Everyday Encounters: A Belvedere couple makes new friends with daily walks at Shoreline Park

Tom Steele and Kristine Iwasaki stop with Quincy, their 17-year-old dog, during one of Steele’s daily walks at Shoreline Park. (Tyler Callister / The Ark)

Every day for the past three years, Tom Steele has exercised along the walkway at Shoreline Park. Steele lives with multiple sclerosis, but it hasn’t stopped him from taking daily walks from Belvedere down to the Tiburon Railroad & Ferry Depot Museum and back.

Steele’s wife, Kristine Iwasaki, says he’s built up a gregarious reputation and greets everyone he passes.

“No matter how steeped in conversation you are with somebody, he’ll always say, ‘Oh, hello, good morning,’” she says.

As the couple walks with their 17-year-old dog, Quincy, on June 26, Iwasaki says that, to her surprise, her husband’s commitment to saying hello to everyone has resulted in real friendships.

“People have invited him out. And I’m like, ‘What?’” she says with a laugh. “I go, ‘We’re going out with strangers?’ And he goes, ‘Well, they won’t be strangers after you meet them.’”

Steele, 78, and Iwasaki, 75, say the Tiburon Peninsula became a place of solace after Steele’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis. They moved from San Francisco to Belvedere in 2013 because walking, a key form of transportation in the city, became a challenge for Steele.

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