FACULTY
Balancing Finance and Fame
Debbie Price caught the Hollywood bug when she glimpsed festival klieg lights. “It was opening night of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival at the Arlington Theatre,” she says. “I saw Robert Mitchum, Jane Seymour, Kirk and Michael Douglas, Peter Cetera and others arriving — my first celebrity sightings.”
She has since attended 36 of the 40 SBIFFs, taking photographs of actors such as Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, George Clooney and Tom Cruise. “One of my favorite photos was a collage I made of Mohammed Ali doing a magic trick,” she says, “Then I had him autograph it at another event.”
Debbie has retired after 36 years as an accountant in the Westmont Business Office.
A bit of a local celebrity, she fielded interviews with reporters from News Channel 3-12, who asked her for the latest scoop about nominated actors and films. “I read articles by a friend who works for Gold Derby, the authority on Oscar races, so I have solid information to share,” she says.
Debbie served as an extra on her favorite show, “The X-Files,” 20 years ago. In between takes, she attended movie premieres, taking photos on the red carpet. Eventually she met a woman who got her into the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards for more than 15 years.
“I was hooked,” she says. “I loved taking pictures and trying to get them signed later. David Duchovny knows me on sight, and I have dozens of photos with him. In Hawaii, I ran into Tom Selleck filming ‘Magnum, P.I.’ and then saw him 20 years later at “The Tonight Show,” where he signed my photos.” Her self-published books of signed photos rival celebrity magazines.
Debbie will spend her first year of retirement on the Villa View Odyssey, a residential cruise ship circumnavigating the world, trading celebrities for bears in Alaska, Hiroshima, snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, swimming with whale sharks, camel trekking, shark cage diving and photographing game preserves in Africa.
At Westmont, she managed collections, student accounts, payroll and accounting, working wherever she was needed. “A core group of four employees stayed the same throughout my tenure, so that made coming to work each day a blessing,” she says. “It’s the people that make Westmont special.”
This is a story from the Spring 2025 Westmont Magazine