Jennifer Shae Hankins
OBITUARY
Jennifer Hankins, a pioneering San Diego businesswoman and tireless champion of the city’s arts and theatre scenes, died peacefully at her home surrounded by family and friends. She was 74.
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, to Leroy and Irma Laverne Hankins, she came to Imperial Beach as a child and graduated from Mar Vista High School in 1969. In the early 1980s she founded The Total Office, introducing professional office suites to downtown’s Central Savings tower and later the Granger Building, Pacific Beach, and Bankers Hill. She went on to form Total Property Management, serving HOAs and individual property owners.
Her business sense and passionate advocacy became a gift to the arts. As board member and president of the San Diego Repertory Theatre, she led the drive to include two state-of-the-art theatres in Ernest Hahn’s Horton Plaza project, giving the Rep and other arts organizations a home and anchoring downtown’s cultural revival. As board president of Sledgehammer Theatre, she used her real estate connections to help the company mount the site-specific productions that made its name.
As a patron of the arts, and friend to all, she lived her life building communities where friendship and creativity thrived. She hosted innumerable fiestas and gatherings adorned in Kahloesque camisas, and lived by the credo, Haz el bien sin mirar a quien (do good without seeing to whom).
Her lifelong passions were travel, adopting strays (both dogs and humans), collecting art, and supporting theatre. She kept an apartment in Oaxaca, Mexico, surrounded by the Mexican art and culture she loved.
She was preceded in death by her partner and friend Robert Spelman and her brother Scott Hankins. She is survived by her sister Dale Mariota (Rene), niece Danielle Hankins, nephew Stephen Tee (Danielle) and their children Henry and Keira, whom she adored, as well as her beloved dog Emma.