Meet Your Neighbor
Molly Leinbergs
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
You read about islanders who are in the public eye all the time, but what do you know about your neighbors - those you see at the supermarket, the gas station, at school or just in passing on the street? Everybody has a story about how they came to be here, what they have done and how their experiences have shaped and perhaps changed their lives and added to the fabric of Nantucket's unique character.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

This week The Nantucket Independent continues a new feature highlighting island residents. She has a keen wit, knows just about everyone on a first name basis and has the patient ear of a bartender - which she learned from experience. With an enviable mane of naturally blond hair and a ready smile for all who walk in the door, Molly Leinbergs is the spirit among the spirits at The Islander package store where she has worked for almost 20 years and makes customers feel like valued friends.

Born in Dorcester, Mass., she was raised in Weymouth. After high school, Leinbergs ventured from her small town upbringing to travel across the nation and spend time with friends who had moved to California. She lived in Santa Barbara for a couple of months but family matters called her back to Weymouth where she stayed and was a bartender for a dozen years. In 1987, she came to Nantucket for the first time to visit her younger sister who was here. The stay was only meant to last a weekend, but like so many before and after her, Leinbergs fell in love with the island and commuted back and forth for a year from Walpole, where she was employed at the time at a liquor store, until she settled permanently on Nantucket in 1988.

Leinbergs was house painting for builder Larry Maury when she happened to meet The Islander owner Paula Driscoll at The Rose and Crown one evening. In the course of conversation she told Driscoll she had worked at a package store. In September of 1988 she was hired to assist in the Polpis Road business and the following August she was married here.

"It's a very social job. I see everybody," she said. "It's a fun job and I love the people. This job keeps me sane - it keeps me smiling."

In her free time, Leinbergs enjoys going to the beach, riding her bike, watching the Food Channel, cooking, gardening and passing time with her "kids," Kate, a yellow Labrador retriever, and Mitz, her blue point Siamese cat.

"Work is my life. I don't go off island much. I'm a very boring person," she joked.

Leinbergs, who has an older brother in Atttleboro and an older sister in Cleveland, said she is quite content on Nantucket but if she could she would like to travel more, especially to tour America by car or go to Europe. Driscoll, who is a friend as well as her boss, took her to see the wine regions of Italy in 2001, areas she dreams of visiting again.

On April 10, 2006 Leinbergs achieved what she said may have been her highest accomplishment - she quit smoking after being a slave to the habit for 25 years. It was a challenge Driscoll joined with equal determination and success.

"I feel great about that," Leinbergs said. "It was the best thing I ever did. I don't get up in the morning and have that despicable cough.

"And I'm grateful for my friends here. Without them I don't know where I'd be," she said, pausing and then laughing again. "I feel like I'm talking to

a psychiatrist." I