Nikki Meredith

Nikki Meredith was the person you wanted to sit next to at a dinner party. By the end of the evening, you might only know one or two things about her, but you would feel like the most interesting, insightful and unique person there. Through her warmth, compassion and heat-seeking curiosity, she would’ve brought out your most intimate childhood memories – good and bad – and the decision-making process that led you to your life’s work. There was no human experience, told honestly, that didn’t interest Nikki. Her empathy and desire to hear stories from people with different backgrounds from her own, were the leading forces behind all of her life’s endeavors.

What her dinner party companions probably wouldn’t have learned was that Nikki grew up in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Hollywood with her older brother Eric; they had a much older sister, Gita, who was more like an aunt to them both. Born Veronica Susan Sarah Phoebus in September of 1943, Nikki was called Susie until entering the first grade, when her parents were informed there were “too many” Susies. Soon after, her name was changed to Nikki, a nickname of Veronica.

Nikki’s father Samuel Phoebus was an Irish Catholic descendant of the Phoebus family of Phoebus, Virginia who became an IRS agent in charge of organized crime investigations instead of his original plan to become a priest. Her mother Naomi was born in Los Angeles to a Russian-born Jewish mother and unknown father who only spoke Yiddish to her daughter. Naomi recruited families for the foster care system of the Los Angeles County, including many in the movie industry.

Growing up, Nikki was told that her maternal grandfather had been a gentile, making her only a quarter-Jewish by blood (though fully Jewish through her mother). Recently, she found out that she was actually half-Jewish. Though her parents were adamant atheists who rejected organized religion, Nikki was raised with a “family” feeling for Jewish secular culture and humor.

A little too sharp for her second-grade teacher, Nikki skipped third grade and went on to (unsuccessfully) run for class office at Hollywood Junior High. (Give Nikki the key to the treasury!) After a day at Hollywood High School, she and her best friend Annette would share 10 cent Cokes at the counter of Rexall Drugs at Hollywood and Vine, pleading with waitresses hoping for better business to let them stay on their perches at the counter a little bit longer. When her older brother Eric gave Nikki and Annette rides in his 1952 Chevy, he made them hunch down in the back seat so as not to interfere with his pursuit of potential dates on Hollywood Blvd.

Nikki went to the University of California at Berkeley when she was only 16, taking a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to Berkeley to start her freshman year. There, she studied sociology, where a famous professor held a class session on social problems entitled: Women Drivers. Despite her fierce independence, high intelligence and family support, Nikki found herself in a relationship with a fellow student who hit her during their arguments. She was able to end the relationship and emerge relatively unscathed, but the experience of being an unexpected victim stayed with her and led to a feeling of empathy and connection with others that had been abused for the rest of her life. She never forgot that if it could happen to her, it could happen to anyone. The why of it was where her interest lay.

Fortunately, Nikki went on to meet a pre-med student from Soquel named Tam Holbert while working as a waitress at a men’s dorm near campus. Right after graduation, when she was only 20, the two married. (“It was normal back then!”)

After graduating Cal, Nikki got her first job as a probation officer. She drove around Oakland interviewing fractured families wearing a leather mini skirt and go-go boots. Her interest in the depth of the human experience, and empathy for those who were struggling, led to a Masters in Social Work. Though she started her classes at San Francisco State, she completed her degree from Sacramento State after having her son Ben in 1968.

Nikki’s first marriage ended when Ben was two, and she moved to Marin County where she worked as a psychiatric social worker at Ross Hospital.

While living in Ross in 1971, Nikki took a Family Therapy class in San Anselmo. She was a dark-haired beauty with great cheek bones and a radiant smile. In the first class, she caught the eye of a fellow student, clinical psychologist Dr. Larry Meredith. He also happened to be a Canadian hockey player with hair to his waist, wearing a fringed leather vest and turquoise necklace, driving a purple Porsche with snow tires. Wasting no time, Larry asked her on a date. Notably, on their first date, Nikki, who was going through a “sleepy” phase, fell asleep at the table. Ever the optimist, the Canadian asked her on a second date. Nikki was unwilling to spend another evening without her little boy, so this time she brought Ben. They put two seats together so he could fall asleep at the table this time. Soon after, the three moved to the Upper Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, where a mid-August morning outing in down coats inspired a move back to the warmer climes of Marin County.

Once while at Cal, a boy had taken Nikki across the Golden Gate Bridge to Mill Valley on his motorcycle. As she gazed at Mt. Tamalpais fringed by towering redwood trees, she told herself that one day she would move there. In 1974, she did, along with her new boyfriend Larry and son Ben. A year later, she and Larry were married in their living room along with a handful of other hippies. Their daughter Caitlin, who they named after Irish poet Dylan Thomas’s wife and called Catie, was born in 1975.

Seeking a more innovative and humane psychiatric approach, Nikki left Ross Hospital to work at Diabasis in San Francisco. Founded by John Weir Perry, MD, Diabasis was a trailblazing residential inpatient program for young adults experiencing early-episode acute psychosis. Instead of pharmaceuticals, the clinicians there applied a Jungian framework to schizophrenia and viewed psychosis not as a disease but as a potentially transformative developmental and transpersonal crisis. Nikki and her fellow social workers would hold intensive group and individual therapy sessions grounded in deep human connection, openness, and loving presence. Nikki found the relationships she formed there intensely meaningful. As she had while working with families in crisis in Oakland, Nikki saw hope and possibility in others before they could see it themselves.

