Yolanda Shoemaker

6/23/1950 – 5/9/2013

On May 9, Yolanda, 63, passed away at home in Tucson with her husband Rick and her best friend Barbie Serrato by her side. She is survived by her husband and her two daughters Chandra and Shanti. Yolanda was born and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona. After graduating from the University of New Mexico, she worked in Parks and Recreation in Albuquerque, built her own adobe house, and owned a used bookstore. Yolanda moved to Tucson, where she worked for the Federal Correctional Institution for 20 years, mostly as Supervisor of Education. While there, she won many regional and national awards for her innovative educational and vocational training programs. After retiring in 2002, she returned to school, receiving an MS degree in Social Work from ASU, and worked as a therapist for Jewish Family & Children’s Services. Yolanda was a mentor and role model for many, many people, and was an avid traveler, hiker, scuba diver, and sailor. In her work and personal life, she spread love and kindness wherever she went. She will be greatly missed. Memorial services will be held at 12:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 18, 2013, at East Lawn Palms Mortuary. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Girl Scouts of America.

LIFE STORY

Yolanda Mayorga was born to Emilio and Lucy Mayorga on June 23, 1950, in Flagstaff, Arizona. She grew in Flagstaff along with her two younger brothers, Frank and Mike, and attended Training School, which was an elementary school that trained new teachers and was run by Arizona State College at the time.

The children at this school were a mix of Hispanics, blacks, Navajos, and whites, and Yolanda credits the diverse student body there with creating in her a strong appreciation of the value of diversity. As a youngster, she was told not speak Spanish. Nonetheless, she continued to speak Spanish to her grandmother, who lived nearby, and, when Yolanda was a mother herself, she made sure that her daughters attended a bilingual elementary school.

After graduating from high school in June, 1968, Yolanda worked as a lifeguard, swimming teacher, and recreation specialist for the Flagstaff Parks and Recreation Department until August 1968. One day that summer, while she was making pottery, a couple from Albuquerque stopped by, and they immediately connected with her. They offered her a job watching their children, and she accepted, accompanying them back to Albuquerque.

She remained in the Albuquerque area for the next 12 years, working for the first 5 years as a Recreation Center Supervisor for the Albuquerque Parks and Recreation Department. In addition, she worked as a teacher at St. Anthony’s Boys Orphanage and at the New Mexico Education Center, and as an Arts & Crafts Specialist for the Martineztown House of Neighborly Service. Then in 1974, she became an Occupational Therapy Assistant at the Vista Sandia Psychiatric Hospital, where she worked for 2 years. During this period, she was also a part-time student at the University of New Mexico, receiving her B.S. degree in University Studies in 1981. While a student at the university, she was advised by a UNM counselor that her selection of courses was not appropriate as preparation for any kind of career. In fact, it turned out that her education was perfect training for the outstanding 20-year career that she subsequently had at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson.

In 1971, Yolanda purchased 111 acres of undeveloped land on the lower slopes of South Mountain, near in what is now Cedar Grove, a community located about 30 miles east of Albuquerque. At the time it was illegal for a single woman to own property in New Mexico, but with the help of a lawyer, she somehow managed to make the purchase. Yolanda also met Jerry Savage, a musician and music teacher, later in 1971, and they were married in April of 1972.

After purchasing the land, Yolanda and Jerry built a small adobe house on it, making their own adobe bricks by hand from the clay soil around the site. No electricity or running water was available there, so they would carry in water from a community well located about a quarter mile away, and use a propane stove for cooking and kerosene lamps for lighting. She and Jerry lived in the house on and off for more than five years, commuting in to Albuquerque for their jobs.

In the summer of 1976, Yolanda and Jerry purchased the Bookcase Bookstore, a used bookstore. There was a small room at the back of the store, with a bed, stove, and table, where they lived part of the time when they were not out at the house in Cedar Grove. To supplement their income, Yolanda also made and sold tofu, and would get up in the early morning hours to manufacture and sell futons.

In 1977, her first daughter, Chandra Shannon Savage, was born at the Cedar Grove house, with only the help of a midwife and her good friend Susan Friedman, much to the distress of the local authorities who told her it was not allowed to purposely give birth to a baby outside of a hospital. She also helped a midwife give birth at home to the firstborn daughter of another dear friend, Susan Sandage, and was the first person to hold the baby.

Two years later, Yolanda’s second daughter, Shanti Dawn Savage, was born. This was also a home birth with a midwife present. Yolanda had a small group of close friends who also had small children, and they would take turns taking care of the children for each other.

