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Community Corner

Neighbors Remember Young Steve Jobs

Los Altos residents Gene Tankersley and Catherine Jacobs lived near Steve Jobs and share memories of their experiences with him.

When World War II vet Gene Tankersley bought his first home in 1953, he never could have imagined he'd be watching one of the world's biggest icons grow up just across the street.

"With Steve, we had no indication that he was gonna be the person that he turned out to be," he said.

Tankersley, 84, still lives on the same street - directly across from Steve Jobs's childhood home where he grew up with his adoptive parents, Clara and Paul Jobs, along with his sister, Patti Jobs.

Both smokers, Clara and Jobs died of lung cancer; Clara Jobs died of lung cancer. Paul married , who still lives in the house. 

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The neighbor, who was a principal at Walter Hayes Elementary School in Palo Alto for 35 years before retiring, described Steve as a scruffy teenager who would walk around barefoot in torn Levi's. But he spruced himself up when venture capitalists came looking for him and started wearing suits, before transitioning to his turtlenecks and jeans. 

"We didn't know what Steve was into, although we had heard that he had gone to India at one time to find himself," he said

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One day Steve came over and asked them to come to his garage. The Tankersleys asked him what he had and he said, "Well, this is going to be a personal computer." 

Tankersley's wife, JoAnn, asked what she could do with it. Jobs said, "You can put your recipes on it. You can pull 'em up immediately," to which she responded "I like my card recipes!'"

Asked if he thinks his parents were a big influence in Steve's life, Tankersley said it's hard to say. "I think Steve is the kind of guy who did his own thing," he said.

Surprisingly, there were no flowers or tributes brought to Marilyn's home, although there were a swarm of people after the news broke, he said.

Tankersley said he believes reports that say Steve Jobs had wanted to go to college but dropped out because his father, a machinist, could not afford to pay tuition. According to Tankersley, the Reed College dropout later audited some classes at Stanford. Jobs' mother was a stay-at-home mom. 

Nevertheless, Paul was supportive of Steve's interests. "Paul was very good about helping the kids with whatever they wanted to do. He built the workbench, built it up for them," he said.

According to reports, Steve Jobs' parents decided to move to Los Altos because the schools were better. Jobs graduated from Homestead High School, where he shared a class with Tankersley's eldest daughter. 

"It really shook me up. We knew he was very sick and had been for a very long time. But when we heard the news and saw it on the TV and everything, I just really kind of felt all choked up about it," he said. "He's the same age as our kids, and you don't like to see people die like that, and that young. And know what he could have done if had continued to live..." 

Catherine Jacobs, now a teacher at Homestead High School, was another neighbor who was asked by Jobs to help set up the new Apple office. Jacobs, who spoke with Patch shortly after Jobs resigned from Apple, had her own business in Los Gatos at the time.

"He was running around telling us we could put recipes on this new machine he was inventing, you know, this personal computer. That did not impress us." 

So she asked him how much her salary would be, and Jobs said he could only offer her company stock.

And I said, 'Oh no, I can't have any phony shares. I have to be paid.' And he said OK. And that was it. 

"I don't regret it, I do not regret it because I enjoy teaching so much," she said.

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