Meet Mike Yager
If you’ve been in Easton Park very long, chances are you’ve met Mike Yager. A neighborhood resident since 2021, Mike serves as a member of Easton Park Pride Group (which helps plan our amazing U-B-U PRIDE! celebrations!), VFW Post 8925 (our local Easton Park post), the Easton Park Scuba Club, and our inaugural S.P.A.R.K. group. We sat down to find out how he has time for so many activities and what he loves most about living here.
EP: Thanks for sharing your story, Mike! How long have you lived in Easton Park?
MY: We actually closed 3 years ago today – it was the day of that terrible ice storm, and my husband John and I packed up and moved to our new home in Kieke Park!
EP: Wow! How did you find Easton? Were you already in Austin?
MY: Yes, we were living on the East Side already, and we were trying to decide if we should add on to our existing home and reconfigure it or buy something new. We enlisted the help of a realtor friend, and she had us go look at Easton Park!
EP: Was it love at first sight?
MY: Well, we were skeptical, because we’re huge movie buffs, and one of our conditions was that we wanted a home theater. At that time, none of the builders had anything like that. But Kelly at Taylor-Morrison said, “Hey, we have this one home under construction that might be more what you’re looking for.” We walked in, and it had a big upstairs loft room and we fell in love. Now our second floor is the home theater – we have a movie-style snack bar and our friends come over on Sundays for movies and shows. Also, it was in Kieke Park, and we have a 24-year-old Cockatiel named Kiki, so it seemed like destiny!
EP: That’s so fun! Do you all have any other pets?
MY: Yes, we have two greyhounds, Cooper, who is 7, and Vuitton, who is 4. She’s the crazy one – we always joke that she only speaks French.
EP: What are your favorite things about Easton Park?
MY: Oh just the community and the people! Even during that ice storm, when we had just moved in, we had had our old house staged, so what we moved in with was only our staged stuff. We didn’t have any food in our pantry, and because of the ice storm we couldn’t get out or in. We posted in the neighborhood groups, “Does anyone have extra dog food?” and someone did, and they left it by their driveway so we could walk over and pick it up. That’s something special. I also like the variety here. So many master-planned communities are all one builder, and that can be very cool, but they don’t have the variety that Easton Park does. I love looking out my window and seeing all the different homes – everyone gets to express their own style.
EP: You have been so involved here at Easton Park! Tell us about your work with the VFW.
MY: Well, I was in the Marines from 1996-2004 – I lived in Japan for over a year, and I served in Iraq. One of the cool side effects of moving to Easton Park is that our local VFW Post 8925 is really close – it’s just up 183 about six minutes from here. I got more involved because I was so close to the post, and so it seemed like a natural fit to work with our Easton Park HOA on community outreach opportunities with Cohere and Brookfield. I thought it would be mutually beneficial to make folks aware of the services that the VFW provides and also let Eastonites know about the community that’s here around Pilot Knob that’s been here for years. (Note: Thanks to Mike, VFW post 8925 was our non-profit partner for the 2023 Easton Made.)
EP: Have you found a lot of fellow veterans in the neighborhood?
MY: Yes, for sure. There are quite a few, and a lot of them haven’t gotten involved with veterans’ service organizations, so I try to be as visible as I can be. And with the tax rate in Easton, a lot of veterans look at this area because of the veterans’ benefits they receive.
EP: What other groups do you take part in here at Easton?
MY: Well, I’m in the Easton Park Pride Group, and the Scuba Group! With Easton Park Pride, our big event is the U-B-U Pride celebration in July. And for the Scuba Group, there are about 6 of us who all live in Easton Park, and we mostly get together to talk about our favorite dive spots in Texas and beyond. This past Christmas we went on a dive trip to the Caribbean! It’s a great way for divers to talk to others in our community and get out there again.
EP: And I know you were part of the HOA’s first S.P.A.R.K. group, too – what was that like?
MY: Yes! S.P.A.R.K. is a program put on by the HOA for residents who want to be more involved in the community and really dig into the operations and governance. It was a lot of fun; it was really cool to hear about the original vision for Easton Park and how it’s evolved over time. To me, one of the most interesting things was how our public spaces have evolved based on public feedback; when they realized there were elements there that were not as utilized as they hoped, they did research and changed the play spaces. Yes, the developer has to make money, but they’re really looking for ways to make Easton Park different.
EP: Mike, how do you have time for all of these activities?!?
MY: I get nervous when I have free time! I like to fill it up!
Thanks so much to Mike for all he does here in the community AND for taking the time to tell us about it! If you want to have amazing neighbors like Mike, browse our builders or come out and see the model homes for yourself!
