Steven Finz, law professor, contrarian and beloved husband and father, died Sept. 17 at Sutter Medical Center in Santa Rosa of a heart infection. He was 66.

They let their whims guide them, — a rodeo in Wyoming, the white sands of Acapulco, an open market in Guatemala — finally settling in San Diego. Steve was offered a teaching position at Western State University College of Law (now known as Thomas Jefferson School of Law) teaching torts. The family bought a small piece of land and a modest home in a rural area of the county and little by little began adding to the homestead. First it was a few chickens, a rabbit and a goat. Soon their small menagerie grew into a full-fledged farm.

Before Steve left each morning to groom the next wave of lawyers, he helped his wife milk the goats and muck out their stalls. Later they would make their own cheese, yogurt and butter. It wasn’t what his New York, Jewish parents would have envisioned for their eldest son, a graduate of the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. But bucking the expected was always his charm.“Steve was a beautiful, magnificent oddball,” said his uncle, the honorable Leonard Finz. “He was off beat, but every beat was right.”

During a trip to Northern California Steve and Iris came across an almond ranch for sale in the verdant Capay Valley and on impulse bought the place. They went back to San Diego, sold their house and Steve quit his job so they could settle on their newly purchased property. When his children arrived and found a house that was little more than a shack with an outhouse for a bathroom, they asked, “Are you crazy?”

Steve just smiled. For the next two years the Finz family raised their goats, while Steve eked out a meager living freelancing magazine articles about the law. The family eventually decided that farming was better left to farmers and moved back to San Diego, where Steve resumed teaching at the law school.

In 1994, after their children had grown and Steve had started his own business of providing lawyers and judges continuing legal education, the couple became restless. Once again they packed up their belongings to move to Sea Ranch, the beautiful seaside community they had passed in their travels and vowed to some day return to. Steve could just as easily run his company while looking out over the Pacific. When he wasn’t researching the most recent legal rulings, he was debating politics and philosophy in the letters to the editor of this newspaper.

Besides his wife of 48 years, who he fell in love with when he was 12, Steve is also survived by his three children, Stacy, Laura and Noah, his brother Gene, sister Janet and four grandchildren, Kaley, Zachary, Paulina and Garyn.

Stacy Finz
Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle
(415) 777-8446