Xari was six years old when she came to a CuriOdyssey camp. One memory that sticks out is the bright orange camp t-shirt she got, with an owl printed on the front, a small detail that’s stayed with her all these years.

“There were three moments that really stuck with me,” she says. An animal handler let campers get up close to a snake and a hawk. Staff walked the group out along the mud banks near Coyote Point at low tide, a spot she still visits whenever she’s back in town. And on a behind-the-scenes tour, she came face to face with the river otters, an encounter she still remembers vividly today.

She only attended camp for that one summer. “I’m always wishing I could go back,” she says. Her family found the camp through school, and a discounted rate made it possible for her to attend, the same access CuriOdyssey’s scholarship campers rely on today.

From Camper to Monthly Donor

Now in her late twenties, Xari lives in Los Angeles, where she works at Kaiser and is studying public health. Her wife is finishing a Master’s program at Cal State Long Beach, the reason the couple moved south in the first place.

The decision to start giving came from an unexpected place: leaving Northern California’s trails and open space behind. “I wanted to make sure that stewardship [of the land] was being taken care of,” she explains. When she thought about which organization to support, it came down to CuriOdyssey or a nature magazine. Her own history at camp settled it.

Why give monthly instead of a single gift? “Truthfully, it’s just something I can afford in manageable increments,” Xari says. It’s a habit she’s carried into her giving more broadly as she tends to pick one organization and commit to a meaningful, steady gift each month rather than a single larger one. For CuriOdyssey, that steady rhythm matters: its dependable support the museum can count on, month after month.

What Access Meant Then and Means Now

For Xari, getting to attend camp was never something she took lightly. Growing up, some of the larger science and nature institutions in the area were often out of reach for her family. A discounted rate was what made CuriOdyssey possible and it’s part of why she gives today.

“I picture my gift doing some small good for CuriOdyssey in whatever way is needed,” she says, “whether that’s the animals, the exhibits inside the museum, or the camps for the kids.”

She loves watching the kids in her own family ask the kind of endless, wide-eyed questions children ask, and hopes support like hers helps give the next generation of curious minds a place to ask them too.

Xari is also planning to give a CuriOdyssey membership to family members in Hayward, whose young kids have already loved visiting. She recently learned about CuriOdyssey’s reciprocal museum network, which would let them use the membership at science centers and aquariums well beyond the Bay Area, a detail that made the gift feel even more worthwhile.

Home Is Wherever Curiosity Lives

Asked why she keeps giving to a place she’s no longer near, Xari doesn’t hesitate: the Bay Area is still home. She grew up in San Mateo, later lived in San Jose, and still has family around the peninsula. Even from Los Angeles, CuriOdyssey remains part of how she thinks about where she’s from.

Her advice to a parent whose kid isn’t at camp right now is simple: “Just sign them up for next year.” And to anyone considering a monthly gift of their own, however small or big: “Even small amounts still matter. Give whatever you can afford.”

Asked to finish the sentence, “CuriOdyssey is worth supporting because…” Xari didn’t need long to think about it.

“It’s in the name — being curious, and nurturing that for little minds. Kids have the best questions. Why not just support that?”

Want to give back the way Xari does? A monthly gift of any size helps CuriOdyssey keep hands-on science and curiosity accessible for the next generation.