Local Roofer Gets National Spotlight

Grover Wonderlin in front of a Wonderlin Roofing Systems truck.

Wonderlin Roofing Systems, a Castro Valley company open since 1992, will be featured in an upcoming episode of the mini-documentary TV series “Viewpoint With Dennis Quaid.” That’s according to Larae Wonderlin, who co-owns the company, and her husband Grover Wonderlin.

They’ll be filming in October and airing in the months after that, she said. The show looked at a number of roofing companies across the country before settling on theirs to highlight. 

“Viewpoint With Dennis Quaid” presents some of those short programs viewers on public television often see just after movies and other shows that don’t end neatly on the hour or half-hour.

The company focuses on issues that confront and sometimes bedevil ordinary consumers, and this segment is on “Choosing A Roofing Contractor.” 

The episode will be introduced with a description of the company by Dennis Quaid, famous for a number of film roles, including “Frequency” and as Jerry Lee Lewis in “Great Balls of Fire.” He is currently appearing in the Max TV series “Full Circle.”

One critic called Quaid “our greatest actor never nominated for an Oscar,” but he has also pursued film production as well as the Viewpoint Project. 

The program aims to provide useful consumer information from a business with expertise but isn’t meant to promote the company itself. Show staff then talk to experts in related fields to tap their expertise for viewers. So besides talking about Wonderlin Roofing, they will be talking to former local building inspector (but not former governor) Jerry Brown and with roofing materials supplier Kevin Lewis Roofing.

Larae Wonderlin is a fourth-generation Castro Valleyite who graduated from Castro Valley High School. She married Grover, who grew up in Hayward, and they started Wonderlin Roofing together in 1992. 

“My family had construction experience, but a roofing company was new,” she said. Grover had learned roofing, and she added her business training.

“We started the business hunched over a typewriter in our kitchen,” she said. They are now married 37 years, with three children and three grandchildren.

Larae is happy one of their sons now works alongside her and Grover in the business. 

She isn’t sure just what about their business made them appeal to Dennis Quaid and his team, as the company has no unusual specialties. They have, however, worked on roofs on about every block in Castro Valley, Larae Wonderlin said. 

“We like to think we stand out a bit for our basic honesty,” she said. “We have a lot of small customers, not so many big commercial ones, and one can easily pay for roofing work one doesn’t really need.”

“We sometimes pleasantly surprise customers by saying, ‘Why re-roof when you can repair?’"

Wonderlin noted that many of their calls seem to come from older women, sometimes alone in their house and dreading what needed roofing work might cost. She said people often don’t realize that roof repairs short of total replacement even exist, although her company will certainly replace a whole roof if that’s what is needed.

Their business stayed in Castro Valley as it grew, said Wonderlin, who noted that her parents still live in town, too.

“One thing we like about Castro Valley,” she said, “is that most of our customers aren’t other businesses, but people in houses of their own, with some, but not a lot, of money in the bank,  and they’re just trying to happily live their lives.”