Scholar Opera

While working at the Burlingame Apple Store early in my Apple career, I often commuted to work from Mountain View to Burlingame and back on the Caltrain railroad line. One Sunday afternoon, after getting off work, I walked over to the station, and when the southbound train arrived, it was chock-a-block full of passengers. I looked up and down the aisle of the car I boarded, and saw a shopping bag on a seat with a woman sitting by the window there. I asked her if I could displace her shopping bag and take the seat; she said, "Sure!"

As I sat down, she said to me: "You used to sing with us 30 years ago, didn't you?" The woman turned out to be Barbara Siegel, who owned a yogurt business and was a big supporter of something that was known as Scholar Opera. I sang in its choruses, and that's how Barbara had gotten to know me then. Small world!