For Lainie, home has never been defined by just one place.

It is Mercer Island, where she grew up surrounded by family, forests, Lake Washington, Pioneer Park runs, summer farmers market trips, dog walks with friends, and the kind of everyday community that becomes part of who you are before you even realize it.

It is also Switzerland, where her father’s family is from, where her grandparents still live, where she spent childhood summers, where she studied abroad in high school, and where she now knows she wants to build her life.

“My whole life up until moving to Switzerland was on Mercer Island,” Lainie says. “It will always be one of my homes and a place I am deeply rooted in.”

At 21, Lainie has already lived a story that stretches far beyond the borders of one hometown. After graduating from Mercer Island High School, she moved to Lugano, Switzerland, where she recently graduated from Franklin University Switzerland with a Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences and a minor in Psychology. This fall, she will begin a Master of Science in Health Science, with plans to pursue a PhD afterward.

But while her academic path is impressive, the heart of Lainie’s story is something simpler and more personal: family, nature, courage, and the lifelong pull of the mountains.

Lainie is the daughter of Emily and Chris Wion. Emily grew up in Seattle and has spent nearly 20 years working at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, designing and executing cancer research studies and public health initiatives. Chris, who is Swiss, grew up partly in Switzerland before moving to Seattle for law school. He brought with him a deep love of the outdoors, especially the mountains. A love he passed down to Lainie.

Her sister, Amanda, also attended Mercer Island High School before going on to UCLA.

Together, the Wion family has built a life that is beautifully split between two places known for mountains, water, and natural beauty: Mercer Island and Switzerland.

And for Lainie, the connection between the two feels almost seamless.

“Growing up in the PNW, surrounded by forests, water and mountains, it was completely natural to spend hours outside every day,” she says. “After moving to Switzerland, my love for the outdoors and the mountains’ role in my life only grew exponentially.”

That love of nature is not just a hobby for the Wions. It is part of their family language.

Emily loves being near the water. Chris and Lainie center much of their lives around the mountains, running, skiing, hiking, and mountaineering. Whether they are in Washington or Switzerland, access to water and mountains shapes how they spend their time, where they go, and what they value.

In Washington, summer means trail runs around Snoqualmie Pass and North Bend, mountaineering and ski mountaineering on Rainier, Adams, Baker, and Mount St. Helens, and plenty of time swimming and boating on Lake Washington. The family also spends weekends at their cabin on Harstine Island in South Puget Sound, where days are filled with family, cooking, games, boating, forest, and water.

When Lainie is back on Mercer Island, the things she loves most are the ordinary things that become extraordinary after time away: seeing her parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles; walking and running through Pioneer Park; cooking with summer produce from the farmers market; swimming in the lake; boating; and walking dogs with her best friends, who still live nearby.

“By far the thing I miss most about Mercer Island is my family,” she says. “I am really close to my parents, who still live on the island, as well as my grandparents.”

Living abroad has only strengthened those relationships. With a nine-hour time difference, staying close takes intention. Lainie talks with her parents almost every day, her grandparents weekly, and her cousin once or twice a week. She still texts and calls her friends from Mercer Island and Seattle.

“I am so grateful for the family I have and how they see how happy I am here,” she says. “I love when they visit and see the life I’ve built here, but I equally love going back home and spending time with them in meaningful places.”

Switzerland has been part of Lainie’s life since childhood. Her father’s family is Swiss, she was born with Swiss citizenship, and family visits to her grandparents were a regular part of growing up. But her relationship with Switzerland deepened during her sophomore year of high school, when she studied abroad for a semester at a boarding school in Zermatt.

That semester changed everything.

It was there, surrounded by the Alps, that Lainie first realized Switzerland was not just a place she loved to visit. It was a place she wanted to live.

“During this semester is when I first knew Switzerland is really where I want to be long term,” she says. “After my semester there, I started to really feel like Switzerland was a second home to me, and knew I wanted to move here after high school.”

For many people, moving across the world for college would feel intimidating. For Lainie, it felt natural.

“Honestly, I didn’t really feel much of an adjustment,” she says. “For me, it was simply moving to a country I already called home.”

She already had family there. She had lived there before. She had visited more times than she could count. Being Swiss had always been part of her identity and her household. The biggest adjustment, she says, was not living with her parents anymore.

Still, Switzerland continues to surprise her. One of the things she finds most fascinating is how much variety exists inside such a small country.

“There are four national languages, and many different dialects,” she says. “The mountains also look vastly different valley-to-valley, and the culture and food varies immensely depending on the region.”