In the late 1970s, Nikki decided to apply her deep interest in the human experience to telling people’s stories through journalism. She did an internship at the NPR station in Sacramento, where she was the first to announce Elvis Presley’s death when it came through the wires.

Nikki then pivoted to print journalism, which led her to California Living, the Sunday magazine put out by San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle, writing long form profiles of Bay Area personalities with unexpected trajectories such as Priscilla Phillips, women falling in love with prison pen pals, abused women who killed their husbands, and Vietnam Veterans struggling to integrate back into “normal” life. During that time, she also wrote freelance pieces for national magazines such as Parenting, Health, Science and Psychology Today. The features she wrote ranged from the evolution of gay male relationships in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, to the plight of Kentucky coal miners, to the unique challenges of female cops.

In the mid-1980s, Nikki was a feature-writer for the Marin County alternative weekly, the Pacific Sun. There, she wrote about the experience of growing up with gay parents, the psychology of adoption, performers with stage fright, and many others. Between 1990 and 1993, Nikki worked as a feature writer for the Marin Independent Journal, where her article about abuses perpetrated by est founder Werner Erhard won a California journalism award, as well as some threats from Erhard’s attorneys. If it was psychologically compelling and was a story seldom told, Nikki wrote an article about it.

A lowlight of her journalism career was in 1976 when then California governor Jerry Brown stopped midsentence to help her detach her microphone in the middle of his press conference when she was having trouble sneaking away to make it home in time to pick up her baby daughter from the babysitter. A highlight of her career was in 1984 when Warren Beatty asked for her phone number while she was covering the Democratic Convention at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Alas, she had to report that she was happily married.

The marriage that kept her out of Warren Beatty’s datebook lasted 50 wonderful years. Nikki had wanted to go through life holding hands with a partner who was up for it all; she found that in Larry. Starting out, Nikki, or “Trixie” as Larry called her, rode shotgun in the purple Porsche up to Lake Tahoe, reading New Yorkers in the lodge while Larry blazed down black diamond ski slopes in his jeans. The fringed leather vest was not invited. The conversations they started on those early trips lasted through each chapter of their life together, often on long evening walks in Sausalito, Tiburon, Larkspur and Santa Monica. Between Nikki’s journalism career and Larry’s role as Deputy Director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and then the Director of Health and Human Services for Marin County, there were no shortage of interesting topics to explore together. They were each other’s biggest fans, and the affection between them was felt by all.

Together and separately, Nikki and Larry collected, and kept, friendships from each chapter of their lives. Their quintessential 1980s Marin pool-and-hot-tub parties included a mix of hockey players, therapists, writers, artists, radio personalities, criminal defense attorneys, Canadians, psychiatrists, architects and some very stoned Berkeley residents. If a friend told Nikki about their problem, it became her problem and she put the full force of her resourceful mind to resolve it.

That same investment and care applied to her children as well. Nikki wanted to know her children’s opinions, friends and experiences out in the world. Did a teacher say something controversial? Was a friend going through a tough time? Were the French fries really both salty and crispy at the new burger place? Nikki wanted to not only know about it, but do something about it. When they called to report an accomplishment, her smile and vicarious joy reached right through the telephone. She may not have had freshly-baked chocolate cookies waiting after school, but she made sure there were always Red Vines and smuggled home-popped popcorn with real butter for Friday nights at the movie theater. Her spirit of adventure, curiosity and generosity was contagious, even if not all her efforts to infect the family with grammar advancement were successful. (No, the kids did not want to learn a new vocabulary word from I Always Look Up the Word "Egregious" at the dinner table every night.)

Nikki and Larry used their house on Mt. Tam as a base to bring their family on trips all over the world, including road trips through Oaxaca, Mexico; Chichicastenango, Guatemala; and Lajas, Puerto Rico, where Nikki’s brother Erik lived with his family. While Canada started out as Larry’s mysterious homeland, it soon became a beloved vacation destination for both. The highlight of their traveling adventures was an African safari where they saw the wildebeest migration and hiked five hours to sit amongst the mountain gorillas.

Nikki called Mill Valley her home for 27 years, earning her a spot as local fixture at the Mill Valley Bakery on Miller Avenue, which honored her with a photo on their “regulars” wall. She knew the butcher at Mill Valley Market, Forest the cheese guy in the Brown Store, the nice lady at the old Post Office (and the not-so-nice lady), and the librarian that would look the other way when renewing an overdue book at the Mill Valley Library (and the one that wouldn’t). In 2001, Nikki and Larry moved to Larkspur, where she got to know a whole new set of postal workers, librarians and grocers. She then became a regular on the trails in Baltimore Canyon, often in the company of Larry, but always in the company of her dog Alice.

