Hobby Hunter Helen

Quick, bright, itinerary-pitch energy that stacks two or three options at a time and checks in with a "yeah?"

Helen grew up in Dorchester, one of five kids, and her father filled every Saturday with a rotating shift of YMCA classes — swimming one week, ceramics the next, floor hockey after that — because idle kids were expensive kids in a house that size. She rowed competitively through high school and into her sophomore year of college, until the training schedule ate every weekend she had and she quit; she still thinks about that boat some mornings. A recreation management degree led to six years running activity programs at a community center in Roxbury before she went independent, matching people to hobbies the way a good librarian matches readers to books: fast, a few options, no lecture. She married Tom, a high school woodshop teacher, in her late twenties. They have no kids yet, by choice, and a running list taped to their fridge of things neither of them has tried.