People in the Strangest Places

I've always found it funny when I recognize familiar faces, friends, and acquaintances in places I'd never expect to see them. With all the traveling that I've done in my lifetime, I tend to associate certain faces with certain places. So when someone I once knew growing up in Virginia showed up on the beaches of San Diego while I was living there, it threw me for a loop. She recognized me and, sadly, I had to apologize and tell her that I recognized her but I couldn't remember from where. It's as though two unfamiliar worlds have collided.

This type of experience happened to me again this week, but in a most unusual way. In 1999, my second year in San Diego, I moved into a 9-bedroom (not a typo) house in the Pacific Beach area of San Diego. A few months into my stay there another guy, named Trevor Neubauer, moved in. Trevor was a cool guy - we both liked surfing, both liked partying, and both liked playing guitar - he actually taught me a few Social Distortion riffs and we exchanged some Blink 182 riffs. The picture above is one from an impromptu party we had a the house, of Trevor (right side) with Melissa (another roommate) and Big Mike (center, a former roommate).

In less than a year, I moved out of the house and into a studio much closer to a favorite surf spot of mine in north Pacific Beach. Shortly thereafter, I heard rumors that our old 9-bedroom house landlord kicked everyone else out of the house so that he could get rid of a couple bad seeds and get a fresh crop of newbies in there. After that, I didn't hear much from any of the roommates anymore, except Big Mike, who is like a brother to me.

Anyway, the other night, Nicki and I were watching some TV and the soap opera, Days of our Lives, came on after whatever show we were watching. After a few minutes of trying to convince Nicki to come to bed (it was getting late), I saw a scene from the show of three guys hanging out and talking at a beach party. Immediately I said, "hey, I think I know that guy". Nicki was hesitant to believe me, so I went to our old scrapbooks and found the picture from the 9-bedroom house that I posted above. Nicki took one look and said, "wow, that could be him".

So then we raced to the web and Googled the Days of our Lives character name, "Jeremy Horton". Sure enough, the actor's name popped up as Trevor Donovan... the first name coincidence was too suspicious. So the next day, I did some further web investigation and found the link between Trevor Donovan (stage name) and Trevor Neubauer (real name). As it turns out, Trevor moved up closer to LA sometime after 1999 and started doing modeling gigs (pic on left) . It looks like he also must have signed a contract with NBC for the Days of our Lives gig pretty recently too.

If you happen to watch the show, he's playing a new "bad boy" character. Not sure how long his contract is for, but I wish him the best of luck. Break a leg, Trevor!