My dad, Steve Guzzetta, grew up in Santa Clara in a family where making things was everyday life. His father, Chuck, was an electrical engineer in the early Silicon Valley era, and his mother was a painter with a master’s degree in art who always kept a studio in the house. His uncle Matt was an industrial designer and inventor with multiple patents — the kind of guy who built his own machines and once set a Guinness World Record for riding a motorcycle 3,000 miles on one tank of fuel.
It was a household full of engineering, art, and hands-on problem solving — and Steve fit right into it. At 13, he repaired a brick mason’s mixer motor just to earn a construction job. He made $3 an hour hauling bricks and mixing mortar and used those wages to buy his first oxy-acetylene welding set. While other kids were buying toys, he was buying tools.
One of the earliest stories he ever told me was about snapping the gearshift off his dad’s Volkswagen van. Instead of admitting it, he stayed up all night trying to weld it back together with no experience. The weld failed the next day, he got yelled at, and then he learned how to weld properly. That moment became the pattern of his life: break it, fix it, understand it, master it.
Even though welding was the first technical skill he taught himself, carpentry became his first real trade — thanks to his first mentor, Dave Sweet.
Dave is a legendary surfboard shaper and master craftsman in Santa Cruz. Through Dave and the group of builders he worked with, Steve learned framing, finish carpentry, structural thinking, and what real craftsmanship feels like. These were the guys who surfed at dawn and built all afternoon — and that rhythm shaped him.
He surfed through Mexico and Australia, picked up windsurfing, and lived a life that demanded balance, timing, and calm under pressure — traits that quietly shaped him as a builder long before he realized it.
As his carpentry grew, his welding grew alongside it. Over time he became a professional in both fields, moving fluidly between wood, steel, mechanics, and structure. That combination made him the person people called when a project didn’t fit neatly inside one trade.
That’s how he ended up on the kinds of jobs most people avoided.
In the late 1980s, Fireclay Tile hired him to help build out their factory in Aromas — everything from facility infrastructure to the massive clay-processing and tile-making machines that powered their operation. These weren’t simple projects. They were mechanical puzzles with real stakes — exactly the kind of challenges he thrived on.
After incorporating Guzzetta Construction in 1990, his reputation continued to grow. And in 1998, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom brought him in to engineer and build the infrastructure for their fire show stage — a complex, high-heat mechanical setup that multiple teams had struggled with. He rebuilt the entire system from the inside out.
I grew up inside all of this. I started building with him when I was ten. He didn’t teach through lectures — he taught by handing you the tool and expecting you to learn by doing. Everything I know about building came from working beside him.
Over the years he trained entire crews, many of whom went on to have successful careers. He never advertised. His work and his reputation built the business for him.
Today, he and I run Guzzetta Construction together — father and son, second generation — supported by employees and subcontractors who reflect the principles he’s lived by his whole life:
Do it clean.
Do it honestly.
And take care of the people who put their trust in us.
Everything this company is today comes from the foundation he laid — curious, hands-on, and committed to doing things the right way.