Janessa Marie "Jae" D. Lazaro Gage

Jae was born and raised in San Diego, graduated from Castle Park High School, and then received her Bachelor of Arts in Art with an emphasis in Painting & Printmaking from San Diego State University.

After college, Jae worked for Fry's Electronics in San Diego repairing and building computers in the Service Department for two years. In order to pursue her passion for technology, Jae moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to work for a managed service provider. A year later, Jae was contacted by a recruiter for Google and decided to take on the opportunity to work for one of the world's largest tech companies.

After working on the Google Cloud Platform marketing team, Jae was eager for other opportunities to grow her career. She spent some time working at a small startup, a medium startup, and now works for a company called Segment working as a Manager of Customer Success Product Adoption programs, where she manages a small team of program managers.

Jae loves to laugh and express herself so her hobbies include painting or anything arts and crafts, playing video games, listening to music, and gardening.

Some fun things about Jae: she used to take figure skating lessons, had a Twitch.tv video game and artwork channel where she streamed under the alias Nostaljae, has a huge collection of succulents, drives a cool black Honda S2000 convertible, and her favorite animals are Sharks.

Adam F. Gage

Adam was born and raised in San Diego, graduated from Francis W. Parker School, and spent nearly a decade working as a Mac computer technician at Crywolf, a computer repair shop. During this period, Adam spent much of his free time working on his project car, a 1991 Toyota MR2 Turbo. 

In 2011, Adam received his Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies and Planning from the University of California, San Diego.

After graduating, Adam went to work for his best friend's off-road racing team and logistics company. During this time, Adam met Jae and decided that he would follow her to the San Francisco Bay Area. Since, he has been working for NVIDIA, a GPU (graphics processing unit) company in Santa Clara, first as a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer, and now as an NPI (New Product Introduction) Program Manager.

Adam is a very predictable man who loves learning, routine, and order so his hobbies include raiding in World of Warcraft (which he has been playing since 2008), reading books/news articles, home improvement projects, and scrolling through imgur, watching movies in the theaters.

Some fun things about Adam: he played soccer as a kid for some number of years, he plays a Troll Shadow Priest on the Duskwood server (PvE) of World of Warcraft and is an officer in his guild called "Imaginary Monsters," he is double-jointed on his shoulders, collecting things (of all kinds and varieties….especially old technology), and has a white Scion FR-S parked in the garage.

When Jae met Adam...

We met through a mutual friend, who knew I was going crazy trying to study for an Apple Hardware Certification Exam. He said, "You need to talk to Adam," so I messaged him on Facebook and we scheduled a time to meet that wouldn't conflict with his 8:30PM World of Warcraft raid. We met up at Fashion Valley Mall because there was an Apple Store there in case we needed it. After ordering from the Starbucks in the food court, we sat down and started talking. It quickly became clear to me why I needed to talk to Adam: he was an Apple Certified Technician for almost 10 years! Instead of helping me study for the exam, we spent the entire time talking about World of Warcraft and the Simpsons. There wasn't a single quiet or awkward moment. It was just awesome to talk with someone who shared a lot of the same nerdy interests as me.   -   Jae

His Story

Lorem Khaled Ipsum is a major key to success. Hammock talk come soon. Lion! The key is to drink coconut, fresh coconut, trust me. They key is to have every key, the key to open every door. In life you have to take the trash out, if you have trash in your life, take it out, throw it away, get rid of it, major key. Don’t ever play yourself. Don’t ever play yourself. Don’t ever play yourself. It’s on you how you want to live your life. Everyone has a choice. I pick my choice, squeaky clean. The key is to enjoy life, because they don’t want you to enjoy life. I promise you, they don’t want you to jetski, they don’t want you to smile.

Adam never wrote his part so this is a placeholder from DJ Khaled.

If you're reading this, it's Jae and I'm very excited to share his proposal story with you all.

On the evening on March 24, 2017, the day before my birthday, my former-best friend drove me home from the gym (we went to Megaformer class after work). As soon as I opened the door, Adam was sitting there with a present in his lap (an Amazon shipping box). He said that it was an early birthday gift for me and I could open it. He also mentioned that Ed (one of our Highfive coworkers), was there to talk about Board Games with our housemate. Nothing suspicious there since the same housemate was playing Board Games at the office during lunch (we were also coworkers). I should also mention that Ed is a photographer and always has his camera with him so I was NOT suspicious at all.

I picked up the box, confused by its lack of weight, and opened it. Inside was a puzzle piece; on one side it has some weird lines and on the back side it has a poem/clue to where my next puzzle piece was. I LOVE Jigsaw puzzles, riddles, and scavenger hunts so this was starting off to be the BEST BIRTHDAY GIFT EVER! I'm running around the house and the backyard and out front trying to hunt down all these pieces, each with a crafty poem recounting many sweet memories from our past together. Finally, I've got all the pieces and I put everything together. I can't figure out any of it. Is it a maze? If it is, where's the starting point? Is this some strange blueprint for a house? I could not figure out what I was supposed to do next. Then it was suggested to me that I walk to the other side of the puzzle and there it was..."Will you marry me?"

It really was the best early birthday gift I've ever received. Adam is my favorite person so I'm glad that we're finally doing this!

Grandma Ester's Ring

Jae's maternal grandmother, Estrella G. Diosa or "Grandma Ester," passed away in October 2014. She was a beautiful woman who taught her children and grandchildren to love and cherish all the wonderful moments that you have with family and loved ones.  She was very quiet but she was filled with so much joy and shared so much laughter with all of them.

When she passed away, Jae's maternal grandfather, Buenaventura Q. Diosa or "Grampa Ben," gave Ester's ring to Jae and Adam. Ben wanted the ring to stay within his family and passed it along to his oldest granddaughter, Jae. He wanted his wife to be remembered through this heirloom and hopes that it will represent many more years of marital bliss, as it did in the 51 years that he was married to Ester before her untimely death.

Although she won't be there when Adam and Jae take their vows, she will be with them in their memories and through her beautiful ring.