Editor’s note — Recently we invited readers to send in their nominations for “Herald Heroes,” an effort to recognize the heroics of people doing great things behind the scenes. We then pursued the nearly impossible task of winnowing the list to five finalists and one winner among them. In the coming weeks, we will feature a different finalist each Sunday, acknowledging the good work they’ve contributed on behalf of our community and finishing with a feature on our winning Herald Hero, who will receive a $500 award.

MARINA >> A mother of eight children from ages 7 through 25 and a dedicated volunteer for numerous organizations, Erica Graham has kept her schedule busy with volunteer work, parenting and furthering her own education. Ever since her eldest son came to Marina High as an athlete in 2014, she has stayed heavily involved with the high school and is a passionate advocate for enriching experiences for all children.

Graham was nominated by her husband, Michael, who said his wife’s “commitment transcends personal interest; she actively improves the community’s well-being … There’s no doubt that Erica Graham leads with heart and dedication, making her an invaluable asset to Marina and an inspiration to all who have the privilege to know her.”

Graham’s leadership roles have spanned several nonprofit organizations, including long-term contributions to the Marina Pony Baseball Softball League, Marina High Parents, Teachers and Students Association and the Marina Youth Soccer Association for 12 years.

While Graham loves all the work she does, she said it is a significant balancing act between parenting, volunteering and furthering her education at Cal State Monterey Bay. She is currently studying business administration, with a concentration in entrepreneurship. Graham has been on the dean’s list since returning to CSUMB this year after taking a break when she had her two youngest sons.

Graham, who is a chef, and her husband, a biologist, own and operate Monterey Bay Seaweeds, a land-based seaweed farm in Moss Landing. They cultivate various edible seaweeds in tanks, selling them to high-end restaurants.

“I kind of did it backward,” Graham said. “We started our business and then I’m in school for it and I did all the stuff with the nonprofits, but it really has helped me to kind of refine some of the skills that I learned along the way and it has helped to understand how to do them easier.”

She said managing everything is challenging. “I don’t sleep very much and I really have to stay organized and do a lot of planning, because if not, I can fall behind and I really don’t like disappointing anybody, and I especially don’t like disappointing myself.”

Graham has managed to pull it all off, emphasising the importance of stopping sometimes and taking time to throw a ball in the backyard with her kids or take them to the park.

“It’s always a struggle and I feel like I’m balancing it OK,” she said. “I would never know if I’m doing the perfect job or not, but I just try to do the best with each different task and as long as I’m completing them and moving forward, I feel like everything else will be fine. I make mistakes along the way, but for the most part, it all works out in the end and everyone’s pretty happy.”

Graham has always tried to stay involved with what her kids are doing, “without hovering too tightly over them.” She has helped with events while her kids were in elementary school, helping organize things like pumpkin patches and fundraising for the fifth-grade science camp at Olson Elementary.

“It was pretty much just helping wherever I can, just for the experience and really giving back to the community,” she said. “It just takes a little bit of time and what you get out of it is so much more than what you put into it.”

Graham won the 2023 Marina Woman of the Year award from the Marina Foundation, which supports programs that benefit youth, teens and seniors in the community. Graham said when they were listing all the things she’d done “I’m like, oh, I forgot I did that. I forgot I did that too. But I just tried to help out wherever I can.”

Graham said she’s scaled back a bit on the number of organizations she volunteers with, but the experiences and skills she’s learned have been invaluable. She was able to learn “a lot of the basics” with fundraising and networking.

“It’s all played a huge role in what I’m doing now and makes it a little easier to be able to do all those things, because I do have a lot of connections,” she said.

Currently she is focusing on the athletic booster club at Marina High, where she is the vice president and treasurer of the program. “I pretty much run all of the daily everything,” she said with a laugh.

As the treasurer, she keeps up with all of the program’s funds, handling all of the collections and organization for any student fundraisers. She also purchases new uniforms and equipment and is “always trying to find a good grant to write.”

“I’m always looking for any way to get involved, get our kids into different situations where they get real-life experience,” Graham said.

Graham spent most of her childhood on the Peninsula, after moving to the area because her dad was in the military. Growing up in the area and raising her kids here, Graham has seen Marina High and the surrounding community expand — something she said was a highlight to all of her time volunteering.

“My kids haven’t known anything different than being out on the fields and being active in the community. It’s been nice to see the growth happen,” she said. “Hopefully we can move toward more fields and whatnot for our kids to play on, cause it’s played such an important role in my kids’ lives, especially my older ones.”

When she was in high school, there was no Marina High (it opened in 2006). Instead, Graham went to school in Seaside. When her kids started coming to Marina High, it had about 200 students.

Graham has had the opportunity to watch the student population grow to about 700 as Marina High constructs new buildings, creates programs and improves over time, she said. Graham attributed the construction of the gym as a big boon for the high school, but also highlighted the culinary and health programs, where her daughter learned to do CPR.

“It’s really exciting to see that that’s the direction we’re heading in and that my younger kids are gonna get to experience this amazing high school that’s just gonna keep having that build up by the time they get here.”

For Graham, her children have played a big part in her motivation for volunteer work. She said when her oldest kids started sports, she was a single parent and was on scholarship to afford their sports.

“When you are on scholarship, you have to do volunteer work. And so I very quickly learned that was a possibility for me. There were only four of them at the time, and so I learned that that was an option and my kids could still be involved. At the same time, that’s when I learned it’s actually kind of fun to volunteer,” she said.

Seeing the return from the time and effort Graham was putting in with volunteering was a big reward for her. The more she learned, the more she wanted to do.

“It was just making an impact for not just my kids, but all the kids in the community,” she said. “It kind of just made me want to do more and it was really like a challenge for me, and I love a good challenge.”

“It’s kind of shaped them and molded them into who they are now,” she said. Recently, her daughter did a college application and while Graham was reading through it, she found that it helped her daughter to understand her role as a community member.

Graham said she used to feel what she was doing too much volunteer work and “I was taking away from the time that I had with my kids.”

But reading her daughter’s application “was a really big moment for me, seeing that everything that I’ve put into my community, even my own children, get it, and they’re ready to give it back. She’s come a few times home from college and her first thing was ‘hey, are we working the snack bar, do we have games?’ and so it’s kind of cool to see that that’s happening.”

Graham was especially grateful to get to do everything with her kids.

“There’s only so much time in a day and the fact that we get to make such a big impact together, because they’re always by my side whatever I do, it’s just rewarding personally,” she said. “If I could get everybody to rally with me, like the world would be a better place. It would just be different and it would be better and we’d all get to enjoy a better place.”