At the same time, she sees a powerful national unity in Switzerland — a quiet sense of shared responsibility, pride, cleanliness, order, and care for the collective good.

“Each Swiss person looks out for one another silently,” she says, “and deeply cares about the collective well-being of the country.”

Her life in Switzerland is deeply active. During her three years of university, Lainie says she spent fewer than five weekends on campus. Most weekends, she headed into the mountains.

In winter, she skis, sometimes taking backcountry ski tours and staying overnight in remote mountain huts owned by the Swiss Alpine Club. Outside of ski season, she trail runs, explores summits, visits small villages, and spends long days on the trails.

Even during the school week, she fits in runs through the mountains above Lugano between classes or before studying. Her university culture, she says, is adventurous, with students learning to study and complete assignments in unusual places while balancing academics with exploration.

“It’s a common theme at my university that the students learn to study and get work done in peculiar places,” she says.

Her academic work has been just as personal as her outdoor life. In her final year, Lainie completed an extensive research project and thesis focused on female athlete health and physiology. She studied how ovarian hormones influence how women metabolize and use carbohydrates, fats, and protein at rest and across exercise intensities. From there, she created a female-specific fueling protocol for athletes.

“Much of the sports science data and consensus are derived from male physiology,” she explains, “which is not always applicable for the female athlete.”

It is a field that brings together her love of science, health, athletics, and performance. Switzerland, with its strong research landscape and fitness-oriented culture, has helped sharpen that direction.

“I have developed a pretty specific niche already: female athlete physiology, health and performance,” she says.

As she looks ahead, Lainie is excited about continuing her education, pursuing research, and hopefully publishing her thesis work. She plans to stay in Switzerland permanently.

“Even before I moved here, I knew I would be staying here permanently,” she says. “I have never even had a thought in my mind the past four years about living anywhere other than Switzerland.”

But that does not make Mercer Island any less important.

In fact, living abroad has made her appreciate her hometown more.

Mercer Island is where she returns for family, comfort, nostalgia, lake days, forest runs, and the people who know her best. Switzerland is where she feels pulled forward into the life she wants to build. One place roots her. The other expands her. Both feel like home.

The two places also mirror each other in important ways. Both are built around natural beauty. Both offer water, mountains, and a culture of outdoor living. But Lainie also notices differences, especially in the pace of life.

In Swiss mountain towns, she describes a slower, more community-oriented rhythm. Neighbors drop off homemade jam, fresh bread, honey from their hives, or produce from their gardens. In return, her family might bring over pie made from fruit they grew themselves.

“The neighborly love and connection is unlike anything I’ve seen in the U.S.,” she says.

She also admires Switzerland’s relationship with food: gardens, local sourcing, seasonal produce, and grocery stores that make it obvious what time of year it is simply by what is on the shelves.

Still, Mercer Island has its own kind of closeness; the kind found in longtime friendships, family nearby, shared trails, summer traditions, and the ease of returning to a place where your childhood is still visible.

Adventure has become one of the strongest bonds in the Wion family, especially between Lainie and her dad. Together, they have climbed 4,000-meter peaks in the Alps, including Pollux, Castor, Walencuppe, Breithorn, Dufourspitze on Monte Rosa, and others. They have skied, climbed, run, and spent long days, and sometimes multi-day trips, in the backcountry.

For Lainie, those experiences have shaped not only her relationship with her father, but also her understanding of trust, gratitude, and resilience.

“When you are doing difficult and dangerous things with people you care about, the bond that forms becomes so strong and uniquely powerful,” she says.

The mountains have taught her awe and respect. They have also taught her gratitude for ordinary comforts: clean hands, a shower, a kitchen, her dog, conversations with friends, and the simple routines of everyday life.

“Being so far removed from parts of my normal everyday life has built up my gratitude for the seemingly mundane aspects of my daily life,” she says.

Asked what she hopes people take away from her family’s story, Lainie’s answer is simple:

“Spend more time outside, with people you love, and appreciate nature and your life.”

It is fitting advice from someone whose life has been shaped by two of the world’s most beautiful outdoor places. Mercer Island gave Lainie roots, family, forest paths, lake summers, and the foundation to explore. Switzerland gave her mountains, independence, academic purpose, and a vision for her future.

This season of life, she says, can be summed up in one word:

“Fulfilling.”

And when asked what she is most grateful for right now, her list is both expansive and precise: family, the mountains, science, learning, and health.

For the Wion family, home is not one fixed address. It is a collection of places, people, trails, peaks, lakes, meals, phone calls, traditions, and shared adventures.

It is Mercer Island. 

It is Switzerland.

And most of all, it is wherever they are outside, together.