Never afraid to speak up for justice, or peace and quiet, she was an avid advocate for the gas-powered leaf blower prohibition within the Larkspur city limits. Over the years, she educated many a landscape professional on local bylaws and health consequences on her walks, much to her granddaughter’s embarrassment.

A throughline for three decades of Nikki’s life was her fascination with the women who followed Charles Manson. Nikki had been in a club at Hollywood High School with one of Manson’s notorious recruiters, Catherine “Gypsy” Share, a daughter of Holocaust survivors. She spent many hours trying to connect the dots between the charming teen she had spent overnights with on Mulholland Drive, talking about how fellow club members couldn’t find out they were Jewish, to the woman she would become — someone drawn to a man perpetrating the same cruelty and division as the Nazis had on her family.

Nikki’s casual fascination turned into years of exhaustive interviews and research, culminating in her non-fiction book “The Manson Women and Me”, published in 2018. Overcoming her intense stage fright, Nikki gave book talks at bookstores in the Bay Area and Austin, Texas, and appeared as a guest on Forum with Michael Krasny on KQED FM.

Nikki wrote much of this book during summers she spent near Tubac, Arizona, where she fell in love with the saguaro cacti of high desert and the prismatic sunsets above the Santa Rita mountain range. She would hike at dawn before the mercury rose to 100, then write for the rest of the day, taking breaks to research rattlesnake and lightening strike first aid in anticipation of monsoon season.(On a related note, if anyone is in the market for 40 acres of undeveloped land in southern Arizona, reach out to the family!)

In the final chapter of Nikki’s writing life, she became a volunteer editor for the award-winning San Quentin Times, an inmate-written newspaper covering prison life, criminal justice reform, and reentry issues — and one of the oldest ongoing prison newspapers in the United States. Spending time discussing stories, characters, grammar, and what makes a good lede with the San Quentin journalists was another highlight of her career.

Her work at San Quentin reinforced Nikki’s lifelong passion to advocate for the underdog, inspired by her activist mother who put democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson bumper stickers over her neighbor’s republican Dwight Eisenhower yard signs in the night. Starting with organizing Haight Ashbury tenants to fight for housing rights in her 20s, Nikki went on to do door-to-door canvassing for Democratic candidates in all high stakes elections.

Nikki loved her children deeply and well, and a new kind of love sprung forth when her granddaughter, Saralena, was born in 2014. In their movie club of two, Nikki introduced her favorite R-rated movies, promising to fast-forward through the “inappropriate” bits with varying effectiveness. The junior movie club member awarded only four stars to “Tootsie,” but both agreed that “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” merited a full five stars. Nikki played countless hours of Scrabble and Monopoly, went on high tea outings for crumpets and clotted cream, and created an elaborate singing march to deliver food to the dogs, much to her granddaughter’s delight and approval. Not even the Covid 19 pandemic could keep Nikki away – within weeks of the shutdown, she gave Larry the specs for a six-foot-long social-distancing grandparenting rope with a handle at both ends. Within giggling distance of each other, she and her granddaughter explored the town of Petaluma three days a week for over a year, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Finally, any memorial of Nikki would be remiss if it didn’t include an accounting of the many loved dogs in her lifetime. There was Cookie, the Hollywood mutt who jumped into the back seat of strangers’ cars; Sam, the Mt. Tam sheepdog who nipped at little boys so had to move to an actual farm; Annabel, the Summit Ave Cockapoo who got bit by a brown recluse spider and survived; Alice, the Baltimore Canyon Golden Doodle doggy love of her life who could spin on two hind paws for a treat; and, finally, Bella, a pint-sized doodle who never lets a peaceful time go unbarked upon.

In 2018, Nikki was diagnosed with lung cancer. For a woman who had only ever smoked four drags of a cigarette (which was preserved in her teenage scrapbook, dated August 15, 1958 – “my first cigarette”), it was a perplexing diagnosis. A dramatic surgery followed and she went into remission until 2022. As someone who had endured 50 years of chronic migraine, Nikki was no stranger to showing up with grace while experiencing head-breaking pain. She was adamant that her pain wouldn’t limit her exploration of the world, big and small, or that of the people around her. She carried this same attitude into her cancer years. Each condition amplified her empathy even more, finding close camaraderie with fellow migraine and cancer sufferers.

Nikki died at home in hospice care from complications of lung cancer on December 23, 2025, when she was 82. She and Larry had their 50th wedding anniversary four days before. The evening she died, she was surrounded by her husband, son and daughter, as well as her wonderful Fijian caretaker Cas who called her “my lovely”. Maria, Nikki’s other Fijian caretaker, was also a huge support. The three family goldendoodles were also in attendance. She is survived by her husband, Larry Meredith; son, Ben Holbert; daughter, Caitlin Meredith; granddaughter, Saralena; her pint-sized dog Bella; and many wonderful friends. None of them will ever know again if they should be saying “she” or “her” without her editorial support.

In keeping with Nikki’s wishes, cremation has taken place and a celebration of life will be held in her honor on May 17, 2026 in Fairfax, CA. Please contact the family to get more information. In lieu of flowers, those interested are encouraged to donate to the ACLU in Nikki’s name. A link for donation is below.