Attorney Elizabeth Kim grew to love Stockton from her days as an undergrad at University of the Pacific. After earning her law degrees in Michigan and Southern California and a brief stint early in her career in Sacramento, she returned to the city, where she looked for a path to move forward in her new working life and meet more professionals.
She found it in the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce.
She enrolled in Leadership Stockton, an 11-month program operated by the chamber that introduced her to local leaders and gave her insight into the city’s rich mix of industries and institutions. Two years later, she joined the chamber’s board. Today, she is president.
“We have to have an open heart — a big heart — to help people in the community and pull people up,” she said. “The chamber is a big part of that.”
This year, the chamber is marking its 125th year advocating for businesses in the area.
With about 750 members, it has evolved along with the community and includes an ever-widening array of industries, some of which have come to define the modern era of Stockton, such as logistics and warehousing.
And the chamber’s diversity has grown alongside the city’s. Besides Leadership Stockton, it hosts workshops and education programs, and offers solutions for problems that can plague businesses, such as shoplifting. It also lobbies on issues affecting local businesses, holds mixers and celebrates new business ventures by promoting ribbon-cuttings.
“You meet people — different cultures and different businesses,” said Kevin Wong, a native Stocktonian and partner in Dave Wong’s Chinese Restaurants, which has belonged to the chamber since 1976. “You put yourself out there. Stockton is such a small community. Everybody knows everybody.”
While a half-century of involvement is impressive by any measure, Dave Wong’s tenure in the chamber isn’t that unusual. There are 48 businesses and institutions that have been members as long or longer.
The oldest locally based member is F.J. Dietrich & Co., an insurance and real estate firm that first signed up in 1924. The business has been continuously run by a succession of men all with the same name since its founding in 1902.
Joe Dietrich, 73, inherited the firm started by his great-grandfather. Joe’s son, 45, goes by Joseph, and his grandson, 6, is called Francis. Their birth certificates all read Francis Joseph Dietrich — IV, V and VI respectively.
Dietrich has seen how Stockton has evolved since the 1950s when the family’s offices were situated downtown.
“Men wore coat-and-tie; women were dressed up. You didn’t worry about going out after dark,” he said, adding that he remembers hearing inmates in the city jail shout to passersby on the sidewalk from their cells.
The insurance business has always been demanding. His dad, Joe III, cut short the family’s beach vacation in 1958 to rush home and assess damage when the Smith & Lang department store burned down — an event described as the “worst national mercantile fire” of that year. Another time, his father donned hip-waders during one of the city’s major floods.
Although the office is no longer downtown, Joe IV maintains a personal touch with his clients. On weekends, phone calls go straight to his mobile phone, not an answering machine or service, in order to swiftly deal with customers’ emergencies.
He’s stayed active in the chamber through the decades, including serving on the board. He values the firm’s membership as a way of “just staying in contact with all kinds of people” and not losing touch with old acquaintances.
Another longtime chamber member, Collins Electrical Co., has tapped into some of the chamber’s benefits to inspire youth.
This winter, the company — which joined in 1942 — turned to the Business Education Alliance, a partnership between the chamber and the Stockton Unified School District, to host 130 high school students at its offices.
The event showcased career possibilities for the teens and also engaged in fun learning activities, said marketing manager Melissa Flores. One was a friendly competition to see who could most accurately calculate the angle of a pipe and then bend it to that specification.
“It’s a way for employees to give back to the community,” Flores said.
Chamber CEO Timm Quinn said he’s excited about Stockton’s future and the role the chamber plays in that.
“I’m optimistic. Things are moving in the right directions,” he said. Yes, there are ups and downs, he admitted, but economy-wise, “right now, we’re in a good spot,” he said.
Stockton remains an ideal place to start a business, Quinn said. It has a lot of the advantages of a big city — sports teams, museums, a symphony — while still being enough of a close-knit community that an individual can stand out.
“In Stockton, you can come in and make a difference. It’s a big city, but feels like a small town,” he said.