Wishing our Sassarini Mentor Facilitator, Maureen, all the best in her retirement. We will miss you, Maureen!
Maureen’s history with the Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance goes back to 1998. At the time, she was a bilingual kindergarten teacher in Santa Rosa who had recently become a mom. She had planned to return to work part-time, but once her first child arrived, her plans changed. While she loved being home with her family, there was one thing she missed.
“I missed kids,” she says. “And I loved teaching reading.”
So she signed up to become a mentor and was matched with a first grader named Maricela at Flowery Elementary. Their time together was simple: a little reading, a little fun, and an hour each week spent building a relationship.
What neither of them knew at the time was that the relationship would last for years.
“She became part of our family,” Maureen says.
As Maricela grew up, Maureen stayed by her side through elementary school, middle school, and high school. Her sister became a mentor, too, and together they shared adventures with their mentees, supported them through challenges, and celebrated milestones along the way.
Over the years, mentoring became part of the fabric of Maureen’s life. So when the opportunity came to become Mentor Facilitator at Sassarini Elementary School in February 2021, she said yes.
It wasn’t exactly an easy time to step into a new role. The world was still navigating the pandemic, and the Mentor Center had just eight active matches. But Maureen saw what was possible. Five years later, the center has grown to 32 matches.
As she prepares to leave the Mentor Center for the last time, she finds herself reflecting on what made it so special. She worked hard to create a space that felt calm, welcoming, and a little bit like home, with soft lamps, houseplants, snacks, and student artwork covering the walls.
“It felt like a little family,” she says. “Each kid was with their mentor, and it became a little community.”
For Maureen, that sense of community is what she’ll remember most. Every week she watched mentors show up for young people, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. She watched relationships grow, confidence build, and shy students begin to open up.
One student in particular has always stayed with her.
When she first met Diego, he was in fifth grade. Quiet and reserved, he often kept his head down and didn’t say much. “I wasn’t even sure he wanted to be matched,” she recalls.
As someone who describes herself as shy, Maureen understood how hard it can be to put yourself out there. She remembers taking Diego for a walk and talking about what mentoring would look like. He didn’t need to tell anyone his whole story, she explained, but he would need to be open to getting to know someone new.
Then she watched him meet his mentor, Jim. “I remember he had on this bright green soccer jersey,” she says. “Before he even got to Jim, he was beaming from ear to ear.” The transformation was immediate.
“He had his person.”
It’s a simple phrase, but one that captures what Maureen has seen again and again throughout her years with the Mentoring Alliance. Every child deserves someone in their corner, someone who shows up consistently, listens, encourages, and cares.
“I think the kids know how special that is,” she says. “They have their person.”
When asked what she’ll miss most about retirement, her answer comes quickly. “The kids,” she says. “And the mentors and my coworkers, too. I’ll miss all of them.”
She’ll miss turning the corner and hearing laughter coming from the Mentor Center. She’ll miss the conversations, the energy, and the joy that filled the room each week. “Some of these kids don’t have easy lives,” she says. “But it always felt balanced because you could see the joy the mentors brought into their lives.”
As she looks ahead to spending more time reading, walking, and enjoying time with her husband, she isn’t planning to disappear entirely. She hopes to continue attending Mentoring Alliance activities and staying connected to the community she has been part of for so many years.
While we will miss seeing Maureen at Sassarini each week, the impact she leaves behind will continue through every match she helped support, every mentor she encouraged, and every young person who found their person because she was there.
Thank you, Maureen, for your years of friendship, leadership, and unwavering belief in the power of mentoring. We wish you all the best in this next chapter. You will be greatly missed.