The New Yorker:

An influx of ultra-high-net-worth newcomers has increased demand for experienced—and discreet—household staff.

By Emily Witt

This past summer, on a visit to Palm Beach, Florida, I met a nanny named Jovana Capric at a coffee shop at the Breakers, the historic oceanside luxury resort, built in 1926. It was late June, the season when the town’s wealthy residents leave for Nantucket, the Hamptons, or Europe. The used tea sets at the Church Mouse, a local charity shop, had all been picked through; the mansions along Ocean Boulevard were shuttered and dark at night. On the patio, where we sat beneath flower-covered trellises, only a few people lingered, drinking iced coffee in the thick summer air.

Capric, who is thirty-three years old, grew up in Port St. Lucie, Florida, about an hour north of Palm Beach. Her career working with children began in high school, while she had a job as a hostess at a Chuck E. Cheese in Boca Raton. “There was someone having his second-birthday party, and the parents just loved how I interacted with their son,” she told me. “And they’re, like, ‘Hey, do you by chance babysit?’ ” The conversation led to a gig as a part-time babysitter for them, and then to work as an assistant teacher at their children’s Montessori school. “Then, when I was a teacher,” she said, “I had families kind of shark me out of working for the school.” The pay was better, fifteen to twenty dollars an hour instead of eleven, so she left, in 2015, to nanny full time for a family with twins and dropped out of Florida Atlantic University, where she had been studying for a degree in psychology. “I could have paid thousands of dollars to get my Montessori certification,” she said, “but for me and in any job that I’ve had, experience trumps anything.”

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