The old adage of "the apple never falls far from the tree" might help illustrate former Boulder City Council member and current council candidate Lisa Morzel's approach to civic involvement.

Morzel grew up in Kansas City, the fourth of six children in her family, and one of her early exposures to social activism came from what many people might consider a relatively unlikely source - her Catholic school.

"I was in sixth grade during the Civil Rights era, and the nuns that I worked with were marching in Selma and Montgomery (Alabama)," said Morzel. "They got a small group of sixth graders who wanted to get involved in changing the world, and I was one of them."

She said the group would go to neighborhoods in the K.C. inner city, working to help senior citizens with grocery shopping, as well as painting and/or cleaning homes, and Morzel met "a lot of children" who were less fortunate than she was.

"So, in eighth grade, I started an inner-city tutoring program where the seventh- and eighth-graders would tutor younger kids on reading and math, primarily," she said.

Morzel said her parents were also social and political activists who instilled values in her that resembled another adage - "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

Her father led "Fair Housing" activities in 1968, and Morzel said her father received death threats for his efforts to prevent discrimination in housing based on race or ethnicity. He also led a "head tax" effort to fund police and fire services for the city. Her mother encouraged her tutoring efforts, so Morzel expanded her involvement in high school and also became active with the Head Start program.

For a quick fast-forward to the years before and during Morzel's 1995-2003 tenure on council - her involvement in civic affairs certainly didn't fade away after the 1960s. She worked on a number of issues, including recycling and solid waste reduction, pedestrian safety, neighborhood planning and the transition of the former Rocky Flats plutonium trigger plant into a national wildlife refuge.

But Morzel's father also had a penchant for outdoor adventure, and Morzel accompanied him to Rocky Mountain National Park for the first time when she was five years old.

"We'd always stop in Boulder to get groceries, my dad would get Coors beer, and we'd have a picnic up on the northern quadrangle," she said. "I can always remember coming over Davidson Mesa, seeing the red-tiled roofs and thinking, 'This is such a neat little town.'"

Morzel's fascination with the town led to hitchhiking trips to Boulder in the 1960s, and she said she would hang out on University Hill or in Nederland.

She moved to Boulder for good in 1977, but certainly noticed one major difference between K.C. and her new home. Her best friend in middle school was a girl who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. Morzel also lived briefly in a home primarily occupied by Black Panthers after leaving her parents' home.

"The thing that surprised me most about Boulder was how homogenous the city was," said Morzel. "There was a lot of hippie music, but I really missed the soul music."

Today, outside of the political arena, she is a research geologist for the U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS). She has a Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Hawaii and a master's in Geology from CU, and currently specializes in physical volcanology - the study of volcanic processes.

But she started out as a fine arts major in school, with an interest in painting. She said she dropped out because she wanted to focus on painting, as opposed to taking the other classes required for her major, but decided to go back to college and gained inspiration.

"I saw a class called Optical Mineralogy and Crystallography, in which they said we were going to study the theory of light and color," said Morzel. "I thought that would be really cool, because that would influence my painting."

On the other hand, she also had to take two prerequisite classes - Physical and Historical Geography - to get into her desired course, and said she became "hooked" on geology as a result.

Her profession has taken her to a number of nations, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama, and she worked stateside at Mount St. Helens during its 1980 eruption.

But those who imagine that there are hazards to studying eruptions are right. Morzel fell into a hot flow while at St. Helens in the summer of 1980, and was left with visible scars on her leg, which would be quite a story for most mainland Americans - but it wasn't as unusual for people she met while running on the northern coast of Java two years later.

"I finished my run, and sat down to just kind of cool off and breathe on the beach," said Morzel. "And these two women selling bananas came up to me, and they knew. They said to me in their language 'volcano' because they knew what had happened."

Her first run for council wasn't quite as hazardous.

Her home is located in north Boulder, and she became involved in neighborhood issues. She had three young children, and said she wanted safer crosswalks and intersections. She said the schools were overcrowded, there weren't enough parks, there was no north Boulder library (and there still isn't), and a proposal to build a 100,000-square-foot chain retail outlet with a huge parking lot was on the table.

Also, she said "the city" told her that it was going to build a bike path in her back yard and a street in her front yard.

"I didn't mind the path or the street," she said. "What offended me is I felt like I was a taxpayer, and the city felt they could just come in and dictate to me what they could do with my property."

Morzel decided to run for council to raise some issues, and said she didn't think she would win because she was up against a field of incumbents - but she finished third and stayed on council for eight years.

She decided against running for re-election in 2003 for several reasons, including a desire to spend more time with her teenagers, increased job responsibilities and the declining health of her father. She ran in the March 2005 special election to replace former Mayor Will Toor, but finished second to current Deputy Mayor Suzy Ageton.

She said if elected she will continue to work for open government, fiscal responsibility, environmental protection and, yes, safe crosswalks - as she has in the past.

"For me, serving the public is what it's really about, and really trying to listen to all sides and come up with solutions that have broad support," said Morzel.