Catherine Angelo Gamboa

It is with profound sadness that we share the news that Catherine Angelo Gamboa passed away peacefully at home on November 5, 2024. Catherine was 64 years old at the time of her passing. Catherine was born in Sacramento, California and in her youth moved with her family to Alabama, Hawaii, and Virginia due to her father’s reassignments while serving in the U.S. Army. The family settled in Castro Valley, California after father Ray retired from the Army.

Catherine was a curious, creative, and courageous person who was a tenacious Engineer, and voracious artist who used her imagination and intellect to challenge conventions and solve problems. Her talents were most recently focused on addressing data-related and algorithm biases in machine-learning, but she was equally happy solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, or anything else that tested and entertained her.

Catherine attended Castro Valley High School and matriculated at San Jose State University where she attained her Bachelor of Science and Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering. A lifelong learner, she received her certificate in Embedded Systems from University of California, Santa Cruz, and an Associate of Science degree in Computer Science from Foothill College.

John and Catherine met in 1981 while both were studying engineering at San Jose State U, but John did not ask Catherine out until they found each other while both were working at the San Jose State book store. Following John's graduation, he was commissioned in the Marine Corps and was sent for training in Quantico, Virginia while Catherine finished up her final semester of college. As soon as Catherine graduated and John completed his initial Officer training, they married on 29 Dec, 1984.

Married and out of college with her newly minted degree in Electrical Engineering, Catherine worked as a Design Engineer in Silicon Valley and Southern California at a variety of Engineering companies. At Source III she designed semi-custom computer chips; at California Devices she created hardware and software simulation model libraries on computer chip logic devices, and at Baxter International, she redesigned Intel microprocessor-based patient simulators for test and integration prior to production release.

After seven years and having attained the position of Staff Engineer, Catherine stepped away from her Engineering career to accompany John as he began his military career as an Infantry Officer. During John's service he was regularly transferred and Catherine and John got very good at packing and unpacking boxes. John's initial assignment was to 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton where Catherine and John loved living in San Clemente. After Desert Storm, they were transferred to Ft Sill Oklahoma for John to attend school followed by reassignment to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; the Pentagon in Washington DC; Joint Forces Command in Norfolk Virginia; and 29 Palms in California. During John's 21 years on active duty, he deployed eight times which took him away from home for over five years cumulatively. During the many times when John was deployed, Catherine's sole focus was on raising their two sons. Vincent was born in San Clemente in 1991 and Anthony was born in 1994 while in North Carolina. Catherine frequently volunteered at the boys’ schools, helping to teach advanced placement Mathematics, rescue a neglected and failing IT system, as well as helping to organize art and other fun assignments. Although demanding as a frequently single parent, Catherine enjoyed travelling to new places which afforded many opportunities for adventure.

After focusing on her children for 21 years, when Anthony turned 18, Catherine announced that she was going back to school to get her Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and then going back to work. Returning to San Jose State University at the age of 46 to get a technical Master’s Degree was not a trivial event. Having completed her undergraduate work in 1984, 21 years had gone by before returning to start her graduate work. Because so much time had gone by, Catherine had to repurchase her undergraduate text books to refresh her memory while concurrently tackling the demanding academic challenges of her graduate courses. Although initially daunting, Catherine found her stride and graduated with a 3.8 GPA. Not only that, but two of the senior Engineering professors were impressed with her intellect and style to the point that they hired her as their Laboratory Teaching Assistant. Following graduation, Catherine started her second Engineering career working at Udacity, Google, and Blue River Technology/John Deere. Catherine loved returning to work where she could collaborate with other professionals to solve difficult problems. Catherine was extremely passionate about her position at Blue River Technology as the Machine Learning Global Educationalist and Machine Learning Ambassador Program Director. In this capacity she worked closely with John Deere employees around the world teaching, organizing, and mentoring Machine Learning projects in the U.S., Mexico, Germany, India, Argentina, and Brazil. Most recently, Catherine loved collaborating with these project teams on issues ranging from chatbots to Artificial Intelligence Large Language models, Natural Language Processing, time series forecasting, and predictive maintenance.

Throughout her life, Catherine had a curious and creative outlook. She had received a Bachelor of Arts minor while in college and loved to draw and work with clay in an original and uniquely difficult manner that required great perseverance to evolve her techniques. She loved to hand stitch quilts and many family members received quilts incorporating designs that reflected the unique passions of the recipients. Catherine was a voracious reader and wore out multiple Kindles by reading every day and night. Known to anyone who visited Catherine at home, she loved to show her tin collection in the laundry room that upon seeing would cause first time viewers to experience emotions ranging from admiration and awe, to bafflement and fear. Catherine loved to garden, dedicating herself to create a backyard Biosphere to provide flowers for bees, butterflies, dragonflies, humming birds, and any other pollinators to enjoy. She like to create hundreds of “seed bombs” which loosely embedded native California flower seeds in a grape-sized dirt and clay seed cluster that she would spread in the local area when walking. When the rains came, the bombs would go to seed and later provide flowers for all to enjoy. She loved taking macro photos of flowers at the Stamen and Pistil level exploring the hidden beauty that few see. She also found great beauty in flowering Cacti and the resilience of succulents, which she voraciously collected. Catherine absolutely loved her Australian Shepherds which she and John had owned continuously throughout their marriage, starting with their first family shepherd named Sammy, but who was known within the family as "The Humiliator." Catherine loved to travel and she and John had fun adventures while visiting Germany, France, Belgium, Hong Kong, Thailand, Mexico, Turkey, Italy, Switzerland, and Greece. Recently as Catherine’s health made air travel more difficult, Catherine and John loved to explore California and neighboring states in their Camper Van that could fit two humans and two dogs, although the bed would get quite crowded at night.

Catherine is survived by her husband John with whom she was married for almost 40 years, their son Anthony, her mother Sheila, brothers Raymond and John; and sisters Krissy and Beth. She is also survived by her beloved Australian Shepherds, Kalimotxo (Kali) and Mojito (MoMo).

Catherine was predeceased by her son Vincent (26), her father Raymond (90), and her oldest brother Stephen (59).

A Memorial service and Celebration of Life will be held at 10:00 AM on Saturday, 7 December, 2024. The service will be held at the Rose Chapel at Oak Hill Funeral Home and Memorial Park located at 300 Curtner Ave, San Jose, CA 95125, Ph # (408) 297-2447

We collectively anguish over Catherine’s premature departure. We will miss her smile, compassion, exuberance, and intellect. Her internal light shone brightly and lighted the path for many others. Although we will have to navigate our future paths without her bright light, she kindled the spirits of those she touched, and our paths will be less daunting. A favorite quote that Catherine embraced comes from French Philosopher, Albert Camus:

Don’t walk in front of me

I may not follow

Don’t walk behind me

I may not lead

Walk beside me

And just be my friend