Plenty of mothers know how to kiss away boo-boos, but few can
rehabilitate you after a heart transplant. Local resident Betty
Doherty can, although she’s more inclined to spend the afternoon
tie-dying T-shirts with her two sons and the neighborhood kids.
Hollister- Plenty of mothers know how to kiss away boo-boos, but few can rehabilitate you after a heart transplant. Local resident Betty Doherty can, although she’s more inclined to spend the afternoon tie-dying T-shirts with her two sons and the neighborhood kids.
“I love being a stay-at-home mom,” said the former nurse. “I know a lot of people have to work to support their families, and I know a lot prefer that. But being involved in my boys’ schooling and playing with them is the greatest.”
Doherty, a Thousand Oaks native, received her Bachelor Degree in Biology from Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo and completed her nurse’s training at Cuesta College. She took on a job working with heart transplant patients at Stanford Hospital, which would prove to be more than just a way to pay the bills.
“Nursing is hard work,” she said. “But I love science, and I love the chance to be a one-on-one teacher. These patients were so eager to learn after they received the transplant, and you could see them improve instantaneously. It’s an amazing thing. After you take a heart, you know to take care of it. Another person has died, another family is grieving, but you have a second chance at life.”
She married her cousin’s roommate Chris Doherty after he proposed at the Salvador Dali Museum in Florida. The couple spent a few years traveling to exotic places like Australia and Trinidad. They settled in Hollister seven years ago when Chris got a job as a chemical engineer in Watsonville. Their second son Rory was born about the same time.
San Benito County’s countryside has given Doherty a chance to grow as a photographer, her passion since high school.
“I have the two best subjects in the world right here,” she said with an affectionate gesture towards Rory and his older brother Connor.
Raising two boys has also given her an excuse to pursue her other passion.
“I absolutely love Legos,” she admitted. “I do the huge models. The boys are more creative with them and will probably lose interest in a few years, but I’m fanatic about them.”
One other passion takes the edge off these nerdy interests: Last April she biked a century – bicyclist code for a 100 mile ride – through Santa Clara County.
“It was hard, but beautiful,” she said. “And at least I can say I did it.”
She and her husband are regular attendees at the Great Western Bicycle Rally in Paso Robles, an annual Memorial weekend event that draws over 2,000 bicycling enthusiasts. Doherty says it’s not unlike Hollister’s biker rally, although “you get a little bit different crowd.”
When the couple celebrates their tenth anniversary next weekend, they’ll have traded in the Carribbean cruises for something a bit more their style – a week-long cycling tour of Northern California. They’ll also celebrate another milestone: The vacation will mark the longest time they’ve spent away from their kids.
Doherty makes a point of staying deeply involved in her children’s lives, volunteering in their classroom once a week and organizing fundraising activities.
“School are bogged down in bureaucratic garbage,” she said. “There’s a lot of fuss over who does what and who gets paid which amount. I go to make sure my boys are taught. Some of these kids, I don’t know how they make it, because they can’t get support at home. It makes a teacher’s job a lot harder, and I want to help.
“I take my kids to church every Sunday, no matter how much they fight it, because I believe it’s important they’re raised that way,” she said. “I help at school, no matter how annoying they think I am sometimes. These things are really important to me. They’ll be grown up and in college one day, I can go back to work then, but for now I love what I do at home.”
