Modern day woman

Tis the season at the Benedetti-Petnic house, adorned in Halloween finery. Pumpkins, spiders and monsters greet visitors who enter under an arch of tiny orange and purple lights into a gracious vintage Petaluma home that is lovingly remodeled to suit owner Gina Benedetti-Petnic’s specifications, and as an architectural engineer, she knew exactly how to achieve a makeover that suited her growing family.

“We had one bathroom upstairs when we moved in,” she recalls, “and I knew we were going to have to redo this kitchen one day. I got exactly what I wanted and got a house that suits my family and me.”

Despite his “strict, Old World-Italian upbringing” and very “traditional attitudes toward women and their roles in society,” Benedetti-Petnic cites her father, Gene Benedetti, as her inspiration to go to school and become an engineer.

“He was a person of strong convictions and one of them was that he was a huge advocate of education,”she said. “It was a challenge for him, raising two sons and four daughters, but he ‘did what he said’ and was the strongest advocate for me in what I wanted. It killed him that (after graduation) I worked in the Alaska oil fields and on Texas drilling rigs as a woman.”

A turning point in Bene-detti-Petnic’s life came when she met her husband, Jim.

“I was an avowed single woman,”she said. “I had a career that I loved. I was confident and full of myself. We met on an oil rig construction platform for what would become the largest offshore oil rig platform in Texas at that time, the Bulwinkle. We had been studiously avoiding each other, but there was a lot of publicity around this project, and they decided to get two of the younger engineers out on the platform. We had helicopters flying around filming us.”

Of meeting, she said, “I fell like no woman has ever fallen, for this man. He really changed my reality. He is the sweetest man I’ve ever met, and what a great dad!”

Benedetti-Petnic found her greatest challenge came in “balancing my work and my family, from my first pregnancy 20 years ago.”

She found the solution at first by “having a few years on my own. I had my own consulting business and I could bring the kids along if I needed.”

She re-entered the workforce about 10 years ago and cites the St. Vincent High School gymnasium as her favorite project.

Asked what is the craziest thing she has ever done, she replied, “While driving out an ice road in Alaska, I saw an Arctic fox. I stopped the truck and jumped out and just slowly walked up to it. We were nose to nose. Someone did take a picture and I do have it here somewhere.”

Since then, she’s been very busy as a project manager with CSW/Stuber-Stroeh Engineering Group in Novato, where “we bring our own clients and see each project through from start to finish. Benedetti-Petnic brings her expertise to a favorite community group, Rebuilding Together (formerly known as Christmas in April), where she serves as a house captain.

“We have people with financial need, who are elderly or disabled somehow, that can’t take care of their homes. They’d be forced to leave, their homes red-tagged by the health department or the fire marshal and they are nominated or they can self-nominate for help. We fund-raise and ask for donations and volunteers, then we go into the home and assess the scope of work that can be done in one day. The larger the crew, of course, the more we can get done. I love this work!” she enthuses.

Talk about Petaluma, and you’ll really hear what Benedetti loves. “I went away to college and traveled around the country. I chose to come back and raise my family here because I just think the world of this community. I think it is a singularly amazing place because of the people who live here.”

(Contact Lynn Schnitzer at argus@arguscourier.com)