She’s 80-something, still active and she’s amazing,” declares Steve Lykken, describing his friend Grace Cota. “Do you know anyone who’s worked 45 years with no days off, no vacation? She should have a presidential award!”
Lykken’s praise for the vibrant octogenarian is well deserved, for Cota rises at one o’clock every morning to deliver the Santa Barbara News-Press to Valley residents. After nearly five decades on the job, she shows no signs of retiring.
“It keeps me healthy!” Cota says with a cheerful laugh. “Of course, I may be slowing down a little bit. My hands aren’t as nimble as they used to be, but I don’t take any medication and I’m never sick.”
Lykken, who owns Steve’s Wheel and Tire, in Buellton, met Cota when she came into the gas station he operated for nearly 20 years. “I’ve known her since 1968,” Lykken says. “She was my first customer when I opened the station.”
Born and raised in Santa Barbara, Cota moved to the Santa Ynez Valley with her husband and family in 1962. She, too, remembers the first time that she and Lykken met.
“I went in there to get gas,” she smiles, her white hair swept neatly back from her face. “You know how you start talking and the next thing you know you’re the best of friends? He’s such a great guy.
“I’ve always dealt with Steve for my tires and brakes,” she continues. “He’s always been there for me. Like when my husband died, he washed my car and everything. There’s nobody like him.”
Cota began her unlikely career as a Santa Barbara News-Press carrier in 1964, at the same time her oldest son, Larry, delivered the paper on his bicycle. One day, the woman who collected the boy’s route money asked Cota if she’d like to help out by driving a route on weekends.
“I had eight children,” Cota remembers, “and my husband was a mechanic, so it was a way to supplement our income. I thought, ’I can do that!’ That’s how I started out and I’ve been at it ever since.
“I still get up every morning,” she adds, “and go seven days a week, 365 days a year.” In 45 years, she has missed only two days of work, taken just after her husband’s passing. She has kept to her rigorous delivery schedule, despite several years spent cleaning houses and taking in ironing to help make ends meet while raising her children.
After landing her own route, Cota sometimes delivered as many as 1000 newspapers per shift to stores, boxes and far-flung addresses out Santa Rosa Road and Nojoqui way.
After moving to Solvang in the late 1990s, she was given a route closer to home. In the early days, Cota remembers having to scout the streets for phone booths in case her car broke down.
“I’d have to stop and think,” she says, ‘if I break down by the Alisal, I’ll have to walk to the post office in Solvang.’ That happened once, and another time in Janin Acres, when I had to walk to El Rancho.
“I was very fortunate,” she added with a happy laugh. “I never broke down way out in the boonies.”
Admittedly a night owl, Cota treasures the quiet hours she spends behind the wheel of her ink-stained van, one of the many she’s owned over the years.
“It’s nice,” she says. “You get to see all the different animals, little foxes and a lot of deer. There aren’t many people roaming around and you’ve got all that clean air. It’s far better than the daytime.
“I get home at 6:00 or 6:30,” she continues, “and I have the rest of the day to myself. I can do whatever I want and it suits my plan just fine.”
Currently, Cota handles about 500 papers a day and credits her two sons for their help, especially on rainy days and Sundays, when a separate, advance run of advertisements adds to the bulk.
“When it rains,” she explains, “they help me roll my papers, because they all have to go into plastic bags. And Larry still gets up on Sunday mornings to meet me at the drop site, pick up the advance run and help me load up.”
Cota certainly deserves Lykken’s heartfelt praise. As she prepares to welcome the birth of her first great-great grandchild—and until that presidential award lands in her capable hands—we in the Santa Ynez Valley salute her!