Well into her 103rd year, Escondido's Stephanie McGraw has been a schoolteacher, Hollywood hairstylist, portrait painter, machine shop employee and kumquat grower.

And through it all, she has seemingly thrived, appearing to elude most of the ravages of old age.

In her Hidden Meadows home where she now lives on her own, McGraw walks up and down the main stairs from the master bedroom to the main floor with ease, still a bastion of strength and independence.

"I have always worked, never wanted to have someone take care of me," she said, her bright blue eyes twinkling.

"The only thing is the hearing." McGraw, whose hairstyle is short and blond, doesn't need glasses but has two small hearing aids.

"There is nothing that I don't want to know about -- everybody is interesting," she said with a quick, easy laugh. "I never exercise and I never drink water. I never smoked, and I quit having a cocktail because I got flushed and didn't like the way my face looked. "

The secret to Stephanie McGraw's unusual longevity is something most would like to know.

"I wonder if there is anyone older in this area," said her neighbor of 14 years, Ron Miller. "She is like a magnet if you take her anywhere. I took her once to a senior center for a birthday party and she was the oldest person there and all of the people were asking her about her longevity."

It could be a stroke of genetic luck or it could be her healthy lifestyle. McGraw is a vegetarian not for health reasons but because "I don't like to eat friends," she said, referring to animals and pets. She has always been slim without dieting too, not due to an iron will, she said, but because she prefers vegetables to more fattening fare.

Or it could be something else, though McGraw said even she doesn't know the reason.

McGraw, who is an avid reader, still entertains friends and neighbors at dinner parties and lives alone with only the assistance of a part-time housekeeper. She stopped driving only a few years ago. "I stopped at 100 when I ran into a Dumpster," she said. Now her part-time helper, Jose, chauffeurs her to the grocery store and on errands.

Her neighbor Miller said McGraw is amazingly active and sharp for her age but he can only guess at her secret. "She thinks she is never going to die," he said. "She just took a Caribbean cruise and she is going to Majorca in October, and it just goes on. She is going to outlive us all, I am quite certain."

When Mary and Ron Miller moved down the street from McGraw 14 years ago, Stephanie was out in the front portion of her yard, with the dog she had then called Sheba. "She was wearing a straw-brimmed hat and we thought she looked like Katharine Hepburn," Miller said. "I don't know anyone who meets her without finding her enchanting."

Always Active

Stephanie McGraw's stepson, DeLoss McGraw Jr., a world-famous abstract artist who now lives in Oklahoma, thinks his stepmother's incredible vitality might be one of the major reasons she has kept so healthy and vibrant into the triple digits.

"She has never been lazy," he said. "She is unbelievably active, and though she might piss and moan, she is never idle. She's always been active."

Born on Jan. 24, 1905, in Missouri, Stephanie Stephens was the eldest of three children. Her father, Harry, was a jack-of-all-trades with wanderlust; her mother was strictly religious and severe.

Soon after she was born, the Stephens family moved to Beulah, N.D., where they farmed.

"At that time, if you built a house, you owned the land," Stephanie McGraw said. "I can still remember the beautiful blue flax fields. They looked like waves on the ocean when the wind blew."

The family moved several times throughout the Western states during her childhood before she married her first husband. After her first marriage ended in divorce, McGraw came out to California, where she met her second husband, Charlie Garland, who had a show in Hollywood. That marriage lasted only two years, but it was an entry into the movie business, where she later became a hairstylist and met her third and final husband, DeLoss McGraw.

DeLoss McGraw was a prop man and Olympic fencer who would later study at the University of Southern California to become an architect.

After the couple were married, they lived in Manhattan Beach, Palos Verdes and Del Mar before buying the hilltop property in Hidden Meadows.

"I have always loved rocks," Stephanie McGraw said, looking out the window at the desert landscape and the orchard of kumquats below. Original artwork adorns every wall in the contemporary home, including many huge, colorful, abstract pieces by her son, her own portraits and other fine works by such Spanish masters as Miguel Utrillo. Four carousel horses she collected and restored are scattered near the central stairway.

"Their life always centered around their home -- finding the right property and building on it. That's what they liked," said DeLoss Jr. "If anyone deserves to live to 150, Mom does."

Contact staff writer Ruth Marvin Webster at (760) 740-3527 or rwebster@nctimes.com.

STEPHANIE'S KUMQUAT MERINGUE PIE

1 1/2 pounds kumquats

1 1/2 cups sugar

6 tablespoons cornstarch

1 1/2 cups water

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

4 large eggs, separated

3 tablespoons butter or margarine

1 baked pie shell for a 9-inch pie

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Thinly slice enough kumquats to make 1/2 cup, discarding seeds and ends. Boil remaining kumquats for three minutes. Cool, split and remove pulp with a spoon. Discard rinds. Push pulp through a sieve. You should have 1/2 cup juice.

In a medium size saucepan, mix together 1 1/4 cups sugar and six tablespoons cornstarch thoroughly. Slowly add kumquat juice and water, blending until smooth. Cook over medium heat until mixture comes to a boil and thickens. In a small bowl, beat egg yolks well. Add hot mixture slowly, beating constantly. Pour back into pan and heat slowly, stirring constantly for two more minutes. Remove from heat, stir in sliced kumquats and butter and let cool slightly before pouring into prepared pie crust. Beat whites in a large bowl at high speed until frothy. Add 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar and start adding sugar, one tablespoon at a time until whites hold stiff glossy peaks. Beat in vanilla. Pile meringue over filling, sealing meringue carefully to edge of pie crust. Bake in 375-degree oven until delicately brown. Cool thoroughly.

Source: "What Do You Do With a Kumquat?" by Stephanie McGraw, self-published in 1986.

Fast Facts

In a recent survey by Evercare, a health insurance plan specializing in the care of older Americans,100 centenarians were asked for their secrets. The survey found that a keen interest in keeping up on the latest trends and being active were key.

According to researchers at the University of Chicago (Gavrilova and Gavrilov) who sifted through data gathered on 991 centenarians born in the U.S. between 1875 and 1899, first-born children were 1.7 times as likely as their siblings to live to be 100. Another even stronger predictor of longevity was how young their mothers were when they were born; those with mothers less than 25 years old are twice as likely to survive beyond a century. (The first U.S. Census was taken in 1790.)

The U.S. Census Bureau figures indicate that the population of 100-year-olds living in the United States was only 66,000 in 1999, but that by 2050, the Bureau projects that number to increase to 834,000.