Mom has worked for the Los Angeles Unified District for over fifteen years. For several months now she has also been a sales associate for the vitamin company, USANA. She is at home in the house she shared with her late husband, Alberto, in Mission Hills, CA, since 1990 or so. Now that Pop has moved on to "the next great adventure,"* probably awaiting us all until our own time comes, Mom is the primary caretaker of the beautiful garden he spent innumerable hours cultivating and loving. Well, the roses on the many rose bushes he planted around the garden were all for her, anyway. (Photo taken at Abi's wedding in Palm Desert, CA, January 2005)

* From J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (New York: Scholastic, 1997), p. 297. Albus Dumbledore tells Harry, "After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." And Pop certainly had a well-organized mind.