Twenty-five-year-old Ventura local Leah Thomas-or as her nearly 160,000 Instagram followers know her-is the creator of one such viral post. If you’ve been on Instagram any time in the past six months, chances are you’ve seen countless graphics educating and informing on the Black Lives Matter movement, racism, and racial justice-to name a few. Written by Olivia Seltzer | Photographs by Mark Griffin Champion How Leah Thomas is redefining the environmental movement In Arizona, Blair works with Children’s Hospital and the Phoenix branch of MD Anderson. And she’s also one of three trustees on the Otis Booth Foundation, which has contributed to Thacher and Cate, as well as local universities, the Children’s Institute, and many, many others. It can be anywhere as long as they carry 11 units.” Loren serves as vice chairman of the Reining Horse Foundation, which also awards scholarships and maintains a crisis fund for horse trainers. “Booth Ranches gives scholarships to children of employees to want to go to college. “Giving back is important in the world,” she says. She also became the first woman to serve on the Citrus Research Board. After her father’s death in 2008, Loren bought out the other partners, and today she grows Valencias, navels, “easy peels,” and lemons. By 2005 Booth Ranches was vertically integrated-handling everything from farming to packing, planning, marketing, and sales.
“It took me two years to get dad to hire employees the first one was a pest advisor” who still works at the company. “Everything was outsourced.” Divorced but still living in Bakersfield, where she was raising Blair and an older son, Jake, she saw opportunities to do things better. He eventually had thousands of acres, “but no employees,” Loren remembers. As an early investor in Berkshire Hathaway, Otis built a fortune, raised livestock, and acquired orange groves. Her father was Franklin “Otis” Booth, Jr., a great-grandson of the founder of the Los Angeles Times, where he was an executive.
We’re each other’s biggest fan.” Now Blair’s 9-year-old daughter, Elouise, is carrying on the tradition, learning the guided movements and exacting turns and quick stops of the sport. “We compete against each other,” says Loren, “but we cheer each other on, too. She and her mares have brought home countless trophies, and her daughter, Blair Moffett, also excels in the show circuit that extends from California to Arizona, Oklahoma, and Texas. But once I was introduced to reining horses…that was it.” Later I moved to Covina, where there was Western riding. “I grew up in Pasadena, where everyone did hunting and jumping. The businesses and her passions are integral to the Golden State-a heritage she’s serious about imparting to her children and grandchildren. Her roots in the state go back five generations, and today she’s president of Booth Ranches, which includes more than 8,000 acres of citrus, a large cow-and-calf operation, and a 300-acre farm near Fresno that breeds and raises reining horses. They’re an apt backdrop for her workspace. On the walls of Loren Booth’s study in her Carpinteria ranch house hang half a dozen depictions of Old California by artist Alexander Harmer, who painted around the turn of the 20th century. Citrus, horses, beach life, and philanthropy are all on the BOOTH family agenda
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