By the last two decades of the millennium, the anomaly of being a subsistence fisherman in the Bay Area must've made some people furrow their brows in wonder. Dick still ran the docks and fished. He liked to catch his own food, whether that meant dropping a line or a crab trap, or hunting a buck in the hills of Mendocino. This wasn't sport. It was survival. He skinned, cleaned, and preserved everything himself and didn't waste a thing. Penny maintained very productive garden terraces on the side of the levee. Together they were pretty much still living off the land as Dick's family had been doing for almost half a century. Now, though, they were surrounded by some of the most densely populated and expensive real estate in the country.

Dick supplemented their income with some carpentry and other odd jobs between runs of salmon or crab season. Part of one decade he was a union electrician, in another decade he was a commercial diver. O'Neill still kept him on as wetsuit design consultant and fitting model. He shaped a few boards, too. Nothing kept him away from his family long. He was never idle nor dry for very long either.

Penny, often closer to home, saw that their awareness of nature wasn't being shared by all members of the community. Pollution had killed off much of the steelhead run in their creek, hotels and developments were being planned for their beach, and there just wasn't any coastal awareness being taught in the local schools. She rolled up her sleeves and began preaching what she'd been practicing her whole adult life. Somehow she struck a chord, and the community responded. Working hard through different groups, she successfully opposed commercial beachfront developments, helped clean up the creek, brought a fingerling program to her local school, and created Ocean Week, a coastal awareness science program for the local public elementary schools. For this last project, she was awarded the Smithsonian Ocean Hero Award. Ocean Week continues to build community awareness, years now after its inception.

In other areas, the manna of these gentle folks has escaped notice. Over the last couple of years there have been a flurry of major surfing-themed historical or surfing-themed artistic exhibitions in the Bay Area. Local and national publications, including TSJ, reviewed and recommended these events, such as "Surf Trip," wholeheartedly including lots of non-surfing reviewers. That these things happened in Northern California struck no one as odd. That they wouldn't have been nearly as authentic or interesting without the considerable store of Keating family memorabilia and its legacy was known only by a few.

During the writing of this piece, it has been hard to catch the Keatings on the phone with all that they have going on. One week it was production of the Seniors Surf Event, put on by the Surfing For Life producers, but run with help from the Keatings. Next, it was the Uncle Dick's Surf Festival, again put on by friends at the NorCal Surf Shop, and the whole Keating family (Incidentally, Dick won both events). Before all that, it was salmon season. Dick is also an on-call judge in the Men Who Ride Mountains contest at Marverick's and if O'Neill calls he might have to…well, you get the idea.

I found that the only sure way to see them, was to…see them. I would get in my truck and drive up the coast to their house and usually find them tinkering or doing something outside away from the phone. Whenever I've done this, I've been greeted with a warm smile and lots of aloha. To see the way they work in harmony with the elements of land and sea is gratifying and in a way comforting. The contrast with the mad rush on the other side of the dunes makes for a disconcerting understanding of how tenuous and fragile their existence really is. You just know, nevertheless, they're going to make it, because, as Camille likes to say, "We were raised on vitamin sea."