God may be his shepherd, but he cares for the goats

Truth be told, there are days when Tony Mahfet thinks he’d have been better off getting sheep.

Mahfet, 55, is the mostly proud owner of six lovable but rambunctious goats who, on occasion, have been known to run roughshod around his North Shore home.

“Goats wreck everything,” Mahfet says. “They can wreck a fence and get out. They’re like Houdini.”

Mahfet got the goats seven years ago to help clear the grass and brush from his yard. They share the property with an aged miniature bull that was rescued from a petting zoo.

“They’re a handful but they’re my babies,” Mahfet says.

In fact, Mahfet handles his goats with the same care and attention he devotes to most everything else in his life that he deems important.

He carries their young in his arms and tends lovingly to their occasional injuries, whether a broken horn or leg sprained while busting over one of those fences. He even built special feeding baskets to keep them from eating off the ground and potentially exposing themselves to coccidiosis, a parasitic infection.

Mahfet says his affinity for animals and his knack for caring for them date back to a childhood shared with family pets.

Mahfet was born in San Diego and raised in Huntington Beach, Calif.

In 1983 he moved to Hawaii to live out his dream of a surfing life.

At one point Mahfet held sponsorships as both a surfer and a skateboarder, a dual identity that was rare for the times.

“I was 50-50,” he says. “Back in the day you were either one or the other, not both. Now cross-training is the norm. Back then people didn’t understand the theory of cross-training. I’d just do different things depending on the time of day — surf during the day and street-skate at night.”

Mahfet also earned money as an acrobatic high diver, even moving to Taiwan for a spell to work as a fire diver at a water park.

“I got lit on fire three times a day,” he says, laughing. “I’d wear two (pairs of) socks, sweats, a hoodie and welder’s gloves.”

Mahfet’s sporting pursuits were supplemented by his work as an all-purpose construction worker. He got his start in 1980 building skylights, a trade he says enabled him to develop a variety of useful skills.

“Building a skylight is like building a whole house in one day,” he says. “You have to do everything, so you get to learn how to do everything yourself. It’s not like people who say they only do drywall or taping or framing. When I was 18 I knew how to do all of it. I never had to worry about work.”

Mahfet says those early experiences instilled in him a desire to continually build on his knowledge and expertise, whatever that might entail.

“My goal was always to create more value at every instance,” he says. “Any time I came across an older person, I’d pick their brain. I’d be on them in a second trying to learn whatever I could. It’s not like kids now who are still young enough to know everything and don’t want to listen.”

Mahfet now works as a field operations manager for a company that installs photovoltaic systems, a job that suits his desire to “work from (the) shoulders up” as his body ages.

A member of North Shore Christian Fellowship, Mahfet says his approach to work and life — and goats — is tied to his religious faith.

“I do all that I do to please God with my work ethic and the high pride that I take in my work,” he says. “I’m a perfectionist.”

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.