During this time, Yolanda and her husband became followers of Yogi Bhajan, a Sikh spiritual leader who introduced Kundalini Yoga to the United States. He had founded an ashram in Espanola, a small town about 25 miles north of Santa Fe, and Yolanda and Jerry often traveled there to attend Langars (free meals available to anyone who comes), and to listen to him speak and teach. They also became interested in the teachings of the spiritual Master, Kirpal Singh, and for a time she led meditation groups that studied his teachings.

In the spring of 1981, Yolanda and Jerry sold the bookstore, and, thanks to a Foreign Language Area Scholarship from the University of Arizona, they moved to Madison, Wisconsin for the summer to take a 12-week immersive language course in Hindi. No English was ever spoken in class, and at first she hated it. By the end of the summer, however, she was able to read, write, and speak Hindi well enough that she said she could have been dropped anywhere in India, and would be able to get along just fine.

In the fall of 1981, she and Jerry moved to Tucson, where Jerry enrolled in a South Asian Studies program at the University of Arizona. After working as a substitute teacher for TUSD for a year, she was hired as a Recreation Specialist at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, which had just been built. Two weeks later, Barbie Serrato was hired. They connected immediately, and remained best friends until Yolanda’s death.

Since the prison was just being activated, Yolanda was able to write many of the prison policies relating to recreation and education, and at one point, she, a lowly GS-5 at the time, ended up supervising a department head. Initially, fitting in to a male-dominated culture was a struggle, but she proved her worth by stopping an escape attempt. She was filling in for another correctional officer, taking over his mobile patrol shift, when she saw an inmate on the roof of the control center, preparing to jump into the parking lot. She pointed her shotgun at him, and told him she would shoot if he moved. The look in her eyes convinced him that she really would shoot, and he surrendered. Yolanda said she felt like she took on the persona of Annie Oakley, a childhood heroine of hers, during the incident.

In 1985, Yolanda was promoted to Supervisor of Education, a position she held until her retirement in 2002. She had an outstanding career in this position, creating several innovative educational and vocational training programs, many of them in collaboration with Pima Community College. Her favorite was an inmate training program that qualified them to get jobs as waste water treatment plant operators. She won numerous awards, most notably the national Mryl Alexander Award, presented to her by the director of the Bureau of Prisons. In addition, she won several others, including the National Education Management Award, the Extra Mile award, the Point of Light award, and three Golden Apple awards for Excellence in Education.

She was also an advocate for wildlife. When swallows built nests above one of the building doorways, the warden ordered them to be removed. Yolanda objected and told the warden that swallows were a protected species, and if he had the nests removed she would report him to the Arizona Game and Fish Department. He backed down.

One legacy of Yolanda’s career at the prison was that, when first arriving in a foreign country with Rick, she would sometimes ask the taxi driver, much to his bewilderment, to take us to the local prison or to the local wa

ste water treatment plant.

In 1987, she and Jerry divorced, leaving her a single mom with two young daughters. Shortly thereafter, Yolanda met Joe Yubeta, a U.S. Marshal. They were married in May, 1988, and moved out to a house in the J-six Ranch development near Benson. Unfortunately, a little over two years after they were married, Joe developed a brain tumor, and the surgery to remove it left him partially paralyzed, and nearly unable to speak. She continued to care for Joe for the next 8 years. In 1997, largely for financial reasons, they agreed to be divorced.

While in the Benson area, Yolanda was a Girl Scout troop leader, and was active in local politics. She said that she considered running for mayor of Benson, but eventually decided against it.

In 1996, Yolanda met her future husband, Rick Shoemaker, in a scuba diving class. As the only two people in the class with gray hair, they were naturally drawn to each other. Yolanda said that she probably saved three months of dating by first meeting Rick on a Saturday morning wearing a bathing suit, having no makeup on, and having two teenage daughters in tow.

At noon on the 4th of July, 1998, Yolanda and Rick were married by a federal judge on the top of a cliff overlooking Yosemite valley. For their honeymoon, they spent several days hiking Yosemite’s trails. In subsequent years, they spent time hiking in a number of other national parks, including the Grand Canyon, Zion, Death Valley, Bryce, Kings Canyon, the Grand Tetons, Sequoia, Mount Rainier, and Rocky Mountain National Park. They also hiked many of the trails in southern Arizona.

In 2002, Yolanda retired from the prison, and went back to school, receiving a Master’s degree in Social Work from the Tucson component of ASU. She did an internship at the New Beginnings women’s shelter, and , together with her good friend Lillian Singleton, obtained a grant to create and run a week-long day camp for pregnant teenagers.

