Zorica Mitrovich Cronemeyer

Surrounded by her family, Zorica Mitrovich Cronemeyer died on May 5, 2026, in San Diego, from the complications of metastatic breast cancer. She was 67 years old.

It’s often an easy reflex to describe a loved one, or friend or colleague as a “great person.” But there was nothing simple or superficial in that description of Zorica. In truth, she was the best person most of us will ever know. She loved without limitation, she was accepting and loyal without reservation, she was consummately moral without judgment. She embodied pure grace in every thought and action. She had an old Montenegrin soul. Her natural beauty dazzled. Zorica was unique. She literally made all of us better.

Zorica was born in 1958 in communist Yugoslavia. In 1961, she emigrated with her parents and sister Milica to San Diego. In 1965, the family welcomed her brother Risto. Zorica’s childhood was not easy. The family had economic challenges, and the clashes of old world and 1960s American cultures experienced by her parents were absorbed by Zorica and her siblings. It was a confusing and unsettled time. But Zorica emerged from this environment with an extraordinary ability to balance the often-outsized demands of her family, with her own integrity, hard-won wisdom and honest compassion. She was after all the classic “middle child.” She understood how, and always sought, to find a compromise to thorny issues without compromising her values. Zorica also became the repository of the family’s memories and stories which she instinctively archived and lovingly guarded for all of us. Her parents, and especially her siblings, sought out her counsel and her company because she was not just wise beyond her years, but a human balm that always made us feel heard, understood and loved.

At the age of 14, Zorica went into the “family business” at the Hotel del Coronado, working summers while in high school (Patrick Henry) and then full time after attending college (SDSU). She described this as the best job of her life. In large part, this is because she made dear, life-long friendships there, one of which turned into a meeting with Jamie who would become her devoted husband. Together they had their treasured children Zach and Alyssa, and forged a tight, loving family in Escondido.

Zorica was singularly and fiercely focused on her family. She guided and supported the kids through school, drum lessons, dance recitals and family vacations that they continued to take together even when the kids were well-launched into lives of their own. She and Jamie were so closely bonded that it was hard to see where one stopped and the other started. Zorica imbued her marriage and her motherhood with the values and love and fun that naturally poured out of her. In turn, her husband and children not only respected and adored her, they relied on her vision, wisdom and advice for just about everything. When Jack, Alyssa’s fiancé, entered the picture, Zorica and the family embraced him as one of their own.

Over the years Zorica also found time to indulge her passions for Bruce Springsteen and music in general (she knew and remembered the words to every song), the San Diego Chargers (that’s loyalty), concerts, camping trips (during which she would come home to shower), cooking shows, Reba McEntire comedies and especially epic family road trips where she always commanded the wheel. She shopped like a fiend and dressed up like a total babe. Overcoming a real fear, Zorica taught herself to ski well into her fifties so she could more fully share in the family’s adventures. She taught herself to knit and made caps for the homeless. Zorica also shouldered the biggest share of her mother Jelena’s care especially in the last, difficult years of Jelena’s life.

Through all her chapters, milestones and challenges Zorica sparkled with fun and a damn excellent sense of humor. Her wit was lightning quick, incisive and precision-timed—wickedly sarcastic—but always light. Even in her last lucid moments she managed an eyeroll or barb that shone through as singularly Zorica. And the girl could sing--she had a gorgeous voice that could belt a rock tune, lilt a lullaby or curl an aching folk ballad into the center of your heart.

This wit and grace, abiding warmth and soulfulness carried Zorica through two cancer diagnoses. And she carried the rest of us by the sheer dint of her diamond-hard determination and insistence that she –and those around her—live in the fullest and most “normal” way possible. In doing so, she eked out every molecule of good, happy life that was available to her. Even in the last, hardest days, she found and lived in optimism and hope. She taught us to do the same.

Zorica is survived by her husband Jamie, her children Alyssa and Zach, her siblings Milica and Risto, their respective spouses John and Linda, her nephews Aaron and Alec, and Alyssa’s fiancé Jack.

We are unbearably sad. We cannot imagine life without her. But we will do everything in our power to live the way we know she would hope and want for us.

Zorica’s funeral will be held at St. George’s Serbian Orthodox church on Tuesday May 19 at 10:30 a.m. There will be a family “Pomen” service the night before.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in her name to one of the following charities: the San Diego Humane Society, the American Cancer Society, or St. Jude Children’s Hospital.