Even before people started arriving at the Calistoga Community Pool to celebrate the grand opening of a decades-long dream come true, swimmers were showing up to take a dip.

The first swimmer to brave the 85-degree water in the cool temperatures of the early morning was Robin Bordow of Petaluma, who was getting ready to give swimming lessons to a friend.

“I swim one mile a day, five days a week,” said Bordow, while waiting for Calistoga’s Janel Watkins, owner of At Your Service event staffing.

Watkins, at age 38, is a sponge for knowledge and adventure, but she never learned to swim.

“We just never had a pool around and my parents and I never had the opportunity to learn to swim while I was young,” Watkins said. “I can dogpaddle, but that’s it.”

Before the crowds started trickling in, the two women — who met at Santa Rosa Junior College when Bordow was teaching a course in electronics for students not working toward a career in electronics — worked on various important movements for safe swimming. Breathing. Blowing bubbles. Learning “the deadman’s float.”

Bordow is also an electronics engineer for Agilent Technologies, a spinoff of Hewlett Packard, in Rohnert Park.

“We’re just going to work on the basics, today,” Bordow said. “This pool is really great. It gives adults, as well as children, the opportunity to learn a skill that may one day save their life.”

A family affair

Jesse Jane Lopez, 10, whose mom, Irais, is co-owner of Irais of the Valley in Calistoga, was hanging out with family friends who drove to Calistoga just to attend the grand opening of the pool — a two-day celebration sponsored by the Calistoga Community Pool Project Committee, a grassroots group that has worked for some 20 years to raise the funds that became the cornerstone for building the pool complex.

“This is the most beautiful thing that’s happened to Calistoga for a long time,” said Isabel Hamilton, whose father is Ivo Semolic, an 87-year-old who has been a resident of Calistoga for 35 years. “I’ve heard about the pool for years and years, and now that it’s here, it’s fantastic, and such an asset to the community.”

Not far from where Hamilton lay with her son PJ and daughter, Gabrielle — who attends Loyola Marymount University, a Catholic university in Los Angeles — soaking up the sun, her daughter Emma, 7, and a friend, Pablo Escalante, soaked up some water in the “kiddie” end of the pool, an area only about 18 inches deep.

It’s only 18 inches, but its deep enough for Katelyn Reeves, 4, and her sister Madelyn, 6, of Calistoga, who are making waves with dad, Dan Reeves — who’s chief of staff for a Los Angeles-based state assemblyman.

The kids slithered like eels from the pool temporarily, joining a gaggle of other kids reaching for various balloon animals and flowers created by Party Marti, a gaily-dressed character from San Francisco. Nearby, Calistoga homegrown musician (and Eagle Scout) Darren O’Brien was singing “California Sky,” a song he wrote as a testimony to the beauty of growing up in a small town.

All the way at the other end of the complex, Stan and Susan Brody watched with admiration as their granddaughter, Alex Brody, 12, performed gymnastics in the air from the pool’s meter-high diving board. Alex is expert swimmer who is a competitive swimmer with the East Bay Stingrays in Antioch.

“She often comes up to visit,” said Susan. “As soon as she saw the diving board she became excited and said, ‘OK, we’re going here, now.’”

Alex took turns flipping and diving from the board with Kirk Keffer, a man of about 30 who is built like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, only more colorful. Keffer is covered with tattoos and dives expertly.

“My wife Alisa and I drove up here with our kids, Kaden and Ava, from Benicia just to go swimming,” he said. “We’d heard about the pool and wanted to check it out. It’s absolutely perfect.”

“I thought, in this sun, the 85-degree temperature of the pool might be a little warm,” Keffer said. “But it’s perfect. We’ll be back.”

That jived with the young Brody’s opinion.

“It is perfect, I have pool at home, so I swim a lot,” she said. “But I don’t have a diving board — that’s my favorite part of the pool. I’m sure I’ll spend a lot of time here.”

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