You could Google her

Since then she has sponsored sailing races (she owns three boats) and noon concerts at the Unitarian church. She bought the Island Spirits liquor store for $3.5 million and donated the land for a transportation hub; acquired Mitchell’s Book Corner for $3.2 million,ensuring the popular landmark stayed open; and presided over a group of investors financing a $34 million renovation of the Dreamland Theater,a film and performing arts center.

“It’s like Wendy here,Wendy there,Wendy everywhere,” said Armyan Bernstein,a Hollywood producer who summers in Nantucket and is a friend. Not since Walter Beinecke Jr.,the heir to the S&H Green Stamp fortune,began a controversial plan to refurbish buildings along Nantucket’s dilapidated waterfront in the 1960s has a wealthy patron exerted such singular influence on the island.

ReMain Nantucket,the most personal project Schmidt has worked on,was started to preserve the island’s culture,something she thought was endangered. But Wendy Schmidt was also altering the town to reflect her tastes. Marianne Stanton,editor and publisher of The Inquirer and Mirror,an island newspaper,recalled Wendy Schmidt telling her after the opening of Petticoat Row,“If I want to walk to town and get a baguette,I can go.”

Locals were wary at first when Schmidt joined their ranks. “There was a little fear of someone coming in from the West Coast telling people what to do,” Alan Worden,a prominent real estate executive,said. Affable and well-connected,Worden helped Schmidt navigate the island’s complicated social politics. He said he set up about six dinners during the winter of 2007 and early 2008 for Schmidt to get to know local politicians,bankers,scientists and artisans. And not all locals have been taken by Schmidt’s charms. In June 2011,Nantucket’s Board of Selectmen voted against a proposed pilot program to test whether paid parking would relieve downtown traffic congestion. What irked some residents,including Grant Sanders,was that the consultant who studied the problem,and whose proposal was being considered,was hired by ReMain.

“No one elected Wendy Schmidt or ReMain Nantucket to solve our parking issues,” Sanders told the selectmen at the June meeting. Her commitment to Nantucket is more remarkable,perhaps,because she has no family history here. After attending a friend’s wedding on Nantucket,Schmidt became enraptured with the island’s translucent light,and the couple bought a humble summer home here in 1999,a decision that led to Wendy Schmidt creating a life over the last decade that has become increasingly separate from that of her more famous husband.

Her mellifluous life in Nantucket has drawn attention to the absence of one back in Silicon Valley,where her husband still resides most of the year. She said she could not imagine a life where she followed her husband around on his Gulfstream. “I would feel like a piece of luggage,” Schmidt said,“And he wouldn’t want me to feel that way.”