[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer]
The Petika family, from left, Dan and Cindy; Regan, 8; Bernie, 9; Danielle, 14; and dog, Andy, in their Trinity home. The Petikas, who bought their 2,150-square-foot home in the summer of 2000, are all about kids.
TRINITY - Four years ago when Cindy Petika first saw the mellow, T-shaped street in Foxwood where her family would eventually buy a home, she was struck by something that seemed out of the ordinary, almost luxurious.
In fact, it made her a little wistful.
"There were kids everywhere," she recalls. "They were playing basketball, playing in the street, playing with each other. I called my husband and, these were my exact words, I said, "We're all moving to Trinity.' "
The Petikas, who bought their 2,150-square-foot house in the summer of 2000, are all about kids.
They transformed their upstairs great room into a kid friendly space, papering the wall with a gigantic map of the world - a big-screen version of the kind grammar-school teachers used to "roll down" like a shade, Petika jokes. As a result, their daughters - Danielle, 14, Bernadette, 9, and Regan, 8 - already have a good grasp of geography.
"It comes in so handy especially with everything that's going on in the world," Petika says.
The space is equipped with a karaoke machine, dart board, electric keyboard, a wall-length chalkboard marked up with math problems, even a kiddie cocktail table (her mother-in-law's butcher block kitchen table that Petika cut the legs off of and shellacked "so that no one could destroy it").
The room even came with a toy closet: a feature that sold Petika on the house.
"It's not air-conditioned, but who cares?" she says.
They're also a family of serious runners: kids and parents belong to the Strider's Club at the Gill's Family YMCA in West Pasco. Running trophies and medals earned their own display space in the playroom, as did school paintings that are cleverly strung across a cord with wooden clothespins.
The Petikas took five years to doodle over ideas for the interior of their dream house.
After returning to Florida from Chicago where Dan Petika, now a financial consultant for Smith Barney, was a vice president of operations for the Hooters chain, the family lived with Dan's mother in Palm Harbor.
"I love my mother-in-law; I love her to death," says Cindy Petika, now 36. "But it still wasn't my own house."
She's proud of her decorating, from the wispy, welcoming grapevine wreath on the front door to the earthy shades of taupe that she has managed to carry through the house. Even the wallpaper and window treatments in the kitchen match like soul mates.
"You can't really tell what style it is," she says of the four-bedroom, three-bath home they bought for $163,000. "Though it's not contemporary, it's traditional, yet eclectic."
Petika doesn't just decorate with splash.
She made another kind of statement in Foxwood by starting the neighborhood Crime Watch group. She also launched the Sly Fox, a down-home community newsletter that's more a newspaper complete with bylines and advertising. There's an editor, Web master and plenty of neighbors writing stories about how to make over a mailbox, control stress or avoid computer viruses. It features the occasional humor column (including a particularly droll one about middle-aged Barbie), letters to the editor and the obligatory Florida story about a 10-foot alligator lurking in a neighborhood pond.
"It (the Sly Fox) really grew out of the Crime Watch program," Petika remembers. "My idea was for people to get to know what was going on the community. Why should you care about your neighbor three doors down if you don't know them?"
Petika, who describes herself to a stranger as "medium height, Irish-Portuguese with dark hair," smiles with an enthusiasm as contagious as a summer cold. Another neighbor, whom she calls "a real doer," caught the volunteerism bug from Petika and launched the community's yearly Spring Fling and fall festivals.
Over a salad at Ruby Tuesday, she talks about her volunteerism in Foxwood, about how she and Dan and another neighbor recently organized a "by-invitation" network referral group for people who live and work in the Trinity area.
Trinity is among the largest communities being developed in the Tampa Bay area, according to Rose Residential Reports, which tracks local new-home sales. Prices at Trinity begin at about $140,000. In Foxwood, property is going for about $115 to $125 a square foot.
"Another big draw for us was that Trinity has an elementary school," Petika says.
In fact, the family has already invested in their Foxwood home, adding cherry hardwood floors and a caged, in-ground pool last year. They also extended the roof for more covered lanai space. They installed patio ceiling fans for year-round comfort: "We're out here all the time," she says. "We even watch storms come in."
Dan, 42, laughs at Cindy's reference to his "Mac-Daddy," an enormous stainless steel gas grill she bought him last year for Father's Day.
The couple met two decades ago in northern California. Cindy was 18 and working in a restaurant that Dan, who holds a degree in restaurant management, had just opened with his brother and uncle.
Two years later, Cindy and Dan were married on a cliff overlooking Lake Tahoe. Outside their home in Foxwood, they look over a stretch of white picket fence and conservation area, a sliver of wetlands where they see plenty of birds, gators and turtles. They've planted an orange tree in the back of the house and added a basketball hoop on the driveway.
The best part is that when their girls go out to play with the scads of other neighborhood kids, they don't have to worry about speeding cars.
"It's the place to raise a family - it really is a community," Petika says. "The community I never had growing up."
- My House is a feature that profiles the people responsible for Pasco's housing boom. Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com