After passing her licensure exams, Yolanda started working 24 hours a week at Jewish Family and Children’s Service (JFCS) as a therapist. She had an outstanding, but all too brief second career there. In the spring of 2012, she received the Employee of the Year from JFCS. She remained at JFCS until illness forced her to retire in July 2012.

Yolanda loved children, and they seemed instantly drawn to her. On many occasions she was able to calm babies or small children when no one else could. As a therapist, children and young adults were always her favorite clients. During the 2011-2012 school year, she was asked to spend 10 hours per week as the counselor at the Hebrew Academy. She really loved that job and the children there adored her.

She was also active in the community, serving as both a board member and executive committee member of the Tucson YWCA, as a member of the Women on the Move Conference Committee, and as a leader of the Southern Arizona section of the National Association of Social Workers.

Each fall, for the last several years of her life, Yolanda accompanied her daughter Chandra, and Chandra’s Los Alamos church group, to Juarez, Mexico, where they would build a house for a Mexican family. These trips were always a highlight of her year.

Scuba diving was another of Yolanda’s great loves, and was the focus of many of their trips together. Yolanda made over 300 scuba dives with Rick, in locations that included Hawaii, Fiji, the Cook Islands, Australia, Tobago, Curacao, Bonaire, Belize, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, Cozumel, the Florida Keys, San Salvador Island, La Paz, Playa del Carmen, Catalina Island, San Carlos, Roatan, Himalaya Bay, and cave diving in the Mexican cenotes.

After Yolanda broke her ankle windsurfing at a Club Med, limiting her mobility for a time, she and Rick became interested in bird watching and joined the Tucson Audubon Society, taking a number of birding trips with them, as well as doing some birding with guides in Southern Arizona, New Mexico, Canada, Australia, Florida, Hawaii, Belize, St. Lucia, Mexico, Trinidad, and Tobago.

Yolanda and Rick also became interested in sailing, so they went to San Diego for sailing school, and both became certified to skipper sailboats or catamarans of up to 50 feet in length. Subsequently, they took eight sailing trips, doing bareboat chartering of sailboats out of San Diego, Ft. Myers, Santa Barbara, Traverse City, the British Virgin Islands, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines. While Rick usually was the captain of record, Yolanda reserved the right to be the admiral, and gave Rick a tee shirt that said “I am the captain because my wife said I could be”.

Some of Yolanda’s favorite vacations were weeks spent at different Club Med locations, including Sonora Bay, Columbus Isle, Turks and Caicos, Cancun, and Punta Cana.

Other highlights of her travels with Rick include:

Rafting through the Grand Canyon

Traveling through Australia and diving the Great Barrier Reef

Sightseeing and eating in Singapore

Touching and petting wild gray whales in San Ignacio bay, Mexico

Diving with Manta Rays off the coast of Hawaii

Doing a shark dive in Fiji when a pair of 15 foot long Tiger sharks showed up

Accidentally catching a 250 pound blue marlin in Hawaii on the way back from a scuba excursion

Two cruises in Tahiti and French Polynesia on board the Paul Gauguin

Hiking in the Swiss Alps, and getting lost in the mountains in Austria

Yearly trips to Condominios Pilar in San Carlos, Mexico

In early 2012, Yolanda began experiencing severe pain and weakness in her left leg. The initial diagnosis was that osteoarthritis in her spine was pinching the nerves to her left leg. On May 4, she had back surgery to enlarge the openings to the nerves in both of her legs. For a few weeks, she thought the left leg was feeling better, but then she began experiencing the same symptoms in her right leg, leaving the doctors mystified. She began to get more and more weakness in her leg muscles, and began using a walker.

In late July, the symptoms became much more severe, and she went to Northwest Hospital, where she was diagnosed as having chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy. Treatment was begun, and she went to rehab for three weeks, but nothing helped, and by the fall she was confined to a wheelchair. A friend and neighbor, Mel Weinberg, observing what was happening, showed her medical records to a UMC neurologist friend. He immediately realized she had been misdiagnosed, and admitted her to University Medical Center. Imaging showed extensive damage to the spinal meninges, and the medical team was quite confident she had cancer. However, despite repeated imaging, blood tests, several biopsies, and spinal taps, they were never able to find a primary tumor. In February, after seeing a new tumor growing in her brain, she was discharged to hospice care at home. On May 9, with her husband and best friend Barbie by her side, she simply stopped breathing and passed away peacefully.

Yolanda was a mentor and role model for many, many people, and in her work and personal life, she spread love and kindness wherever she went. She is greatly missed.