OUR LAGUNA:Guard changes at Laguna Canyon

Mary Fegraus has been the heart and soul of the Laguna Canyon Foundation since it was incorporated in 1991.

But in 2006 she told the board she was ready to retire. However, she wasn’t ready to turn over the reins to just any old who.

It took months, but Fegraus couldn’t be happier with the choice of Meg Jones to succeed her.

“I have known her since she was in nursery school,” Fegraus said. “It is very comforting knowing her parents — our kids grew up together — and our families have the same values. You can’t help but be influenced by your values.”

Or by Jones’ impressive credentials. She is a child of Laguna: the recipient of a Festival of Arts scholarship in music, which she studied in college while earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology, with a near minor in art history.

Jones has worked in the rain forest of Australia. She also worked for National Geographic, Hawaii’s Mauna Kea Astronomy Education Center and the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. Most recently she was the education director at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in the canyon.

She recently announced her engagement to Darren Sandquist, a professor of desert plant ecology at Cal State Fullerton.

Jones was one of the hundreds who marched in “The Walk” on Nov. 11, 1989 — she swore she would never come back to Laguna if the toll road was built, but here she is.

“I bet she never thought she would one day be back in town working for the foundation that preserved the canyon she loved as a child,” said Michael Pinto, founding president of the foundation.

Jones was born at South Coast Medical Center in 1974, the daughter of Mike and Kathy Jones, the first woman vice chancellor of university advancement at UCI and later vice president of Georgetown University. The young Meg became interested in biology in middle school.

“I was bused down from Thurston to the high school for Mr. Reich’s biology class,” Jones said. “He scared the ‘bejesus’ out of everybody. But he made me like biology — maybe it was because I survived such an ordeal.”

When Jones entered Smith College she was torn between studying art history or biology. The tipping point was that the biology major offered a year of study in Australia.

After earning her master’s degree at Georgetown University, she returned to Australia as a volunteer, tracking the big, flightless cassowary birds that live in the tiny but intense rainforest.

Jones saw there golden orb weaver spiders, big as nectarines; snakes so poisonous that death is inevitable if bitten by one, and beautiful birds.

“It was way different than anything I had ever seen,” Jones said, “It’s very small, but wondrous.”

Jones’ main goal is the development of educational programs, but new goals are always coming up, she said.

“No one can replace Mary, but Meg will bring her own strengths to the job,” Pinto said. “We are moving away from acquisition to education, and that is her expertise. She is young — the youngest applicant we interviewed — strong and energetic. I am excited.”

It may seem that Jones’ whole life has been leading up to her new job. Nonetheless, she finds it a little daunting to follow in Fegraus’ footsteps at the foundation.

“She founded it — there is all this history,” Jones said.

“Meg will make a new footprint,” Fegraus said.

And it is not as though Fegraus won’t still be active on behalf of the foundation.

“I will keep certain projects that are dear to my heart,” Fegraus said. “We need to finish the interpretive exhibits at the Nix Nature Center; we are still missing the geology exhibits.”

She also will work on the orientation signs for Mary’s Trail, near the center. The trail is named in her honor, one of two named for women immensely involved in the preservation of open space in and around Laguna.

The other is named for the late Barbara Stuart, an early supporter of James Dilley’s dream of a greenbelt, who willed a half-million dollars to the foundation.

Other projects earmarked by Fegraus include a philosophy for conservation easements and land management issues, but she will have more time for personal matters. Her daughter, Lisa, who lives in Australia, is expecting her second child — her first is 4-year-old Miles — and Fegraus plans to be there.

Fegraus has virtually defined the job of foundation executive director. Responsibilities include managing a small business, which is also a nonprofit, as well as the tax-free donations that must be tracked; donor relations and programs besides education, such as exhibits at the nature center, volunteers, signage and stewardship of the land.

“My broad volunteer experience gave me the leadership tools essential for the position,” Fegraus said.

Land management is among the tools in Fegraus’ capacious storehouse of expertise. Her interest began close to home.

Mary and Clark Fegraus moved with their daughter and son, Eric, to Laguna Beach in 1973 and bought a house in Rimrock Canyon in 1974.

“By the late ‘70s, someone was proposing to fill in the canyon and build a tennis resort,” Fegraus said

“I got interested in land use and applied for a seat on the planning commission. I had the enormous advantage of being trained by [highly praised former Development Department Director] June Catelano.”

Elisabeth Brown also applied at that time, which marked the beginning of an alliance that has endured.

“She encouraged me to join the Greenbelt, and I was immediately elected to the board,” Fegraus said.

It was a learning experience.

At the same time, she became a trustee of the Laguna Beach High School Scholarship Foundation, in which she is still active.

Fegraus also was a substitute teacher in all of Laguna’s schools, including one stint in Art Smart’s special-ed class and she taught an after-school “Great Books” class at Thurston — not to mention years of involvement with the Girl Scouts, working with Carrie Joyce.

The foundation was created in 1990, in the afterglow of the successful passage of the $20 million bond measure to purchase parcels of Laguna Canyon slated for development by the Irvine Co.

More than 80% of Laguna’s voters cast ballots in favor of taxing themselves.

Pinto and Larry Ulvestad steered the bond committee, with Fegraus and Paul Freeman as paid staff.

“After the bond was passed in November, Michael, Elisabeth Larry and I sat there at the council meeting and [then Councilman] Bob Gentry said, “We really need a nonprofit to move this along,’ and he looked straight at Larry and Michael, and Michael said, ‘Yes,’” Mary recalled.

Pinto, Fegraus, Brown, Stuart, Carolyn Wood, the Irvine Co.’s Carol Hoffman, former Mayor Neil Fitzpatrick, attorney Ken Kaplan; and Sy Jones, a past president of Village Laguna, former Councilwoman Martha Collison and Louie Garfin — the last three having since moved from Laguna — decided to incorporate a foundation.

“We filed in January 1991,” said Fegraus, who served as the acting executive director. “The idea was just to get us through buying the first couple of parcels. Michael and I still laugh about that.”

Pinto, who has been the foundation’s only president, tapped Fegraus for the job she has held all these years.

“It has been a wonderful partnership,” Pinto said. “Mary has such a sweet nature. When she smiles, everyone knows she means it — and she is very smart and politically sensitive. She has kept me out of trouble and I have relied on her.”

During their partnership, the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park was dedicated, expanded and enhanced.

Her most gratifying accomplishment?

“I am torn between the commitment of people and the physical land we have preserved forever,” Fegraus said. “Knowing those cliffs will look like this 100 years from now just wows me.”