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Show Vital Statistics Favorite things to do: road trips, spending time with friends Favorite reading: "The New Yorker" magazine Favorite foods: Farmers' Market fresh Animal companions: www.parkrecord.com B-15 Jefferson an SAT/ Park City Baker spreads sunshine at the Morning Ray behind and learned to cook for everybody." Within a year she'd taken another cooking job with the Young Adult Conservation Corps in Alaska. "I cooked for 50 people at a remote U.S. Forest Service camp," says McGee. "It was a beautiful setting with great people and great fun. That's By STEVE PHILLIPS where 1 met my true love, Paul Woods." Record contributing writer The two teenagers were a match and soon settled together in Juneau, Alaska, where McGee refined Paula McGee got the conservation message early her culinary skills at the Fiddlehead Restaurant, one in life. "To me, it was always a no-brainer,'? she of the town's finest eateries. "This is where I started exclaims. "The Earth is our home and we need to baking." she says. The newly-acquired talent was a protect it for ourselves and future generations. It's as harbinger of what was to come in her adopted Park simple as that." City home. That's why. on any Tuesday, you'll find her at the After two years they returned to the lower 48, Park City Recycle Center, keeping the books or eventually marrying in July of 1984 in a California doing any one of the dozens of other decidedly dirty redwood forest just south of the Oregon border. "I jobs it takes to rid the city of the tons of recyclable thought then and still do that the redwoods are the trash Parkites generate every day. most special place on earth, says McGee. "We had It's not her main claim to fame, but a noteworthy an intimate wedding in a campground and catered it sidebar to the story of this talented, industrious ourselves, or course." woman who, with her husband Paul, owned and Thirsty for new adventures, the young couple operated one of the most successful cafes on Main took jobs in Antarctica. Paul went first and she was Street for many years. The Morning Ray was a to follow two months later. When her job offer was locals' Mecca for a decade until McGee sold it in withdrawn, newlywed McGee spent a forlorn four 2000. months stateside before traveling to New Zealand to She was born in Chicago one of Livier and meet her husband. "It turned out great and we had Thomas McGce's four daughters. She attended a wonderful six-week honeymoon there before comBrett Harte Elementary in Hyde Park. ing home. She remembers childhood trips to Mexico to visit Back in Alaska again, the couple began searching family. "I can't believe my parents had the guts to for new places to ply their culinary skills. 'I think I DAVID RYDER/PARK RECORD drive from Chicago all the way to the interior of sent to every state for information. The state of Mexico with four young daughters and my grand- Utah sent information back in about a week and we Paula McGee owned and managed the Morning Ray Cafe on Main Street for over a decade. mother. Luz Maria Alvarez de Padilla. "This was in were hooked on Park City," says McGee. She's passionate about her work at the Park City Recycle Center. the days before minivans, not to mention seatbelts." They arrived in Park City in 1985 and McGee was she laughs. quickly offered a cooking job at a prestigious restau- ness, "Park City has lost the ability to foster young, baker at Whole Foods. "I really like punching a At age 10, McGee moved with her family across rant in Deer Valley. "I showed up for my first day of undercapitalized entrepreneurs on Main Street." clock now," she says. I go to work and come home the country to San Diego and later attended Earl work but, when I refused Locals and stress-free." Warren Junior High School. As a teenager in trendy to remove my new nose tourists alike flocked McGee and her husband recently moved to southern California, she developed an early and ring, they fired me," she Coalville. "It wasn't planned really." she explains. "Park City has lost the ability to foster to the Morning Ray. abiding environmental conscience and a taste for the laments. "I moped McGee and her hus- "We just started looking around to make an investemerging counter-culture of her generation. around for a few days young, undercapitalized entrepreneurs band were thrust into ment and found a house we really liked, We've been "I remember seeing Bob Marley perform live at San but soon got a job baking the heady, stress-laden here a couple of years now and just love it. The Diego State when I was 17," she recalls. She pastries for the Eating on Main Street and that's unfortunate." world of restaurateurs. town is a lot more laidback and our daughter loves enjoyed doing bcadwork, playing the recorder and Establishment and They bought a house in her school." They still maintain a strong connection listening to good jazz. - Paula McGee Old Town, Cisero's. had daugh- to Park City and have kept their Old Town home. She was a bright student, but restless and anxious Park City was a town ter Liliama. now 11 McGee still finds time to work a few hours a week to see the world. She stormed through high school, ripe with opportunity in years old, and walked at the Park City Recycle Center she and her husband graduating when she was just 16. the mid-1980s, a place where intrepid entrepreneurs Her passion for the environment soon led her to with a little money could still make a go of it. Within to work every day. The "Ray' reigned supreme for helped create almost 20 years ago. It's still a passion a job with the California Conservation Corps. She two years, she and her husband opened the original over 10 years until, ready to take a break from man- of hers. "Like I said, it's a no-brainer," she reminds us. worked there for a year, first at Mt. San Jacinto. near Morning Ray, a diminutive Main Street nook on the agement, the couple sold out in 2000. For the next several years McGee continued to Idlewild, and later in northern California at Del ground floor of the renovated Imperial Hotel. They Norte on the mouth of the Klamath River. quickly outgrew the place and moved to a larger run the bakery side of the business, catering and Steve Phillips is a Park City-based writer, actor and balproducing fine pastries for a variety of Park City loon pilot/instructor. If you would like to suggest a "It was there, in the heart of the redwoods, that I building just down the street. Business boomed. businesses. In 2006, a burned out McGee walked Summit County resident for a profile, please email him started cooking professionally." she chronicles. "I "We couldn't do today what we did then and I was too young to go out with fire crew, so I staged Ihink that's unfortunate." McGee observes with sad- away from business ownership and took a job as a at stevep263Wcomcast.net. 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