolo County. With her track record of successes, it would not be surprising if she figured out a solution.