We Could Not Have Done it Without You

Roll down Mather Field Road on any given Tuesday, and, if you are a local, your car voluntarily makes a sharp turn right near the intersection with Folsom Boulevard. It may be because you need to catch a light rail train. But it probably is because you are making that time-worn trip to Straw Hat Pizza for the weekly fix.

Step inside Straw Hat and it looks pretty much the way is has for nearly 20 years. It's an old-timey place with air rich with tomato sauce and spiced with pepperoni. Yep, it's pizza time at Straw Hat.

Likely as not, there is a community group that has a stake in your visit to Straw Hat. That's because anybody who knows anything about Rancho Cordova knows that owners Skip and Olga Sehhat are two of the most generous pizza people on the planet.

With astonishing regularity, you can eat pizza to benefit a softball team. You may munch on a slice for the betterment of a student effort at Cordova High School. Mitchell Middle School is a Straw Hat regular and PAL is a pizza beneficiary. Even the Rancho Cordova Historical Society regularly rallies the troops to have pizza -- for preservation. 

The Straw Hat gang, led by the Sehhats, is not just a fixture on the Rancho Cordova pizza map - it's a fixture on the income line on more Rancho Cordova volunteer organizations, non-profits and clubs than any other we can think of.

For close to two decades, the Sehhats have been hosting the Cordova High School Alumni, the Sacramento Banjo Band, and every body in between. Need to make a few bucks for new uniforms? Skip and Olga will join your team and kick in cash for a good cause, as long as you bring your gang in for a hot, spicy pie.

Yes, it's hard to imagine a time when Straw Hat Pizza and the Sehhats were not helping keep a wide array of Rancho Cordova do-good groups afloat. But sometime soon, we will have to do just that. Because Skip and Olga are going to retire. Straw Hat will remain, but the Sehhats are selling their business.

We could not let them do that, however, without letting them know how much their funky pizza-place-with-a-heart has been appreciated - even loved.

So, here it goes:

Skip and Olga, we appreciate your openness to helping children and families and all kinds of good causes by sharing the profits from your business.

We will miss all the long meetings held with your permission around wooden tables and squeezed into booths and will long remember how you would often sit down and join in the discussions.

You are special people who have helped build a community… one pie at a time. 

And as you prepare to go, we needed to say: