Jodi Heinzen found out by complete surprise she was the Gilroy
Chamber of Commerce’s Woman of the Year for 2002.
Jodi Heinzen found out by complete surprise she was the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce’s Woman of the Year for 2002.
The revelation came during a Thanksgiving dinner family toast last November. Heinzen had returned from a vacation trip to Australia the day before. Her husband, Ric Heinzen, had e-mailed family and friends and asked them not to mention the announcement the chamber had made earlier that week.
With the Heinzen family all gathered around, Ric started reading an editorial from the Gilroy Dispatch which congratulated Jodi on the honor.
“He said, ‘Our editor put it so well in his editorial, I’d like to read something to you,’ ” she said, recalling the sly way Ric informed her of the honor. “It was quite a shock. Ric just smiled when he saw the look on my face.”
Along with recipients of other honors, Jodi will be presented with her Woman of the Year award at the Chamber of Commerce’s annual installation and citizen and business recognition dinner on Friday night.
Susan Valenta, executive director of the chamber, said Jodi’s volunteering in so many community activities has shown her true commitment to Gilroy and its people.
“Jodi has had a long history of involvement in the community, and she has been very selfless in that she’s given of her time,” Valenta said. “Individuals can make a choice of what they do with their time, and individuals like Jodi choose to give of their time to the community.”
The chamber had a large selection of choices for its 2002 Woman of the Year award, she said.
“The reality is, you have a lot of very giving people in the community,” she said. “It’s always a difficult selection process because you do have so many people who give of themselves to the community.”
Jodi and Ric Heinzen moved from Sacramento to Gilroy in 1976. That year, Jodi stepped into volunteering for the community when Wheeler Hospital Board Member John Scherrer asked her to replace retiring Director Catherine Ryan.
Jodi gladly took on the role and spent eight years on the board. She was the last chairwoman involved in the purchase and transition of Wheeler Hospital into Saint Louise Regional Hospital. Besides giving of her time to volunteering activities, Jodi serves as chief executive officer at ACS, Inc., the Heinzen family’s Gilroy-based electrical engineering firm. And the couple raised two sons, Randy, 25, a viticulturist in Napa, and Jeff, 24, a student at Cal Poly. Both boys went through the Gilroy Unified School system, and Ric and Jodi supported their sons as volunteers in various clubs and athletic programs.
Jodi also served in the Gilroy Presbyterian Church community as a Sunday school superintendent and as an elder. She has also been a board member and chaired the Gilroy Foundation Wine Auction for the past three years.
The Gilroy Foundation raises funds for grants given annually to non-profit organizations and schools in the community. Money is put into a large fund through endowments and fund-raising events such as the wine auction, and the interest is dispersed as grants.
Jodi and Ric have been highly involved in the Gilroy Garlic Festival since the very first years of the community’s famous summer event. She has chaired a number of festival committees including the children’s area which she helped develop, transportation and, for the past several years, retail. Ric was the Festival President in 2001 and Jodi helped him in this post.
“Ric shouldered it well,” she said. “There was a lot of social engagements I had to go to (with him) and that made it kind of tough with my other responsibilities.”
The festival is an important part of her volunteer life.
“Everyone loves garlic,” she said. “But it’s all the volunteers who make it special. Everyone is out having a good time, enjoying each other’s company. It’s a warm, cozy feeling. It’s what makes Gilroy.”
The Heinzens made sure their sons participated in the volunteer spirit at the Garlic Festival every year, she said. Children learn a lot about the joy of helping others when they volunteer, she said.
Besides garlic, another of Jodi’s passion is gardening. This has led her to volunteer many hours as a docent at Gilroy’s Bonfante Gardens theme park. She also worked as a volunteer at the park’s garden gift shop, giving advice to customers. If she didn’t know the answer to their horticultural questions, she would get their address, ask a gardening friend who did know, and mail the person a response.
“I know my plants,” she said. “That’s my hobby. It’s gardening.”
Despite hours spent volunteering for the Gilroy community and working at ACS, Jodi also finds time to run her own home-based business called JBH, Inc. The specialized engraving company makes industrial labels for machinery.
She said she felt “terribly humbled” when she found out she received the Chamber’s honor of Woman of the Year.
“I never did anything I do for the recognition of it,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why pick me?’ There are a lot of people (in Gilroy) who deserve it more.”
But she does feel proud of Gilroy, and she believes the large number of volunteers who serve their fellow citizens here make it a special place to call home.
“Gilroy is just a strong community,” she said. “I absolutely love it here. I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. It’s a neat place to live and raise your family.”
