Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, Kate Winslet, Jane Fonda and Bill Moyers have all stayed at the famous Rancho la Puerta Wellness resort and spa, an exquisite collection of casitas, pavilions, pools and gardens nestled on 4,000 acres of mountains in Baja California, Mexico.
But the property’s biggest star is Deborah Szkeley, who founded the ranch with her husband in 1940 and today – at 102 years old – is the embodiment of everything the property strives to achieve: health, longevityand peace of mind.
“On the morning of my 100th birthday, I lay in bed and thought, ‘Hmm, I’m 100. What’s different?’ I couldn’t think of anything,” says Szekely. Assets, She sat for a recent interview in her hotel suite in New York City, where she had flown in from her home in San Diego to speak at two different wellness conferences. “I’ve had a beautiful life, and when it’s over, it’s over. But I’m enjoying it,” she says. “I really don’t have any worries that I can’t do anything about. Otherwise I’d be an old lady! But where I can do something, I do something.”
The Brooklyn native has achieved a dizzying amount in her life, including the founding and management of Rancho la Puerta and also the Golden Doora luxury Japanese spa and resort in San Diego (which she sold in 1998). At age 60, she ran for Congress and was president of the Inter-American FoundationAt the age of 80, she realized a long-held dream and founded the New Americans Museum and Immigration Learning Center in San Diego.
They are all continuations of their formative years, rooted in values such as healthy living, vegetarianismand sustainability, as advocated by her mother, a Jewish-Austrian immigrant and “health fanatic” who was a nurse and vice president of the New York Vegetarian Society and who converted her family to an all-fruit diet. In 1934, she made a bold decision that changed her life forever.
“It was the Depression. And my father was very depressed,” recalls Szkeley, née Shainman. He was 12 when his mother caught him checking his life insurance policy and she feared he would commit suicide.
“One day my mother came to dinner and said, ‘We’re leaving in 16 days.’ And my brother, I and my father looked at her, and my father said, ‘Where?’ ‘Tahiti.’ And we said, ‘Where is that?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know. But here are the tickets.'” She had chosen the destination because of the fresh air and fresh fruits– both of which were in short supply in New York during the Depression – and soon they all boarded a steamship and spent several weeks at sea on their way to their new home.
“And from then on we led a different life,” says the centenarian, adding that she remembers “a lot” from the few years they spent in Tahiti, where they lived a rustic life in a grass hut, and that because of her education at the time, she still “thinks in French most of the time.”
There, the family met another health-conscious newcomer: Edmond Szkeley, also known as “the Professor,” a Romanian immigrant and aspiring health guru known for his writings and lectures on philosophy and ancient religions, sports, and the value of fresh, organic vegetables. They all eventually returned to the U.S., and Deborah’s family attended his summer “health camps.” It was then that Deborah decided to work for him, and she and Edmond fell in love. They married when he was 34 and she was just 17.
“I did it to get out,” she explains. “He was chairman of the British International Health and Education Society and he wanted to go to England. And I thought, ‘I’m going to England, and if it works out, that’s fine. If not, I’m free. I can go to France.’ And it worked out. So I stayed.”
Founding of Rancho la Puerta
The young couple were looking for a place where they could set up a health camp together and ended up in Baja, partly because it would allow Edmond to avoid the fact that he did not have immigration papers that would have allowed him to stay in the United States. They settled on a huge piece of land at the foot of Mount Kuchumaa and wrote to friends inviting them to come and stay on the land.
“For $17.50 a week,” she says, “I was able to bring my own tent.” The whole thing went down well, she adds, because “my husband was very well known.”
They erected their own permanent tents, which they soon replaced with cabanas made from surplus army crates, and then added vegetable gardens, Exercise Classes, a dining room with mostly raw vegan food (the menu now includes pescatarian), and a printing shop for Edmonds’ books. Advertising in Los Angeles attracted Hollywood audiences – as did the Golden Door, which Deborah created in 1958 after traveling to Japan a dozen times in one year for inspiration.
The couple had two children, and today their daughter Sarah Livia Brightwood runs the resort, having planted thousands of trees on the property.
“She is the boss,” says Deborah. “She makes the decisions… I don’t interfere.” (One of her grandchildren – a professional surfer— is on the board; the other recently graduated with honors from the University of Southern California.)
Today, Rancho la Puerta, which she calls “the ranch,” is “a little town” with 400 employees. It charges guests $5,100 and up per person for week-long packages and features 20 full-time fitness instructors, 11 gyms, a cooking school, an organic farm, three spa treatment centers, programs such as group hikes and workshops, and peaceful nature trails for go— and not a single golf cart in sight. Of the 10,000 acres, only about 300 are actively used by guests, part of a conscious effort to keep the footprint as small as possible.
“We are not growing,” says Deborah. “We are smaller than we were, and we are doing so on purpose.”
Deborah is on the property three days a week and still holds weekly question-and-answer sessions with her guests in a house that is always full, often answering questions about how she has managed to live such a long and healthy life. People want to know what kind of Water she drinks – a question that makes her laugh – and what her skincare routine is, to which she replies: “Soap and water.” As she tells Assets, “These are not my jobs. The fact that I don’t worry is more important than the water. I have really accepted what I can and cannot do.”
But honestly: what is their secret?
Her healthy lifestyle – including the fact that she never ate Red meat and still go a mile a day, even after breaking her hip twice (she now uses a walker)—has certainly contributed to her longevity. But Deborah knows it’s not everything: Her father lived to 81, but her mother died of cancer at 60. Edmond died at 70 (after they separated), but because he refused to have surgery for an umbilical hernia. “He died of a strangulated hernia as soon as he got to the hospital,” she says. She outlived her brother. And then there was the greatest loss of her life: the death of her son (which she doesn’t want to discuss).
But when it comes to having outlived so many people, Deborah says, “I don’t think about it. You just accept it.”
She tends to have much younger friends, which helps her. “I’ve always had younger friends – because of the conversations, the theater, the plays we see, the activities we do, you know? They’re in their 40s,” she says. “It’s fun.”
Her advice to anyone seeking longevity is to keep the body and mind active – and to read a lot, as she does, preferring ninth-century Japanese mysteries. “I like Buddhism,” she says. “I call myself a Jewish Zen Buddhist.”
For Deborah, however, an active mind does not include brooding.
“The thing is, I don’t allow negative thoughts. We are in control. And we can say, ‘I don’t want to go there.’ You just don’t go. I don’t do that,” she says. “I mean, the world is a terrible place and terrible things happen all the time… But I try to help as many people as I can live healthier lives.”
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