December 2001
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Random Profile:
Teresa Rivas
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Every other month, Staff Notes Monthly spotlights a
stochastically chosen staff member. This month we profile
Teresa Rivas, a division administrator with the Atmospheric
Chemistry Division.
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Teresa Rivas with her husband, Guadalupé, and two
youngest sons, Eduardo and René. (Photo by Carlye
Calvin.)
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What brought her to NCAR?
Teresa began working for NCAR 25 years ago as a receptionist
for HAO. At the time, she was raising two young sons, and she
had also legally adopted her two younger brothers—so she
needed to reserve time for her family. "I was looking for a job
that would mean I would be home weekends and evenings," she
says.
After a year, "I wanted a little more opportunity for
advancement." She landed a job as a secretary in the
Atmospheric Quality Modification Division, which subsequently
became ACD. She worked her way up, winning an administrative
support award (now known as an outstanding accomplishment
award) in 1983 and, in 1990, becoming a division
administrator.
What she likes most about her job:
"The best thing about my job is all the people I work with. I'm
really blessed that there are people here from all over the
world. That's really exiting to have contact with different
cultures. You come to learn that, basically, people are people
the whole world over." She also enjoys being an administrator
because, Teresa says, "I like to organize and put things
together."
A tradition of mentoring:
Teresa says she strives to be as helpful to her staff as
possible. She won a professional mentoring award last year from
the Boulder Association for Community Living because of her
supervision of a person with developmental disabilities.
"Initially, it was difficult," she says of the experience. But
she came to realize: "We all learn in different ways."
Teresa herself has benefited from the guidance of others. To
this day, she remains appreciative of the man who hired her at
HAO, Keith Watson. "He was the first one to give me an
opportunity." She also bestows praise on Med Medrud, a former
division administrator at ACD. "If you're lucky in this world,
you'll meet a few people who have 110% good in them. And that
was Med. He took me under his wing." She adds: "I have really
been blessed with many good mentors."
Many-layered family life:
Teresa, who grew up in the southern Colorado town of Trinidad
before moving to Boulder with her first husband, has raised
three sets of children. First, she had two sons from her first
marriage, Robert and Louis, who are now in their 30s and
raising their own children. (Louis DiMarco is a heating and air
conditioning mechanic in Physical Plant Services.) Then she
adopted her brothers, Salvador and Tony, when she was just 19
years old. "It sounds kind of difficult, but in Mexican
families it's not unusual for children to be raised by an older
sibling, or by a grandparent." And now, in her second marriage,
she is raising two sons, Eduardo and René, both of whom
are at Angevine Middle School in Lafayette. She also has a
stepdaughter, Adrian, who is in her 20s. "I have the ones who
are grown up, and then I have the kids who are growing up real
fast."
Teresa married her second husband, Guadalupé, a few days
before Christmas in 1986. The two had met at a Mexican dance.
"He's my very best friend," she says without any hesitation.
The couple has made many trips to visit Guadalupé's
family in Parral, a small town in the Mexican state of
Chihuahua. Teresa had not previously spent much time in that
country. "Going to Mexico has helped me get in touch with my
own roots."
Making time for volunteer work:
Teresa has served on the boards of a number of community
organizations, including the Boulder County Safe House, the
Mental Health Center of Boulder County, and the Boulder County
United Way. She explains her philosophy this way: "When you're
blessed with good health and you have everything you need and a
little extra, I think it's only fair that you give back. And I
think it's important for my kids to understand that."
She has cut back her community work somewhat to spend more time
with her sons, but she is a member of the Boulder County Latina
Women's League, which raises funds for scholarships for Latina
girls. She also teaches catechism to third graders, organizes
altar servers at her church, and serves as "team mom" for
Eduardo's basketball team—which means making sure
everybody knows about schedule changes and directions to
games.
But her main focus is on her sons. "I spend a lot time working
with my kids on their homework. If you want your kids to do
well, you have to put in homework time."
Recreation, relatively speaking:
For Teresa, there's no question that her greatest joy is
spending time with her family. "I'm lucky that there are six of
us brothers and sisters, and that my mom is still alive and
quite healthy for her age—86. We all have children and
grandchildren. I enjoy just getting together." The family,
which is concentrated in the Denver-Boulder area, gathers every
other month to celebrate the birthdays that fall in that time
period. But, Teresa says, they've cut back on exchanging
birthday and Christmas presents. "With a family of over 50
people, it's a lot of gifts. The important thing is that we not
lose touch with each other."
• David Hosansky
In this issue... •
Other issues of Staff Notes Monthly
UCAR •
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Edited by David Hosansky,
hosansky@ucar.edu
Prepared for the Web by Jacque Marshall
Last revised: Thu Dec 20 17:08:40 MST 2001