No Place Like Home - Page 2

"But I don't like tarantulas," quips Joe, referring to the steep local rise where hikers have reported seeing the giant, fuzzy spiders over the years.

Joe works for Sony Pictures, where he was lead character designer on the second 'Spider-Man: Spider-verse' movie. Before Emi was born, Robyn had a busy career in public relations and marketing. These days, Mom and Dad are a modern work-at-home couple.

"One of the best things about living here," says Joe, "is that Robyn and I can see Emi in her craft room just by looking across the atrium."

Following in her father's artistic footsteps, Emi uses a program on her iPad called Procreate to make her own comic books, and is proud of her doggie creation, 'Pawdres.' "No Dodgers here," quips Dad. "We're from San Diego!"

Despite all their privacy, Eichler worlds can still be small worlds. Just four doors down from the Moshiers is another young family, the Tuckers.

"Our daughters go to school together, that's how Robyn and I met," says Stephanie Tucker. "I'm technically a stay-at-home mom—yay!—though I do fiber arts work on the side."

Husband Brad works as an independent contractor, making TV commercials. Prior to the pandemic, he had been commuting "59 minutes," as he puts it, to and from Santa Monica. Now he enjoys working from home.

As a serious ham radio hobbyist, Brad was surprised to find a kindred spirit nearby. "There's actually an old-timer down the street with a big ham radio antenna in his backyard. Didn't even notice it for the first five years I was here," says Brad.

The two young families enjoy their mutual friendship. "Robyn and Joe were kind of our 'Covid lockdown' buddies," says Stephanie. "We'd have dinners in their backyard. It was nice to have that outlet, since it was so hard not seeing people then, and not to be able to socialize."

The Tuckers moved from Pasadena to Thousand Oaks in 2011, and have two children, Max and Scout. "Our daughter, Scout, has a pet leopard gecko we named Dizzy," Stephanie says, laughing. "It's short for 'Discount,' because we got him on sale."

Scout wants to be a photographer when she grows up, and brother Max hopes to become an archeologist. Their Eichler serves them well, providing plenty of space for the family's models, crafts, and interests.

"Our home is a Claude Oakland design, model VC-584…with the atrium in the middle of the house," says Brad, the Eichler historian of the family. "I ordered the floor plans from UC Berkeley; they made them all and printed them out for us."

With schools, churches, restaurants, shopping, a country club, golf course, and parks and botanical gardens within minutes from the neighborhood, residents are in a position to enjoy lots of nearby activities and amenities. A special highlight is the half-hour drive south to the beaches at Malibu.

One of the last subdivisions to be built before Joe Eichler sold Eichler Homes to new owners, who then went into bankruptcy, Thousand Oaks was constructed in phases between 1964 and 1967. The first homes were billed by Eichler as 'Conejo Village,' named after the local valley of the same name. The later, much smaller section of Eichlers was marketed as 'expo/west Homes.'