A Legacy Rooted in Giving

Continuing a 90-year family tradition, Candy Pelissero helps connect a new generation to the redwoods

Candy Pelissero says she grew up a “typical ranch kid” in the 1950s. Her family raised cattle and grew citrus near Santa Barbara, California, on land that stretched from the mountains to the sea. On horseback rides with her two brothers, she would explore the nearby creek, surrounded by tiger lilies and buzzing dragonflies. When her grandmother visited, they would take “wonderful walks” and discuss the flowers, trees, birds, insects, and snakes they met along the way. The family property was even home to a few redwoods that Pelissero’s parents had planted. “It was a magical place,” she remembers. “I was surrounded by nature.” 

Her relationship with Save the Redwoods League also began when she was a mere sapling. When Pelissero was eight years old, her mother began donating to the League in her children’s names on their birthdays. “We would get a little certificate, which we thought was really cool,” says Pelissero. “It became an annual event. And when we grew up, we were expected to continue it.” 

“When you learn about these forests when you’re young, you want to try to preserve them.” 

Pelissero’s commitment to giving grew from this philanthropic seed, but her family’s support of the League stretches back even further. In 1935, her grandmother and her great-aunt, Caroline Canfield Spalding and Florence C. Whitney, donated $50,000 to the League in honor of their late father, Charles A. Canfield, a successful prospector who had been involved in several charitable education and environmental causes. The donation led to the creation of the Canfield Grove in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. 

When Pelissero was a teenager, the family took a road trip north to visit the grove. The ancient coast redwoods were nothing like the young redwoods on her family’s ranch. “I was not only astonished by the truly extraordinary height and width of the trees, but by the absence of sound,” she says. “Everything in the environment seemed muted.” 

Decades later, after retiring from a career in nonprofit management and education, she felt compelled to do more for these majestic trees than simply “send a donation every year.” Today, Pelissero and her husband, Brian Larsen, are focused on helping a new generation experience the awe she first felt in the Canfield Grove. Starting in 2018, the couple helped fund the League’s elementary school programs in San Jose’s Oak Grove School District. Their goal was to introduce young people from underrepresented and low-income communities to the power of the redwoods.

“Everyone has seen a tree,” says Pelissero. “But until you have experienced the majesty of the redwoods, you can’t imagine how insignificant but energized you can feel.”

Pelissero and Larsen have joined several field trips to a state park in the Santa Cruz Mountains and saved the drawings and thank-you letters they received. Despite the school district being less than an hour’s drive from the park, many students had never wandered through a redwood forest. In their letters, the kids shared that they found the trees “amazing” and plan to “work on saving them.” One thank-you note in particular underscored the whole point of the League’s education program: “If I never went on that field trip, I would have never, ever seen a redwood tree in my whole life. I am very, very grateful.”

Pelissero believes most people understand the need to protect the redwoods but fail to realize how critical it is to connect more young people to these irreplaceable forests. “We feel very strongly that this could help save us environmentally,” she explains. “The redwoods are commanding teachers. When you learn about these trees when you’re young, you want to try to preserve them. You realize you’re losing a precious thing.”