Talk about trial by fire. Fresh out of graduate school, Theresa Savarese found herself stepping into a business and economics classroom at Gerard Catholic High School in Phoenix, replacing a beloved instructor midway through the fall semester. The students – some from the city’s most affluent families – were not shy about voicing their displeasure.

“There were about four or five girls, and I can still remember them, and they just had it in for me from the beginning,” Savarese said. “They even came out and told me, saying things like, ‘We’re going to break you, we’re going to destroy you.’ And I’d drive home crying. I was only 23 at the time, so I wasn’t much older than them. And then you’d get these big senior boys, and they’d be like, ‘Well, we’d like to ask the teacher out.’ It was a hard time, but I still liked what I did, and I knew this was what I wanted to do for a career.”

That difficult start only strengthened her resolve. Now, more than 50 years later, including the past 35 years at San Diego City College, Savarese is preparing to retire on July 31, leaving behind a legacy measured in the thousands of lives she’s impacted.

“It seems like all I ever wanted to do was teach,” she said. “It just intrigued me. I really thought I could help and make a difference in people’s lives. And I hope I’ve done that.”

Her coworkers certainly believe so. “She’s an amazing friend and an amazing colleague, someone you could always go to for some sound advice,” said Shana Carr, a City College accounting professor and Accounting Department Chair. “She has meant so much for so many.”

Savarese’s former students have gone on to become NFL and MLB athletes, ordained ministers, well-known lawyers, prominent businessmen, and educators themselves.

Originally from Brooklyn, Savarese spent her formative years in the hamlet of Bohemia, Long Island, but moved with her four brothers to Arizona as a teen when her parents tired of the cold winters and decided it was time to head out West. Savarese would graduate from Phoenix Community College with an Associate Degree in Business Administration, and bachelor’s and master's degrees in business administration from Arizona State University.

In October of 1974, she received her first and only offer for a teaching job via letter from Sister Rina at Gerard Catholic High School, a letter she still keeps, pinned by a magnet to a file cabinet in her second-floor office. Six years later, Savarese was hired to teach business and economics at the then-recently opened Dear Valley High School, a public school in the Dear Valley Unified School District in North Phoenix. In 1985, Savarese then accepted an offer as Business Department chair at the new Barry Goldwater High School, where she created the first networked computer lab at an Arizona high school. It was about that time that Savarese began contemplating a move to the community college level and began teaching night classes at Phoenix College.

A spring break trip to San Diego in 1990 changed everything. On a whim, she visited San Diego Community College District offices and learned that City College was looking for a professor teaching Office Information Systems. She applied for the post and was hired later that year. Since then, she’s taught a wide range of classes focused on computer business technology and has served as chair of the Information Technology Department for the past 12 years. Her assistance helped City College become the first community college in the state to offer a bachelor’s degree in cyber defense and analysis.

Savarese will soon be busy cleaning out her office, packing the LC Smith & Corona typewriter that belonged to her grandfather, taking down the letter from Sister Rina, carefully removing a treasured color photograph of her and her beloved husband, Bob, and filing away pictures of her with her Jazzercise class. (She met Bob, an adult student who took one of her classes when he returned to college. When Bob graduated City College, then-President Jerry Hunter noted that some people leave this school with more than a degree.)

The memories will endure. And there are new adventures to experience.

“It’s been a wonderful career,” Savarese said. “I’m so fortunate to have had the opportunity to be at City College for so long.”