The Hills Living Magazine - Meet the Menser-Polley Family
**Check out Pages 12-14!**
Ben Polley and Stephani (Menser) Polley met at the beginning of 2012. They were introduced through a mutual friend that they both went to meet with at the Folsom Hotel on Sutter Street. They spent several hours talking and Stephani mentioned that she was a realtor and was hosting an open house on Breese Circle that weekend. Ben, living in Serrano, decided to stop by the open house and ask Stephani on a date. In 2015, they got married in Cancun, surrounded by 70 of their closest friends (most from EDH) and family.
Ben, originally from Sebastopol, CA, moved to the Sacramento area in 1994 to attend college at Sacramento State. After college, he moved up the hill and settled down in El Dorado Hills. Ben owns Polley Insurance and Risk Management, formerly known as Clinton Polley Insurance Brokers. After 20 years of building his business, Ben recognized a greater need to manage risk for his cli- ents beyond the placement of insurance policies. At the beginning of 2020, he announced the launch of his new company branding.
Stephani grew up in El Dorado Hills and graduated from Oak Ridge, the same high school her teenagers now attend. Her parents, Steve and Donna Menser still reside here as well. Stephani is a realtor with the Menser Real Estate Group at Coldwell Banker. She formed this team in 2013 alongside her mother, Donna, and longtime friend (also an EDH native) Melissa Cvitanovic.
The Polley’s are a blended family with Aden (17) and Lauren (14) from Ben’s previous marriage. In August 2016, Steve was born. “We have a very busy household!” says Stephani. “The big kids live with us a week on/a week off. We have our au pair Barbie, from Coahuila, Mexico, that lives with us to help with Steve. We also have two dogs-Juicy, a 12-year-old Chihuahua, and Caymus, a 6-year-old Yorkie.”
Aden is a junior at Oak Ridge and works at Safeway. He is a big Sacramento Kings fan and when he is not working or teaching his little brother how to play basketball, he is working on his ‘67 Chevelle. Lauren, a freshman at Oak Ridge loves to play soccer and, as a typical teenager, socialize with friends. Steve is attending his second year at Step by Step, Paso a Paso, a Spanish Immersion preschool. Steve is the biggest personality in the Polley household. His hobbies are golfing, swimming and dressing up in costumes. Some days he can be found dressed up as a bagpipe player in their backyard, entertaining his parents while they pretend they are in Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach. Barbie (20) is the Polleys’ third consecutive au pair. She’s lived with them for a year and a half and will be returning home shortly to finish college.
For fun, the Polley family loves spending time on their boat or golfing at Serrano. They also frequently attend concerts and Sacramento Kings basketball games. Prior to COVID, they would often visit KP Karaoke as a family and take trips to the Delta, Lake Tahoe and Mexico.
“COVID has really been an eye-opener for us,” Stephani says. “We’ve always loved where we lived, but being forced to shelter in place, we have become much more grateful for our neighbors and our beautiful community. We are very social people and our backyard saved our sanity. We live on the 8th tee box and were able to (from a distance) visit with members from the Club as they drove by our house.”
Their favorite part of living in El Dorado Hills is the sense of community that comes with it. Although it has grown tremendously since Stephani grew up here, it still has the small-town feel that they love.
