Santa Cruz can feel like a spell. One minute it’s sunshine and greetings on a neighborhood street, the next it’s elbows up in a surf lineup that treats every set wave like property. We sit down with Jefferson De Paula, born and raised on the east side of São Paulo, Brazil, to name that contradiction and to figure out how a person stays soft without getting pushed out.

Jefferson came to Santa Cruz to learn English after a career moment that exposed a gap he couldn’t ignore. Then a violent car accident left him with no injuries, and the shock of that “how am I still here” moment changed his timeline. He talks about researching where to go, avoiding big-city life, and choosing Santa Cruz on a feeling he still calls magnetism. We also get into what it’s like to arrive as a Brazilian immigrant and a Black man, to feel both the warmth of strangers and the edge of a town still learning who it makes room for.

From there we go deep on surf culture at Pleasure Point, the weird split between who people are on land versus in the water, and why Jefferson decided early on to be friendly, stay out of the way, and refuse to carry someone else’s anger. We connect that to Brazilian jiu-jitsu in Santa Cruz, where the mat can become a safer home than the ocean, and we end with a grounded definition of hope: small daily actions, real listening, and discipline that outlasts any single win.

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