Raised in Fair Oaks, Sommer Peterson left to forge a career as a big-city restauranteur. She returned home to fashion a dream. Now she’s fighting to keep it alive.   For Sommer Peterson, Fair Oaks always served as a starting point for her ambition. She grew up here, left to find her entrepreneurial footing in the Bay Area, and ultimately returned with a restaurant vision shaped by both hometown roots and hard-earned experience. What she didn’t expect was how close that vision would come to...

Torey Byington is back, and we are grateful. As a 1998 graduate of the University of Michigan, Byington moved from Michigan to Sacramento to work for the Yolo Basin Foundation and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Then her career took her back to Michigan in 2008, to run a residential environmental education school for ten years. By 2017, she and her family missed living in California (her daughter was in college here). When they moved back to our area, they fell in love with...

Our new FOVEC membership chair, Cheryl Firenze, has much in common with other members we've profiled on this website. Like Cheryl, we may seem like newcomers, but many of us grew up in Fair Oaks and surrounding communities and then lived elsewhere for a while before returning to Fair Oaks because we wanted to settle here and share our strong sense of community and traditions. We all love the Village, its celebrations, and one-of-a-kind shops and dining establishments. FOVEC members are also...