From Dell’Arte to Senior Services: Leira Satlof’s Long Road Through Humboldt County

Leira Satlof has worn a lot of hats in Humboldt County. She ran Ferndale Repertory Theatre back from some rocky years, sold food out of a truck for a hot minute, baked bread at the co-op during COVID, and somewhere in between earned an opera degree in Manhattan. Now she leads the Ferndale Senior Resource Agency, and in this episode of 100% Humboldt, she sits down with Scott Hammond to talk about how she got there.

The conversation digs into what it actually takes to keep older residents connected in a small town cut off by its one bridge. Satlof talks about running Meals on Wheels for around 70 clients a day, a transportation program built around the fact that Ferndale doesn’t have a bank, and a medical equipment lending library that sends her out to people’s homes, where she’s learned exactly whose apple trees are giving away fruit this time of year.

She and Hammond also wander through Ferndale’s layered Portuguese, Italian, and Scandinavian dairy history, Humboldt’s outsized arts scene, and the pull of Oregon as she and her husband think about retirement. Asked what she wants her legacy to be, Satlof doesn’t hesitate: “She cared and got some stuff done.” Watch the full conversation to hear how she’s trying to live up to it.