"She's everyone all in one," says Donna Austin, president of the society.

Lehmer recently graduated from San Francisco State University with a master's degree in museum studies with an emphasis in fundraising. Lehmer's affiliation with San Francisco State got her the job in Cupertino--the collections manager for the society's museum at Quinlan Community Center attended the school as well and posted the job opening for his fellow museum studies students and graduates.

Her start date was March 1, but as Austin puts it, "She's hit the ground running." Lehmer is already enthusiastic about the society's many projects, including raising funds for its planned Center for Living History on the old Stocklmeir property.

"As schools are losing funding, museums' roles in education are becoming hyper-critical, and education is a very high priority for this organization," Lehmer says. "With our Center for Living History, we're going to have actual objects that kids can touch, which is counterintuitive to the way most museums are run. But that's how you create passion for history."

Lehmer was born and grew up in San Francisco. As a student at Mills College, she majored in anthropology with a focus on Middle Eastern studies, but she says she realized that she was better suited to channeling her interest in a manner that could help the community.

Museums and history have always been a fascination for Lehmer--when she was 7 years old, her parents took her to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., and couldn't get her to leave.

"The security guards had to come by and say, 'I'm sorry, but we need to close now,' " Lehmer says with a laugh. In a way, it was hard for her to steer away from the traditional museum studies path, but she says her concentration in fundraising was chosen for the greater good.

"It's so much fun to work with great historical objects, but everyone wants to do that," she says. "If no one studies administration and fundraising, no one's going to be able to step into those roles."

Her career choice was also an offshoot of her family background--her parents are both artists, and her grandmother, to whom Lehmer was very close, was the family historian.

For now, Lehmer remains in San Francisco and commutes to Cupertino every day. But she doesn't mind--her curiosity extends to her route down Interstate 280. "It has to be one of the most beautiful freeways in the country," she says.