Surfer Kris Wolfe Enjoys the Ride

By STEVE GALLUZZO  |  Sports Editor

For surfer Kris Wolfe, not many things compare to catching the perfect wave.

“There’s no thrill in the world like getting barreled, when  the water shoots over your head, then coming through dry,” he claims.

He has been doing that for decades and is still going strong, thanks to his Palisades upbringing, the friends he has made and the valuable lessons he has learned both in and out of the water.

In early November, at the age of 51, Wolfe took first place at the WSA Championship Tour Event in Morro Bay and he is only getting better with age.

“I’m probably a better surfer now than when I was in my 20s,” he says. “The more you do it the more knowledge you get. Life is just a learning experience.”

Although he has suffered his share of injuries (he shattered his upper humerus five years ago racing motocross and could not surf for eight months), Wolfe remains undeterred and unafraid knowing he has taken on many of the roughest beaches and demanding conditions in the world.        

“I started surfing at beaches between Rosarito and Santa Cruz,” says Wolfe, who grew up near the El Medio Bluffs and in the Alphabet Streets and went to Marquez Elementary, Paul Revere Middle School and Palisades High. “The first time I ever stood up on a board was at Will Rogers Beach between Chautauqua and Temescal where they used to film ‘Baywatch.’ My grandma lived in Carlsbad and I started boogie boarding down there in 1977. Most kids who become really good start surfing when they’re 4 or 5, so I was a late bloomer. Back then there was no such thing as a career in surfing for someone like me. If you won a competition you were lucky to get a t-shirt or a pair of sunglasses. Now it’s a billion dollar industry.”

Asked to name his favorite places to surf, Wolfe said Raglan on the north island of New Zealand and in Tahiti—Teahupoo  being the scariest. The biggest waves he has surfed are at C Street in Ventura.

A modern day renaissance man, Wolfe has held numerous jobs to make ends meet. Not only has he been a surf instructor (he gave actor Adam Sandler one of his first surf lessons in Malibu), he worked construction for Dan Kanan and was a bus boy at Alice’s Restaurant on the Malibu Pier. He also plays instruments, namely the ukulele and bass.

“Being a surf instructor is seasonal so I’ve learned other things to supplement my income, whether it was live-action stunt shows, working construction or trying to get extra work in movies,” Wolfe says. “Over the years I’ve taught so many people in all walks of life how to surf and the amount of gratitude I get from that is greater than any wave I could ever catch.”

Though surrounded by many of the wealthiest people in the world, Wolfe never cared about money or fame. He lived on Las Lomas north of Sunset before moving to Embury Street when he was a teenager. He was raised by his stepfather Jim and his mother Joy. Jim, an outdoorsman who in 2017 completed the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Campo, California at the Mexican border to the mountains of British Columbia. Kris was also an avid skateboarder, learning to ride at Palisades  Elementary, the Pacific Palisades Woman’s Club and Paul Revere. He is also a swimmer, trail runner and mountain biker.

“The first ramp I ever skated was in the driveway of Ken and Rich Waco’s house on Sunset across from the fire station,” Wolfe says. “There was a chain on it and I skated right over that. When they saw me do that they instantly welcomed me to skate their ramp and unlocked it. When I was in my 20s I lived with fellow surfer Jamie Witherill and his race car brother Cory. I didn’t meet my musician brother Robert until I was 24 years old. Sometimes the blessing is growing up in a grassroots family. In the summer, we didn’t go on expensive vacations, we went camping because that was more our style.”

Wolfe was recently invited to BSR Surf Resort in Waco, Texas and describes it as surreal.
“I’d never been in a wave pool before,” he says. Everything you learn about reading waves in the ocean, forget about that. You’re sitting up against a concrete wall, there’s weird turbulence and bubbles and it smells like the pool at the YMCA. I’d love to surf Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in Lemoore someday. I’ve heard it’s amazing.”

Wolfe has won surfing and motocross championships, including the WSA amateur event at Topanga State Beach in 2006 and the best he did in a Pro-Am was third in Cabo San Lucas. He won the OTHG motocross event in Reno in 2016 and many others.

“As soon as I turned 18 I got my GED at Temescal Canyon and I moved to Hawaii,” says Wolfe, who recalls being pictured in the Palisadian-Post several times, including with his homeroom teacher Darryl Stolper (a fellow surfer) when he was a 7th-grader at Paul Revere in 1983. “By the time I was 13 or 14 I was pretty independent. I started racing motocross when I was 9 and back in the late 1970s and early ‘80s there were no houses above Temescal. We had a motocross track up at the top of Las Lomas and that’s where I learned how to ride with dad Jim, which led to my stunt and motocross career.”

 Wolfe has called Oahu, Hawaii his on and off home since he was 18 but he now lives along California’s Central Coast—a place that holds special meaning for him because his mom’s ashes are in Big Sur (she died of complications from back surgery when Kris was 35).

In 2009, his grandfather Robert Wolfe was diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and Kris assigned himself to be his primary caregiver, which allowed the two to become very close over the next five years—a gift more rewarding than any trophy he has earned on the waves or a motocross course.

“He was a musician and an artist and he’d tell me stories of World War II and growing up on his farm in Ohio,” Wolfe remembers vividly. “I barely slept during that time, yet I value that period in my life the most because I was there for my grandfather.”

One of Wolfe’s favorite lines is spoken by Irving Feffer in the 2004 film “Along Came Polly,” and it has become his mantra for life: “It’s not about what happened in the past, or what you think might happen in the future. It’s about the ride.”