Dace Starkweather is our singing cowboy.  A brief look at his timeline takes him from a family farm in Illinois to the University of Colorado at Boulder, on to another ranch as head wrangler and staff manager for seven years, then to Biola University for a quick master’s degree and now to VVR.  Dace shares the general manager job with Ben, and his focus is recruiting, hiring and managing our wonderful staff.

Bill Backer (pronounced “Baker”) is our properties manager and is responsible for the facilities and equipment of the ranch.  (In other words, for everything that squeaks, leaks or breaks.)  He is a graduate of Southwest State University and holds a degree in biology.  Bill gained his practical hands-on experience at Schwan’s Foods in Minnesota and YMCA Camp Eberhart in Michigan.  As our resident artisan, he builds a lot of our furniture, and with his well-equipped woodshop at the ranch, he’s into authentic reproductions (or is that an oxymoron?).

Stephanie Wilson is another year-round member of our staff and is responsible for reservations (among other things).  She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and early on developed a passion for the outdoors, which led to a degree in agricultural and managerial economics from the University of California at Davis.  Like so many of our staff, Steph has had a variety of work experiences ranging from training horses for Ventura Farms to running our dining room and our teen program, not to mention raising her daughters Maggie and newborn Ella. Email Steph at reservations@vistaverde.com

Charlie Cammer is our agriculture manager.  That means he’s responsible for preserving and enhancing this beautiful place—meadows, pastures, forest and such.  Charlie is originally from the Catskill Mountains in New York and grew up in the resort business.  After obtaining a degree in hotel management and working for several large motel chains, he fled to Colorado and fell in love.  After twelve years of managing a ranch down the road, Charlie joined us nine years ago to apply his talents up our way, and we are still delighted.

Dorit Iacobsohn is our summer office girl extraordinaire.  She’s a California girl, going to school in UC Berkeley, where she’s majoring in Political Economy of Industrial Societies.  Dorit has copyedited a New York Times bestseller, served as Managing Editor of the International Affairs Journal at Berkeley, and worked for a congressman. In her downtime, you’ll probably see her hanging around the barn trying to get in some quality time with the horses.

Chase Miller epitomizes the term “ranch hand.”  He has worked for rodeos, stacked hay, planted crops, maintained machinery, exercised horses, replaced windows, and the list goes on.  Currently, he is working toward a degree in Outdoor Recreation and Resource Management at Indiana University.  We are extremely excited to have a guy like Chase around for the summer.  He can fix all of the things the wranglers break!

Matt Augustyn joins us from the good ol’ South.  Matt lives in Alpharetta, Georgia and is a Business Administration/Finance major at the University of Georgia in Athens.  He is leaving the land of sweet tea and home cookin’ to come out West and be a ranch hand during his last college summer.  Having studied abroad in New Zealand, this won’t be Matt’s first time out of the South.