Saenz
scores on, off the court
By Carolyn
Gonzales
As
an accountant, Teresita Teddy Saenz has tallied
and totaled in travels through New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and
Nevada. Currently working at UNMs Institute for Social
Research, her journeys dont seem to be over.
Born in
Mescalero, New Mexico because her father was working
on the reservation Teddy grew up in Tularosa.
Long before
she would work at Otero County Bank in Tularosa and before she
would work as a keypunch operator for a contract company at
Holloman Air Force Base, Teddy learned about money.
My
father owned a grocery store in Tularosa, she says. Fields
Grocery. We grew up in the grocery store. It was connected to
the house. Her father, Manuel Fields, followed a tradition
set down by his father Reney Fields, who owned both a grocery
and lumberyard there.
Teddys
mother, Candelaria Sandoval Fields, and their four daughters
ran the grocery store when Manuel was at work as a firefighter
at Holloman. Family history in Tularosa goes back yet another
generation on her fathers side. Great-grandfather Wesley
Fields resided in the community information Teddy found
out during one of her UNM stints, as office manager in Zimmerman
Librarys Center for Southwest Research (CSWR).
I
found him in a book called California Column,
she says.
Small town life behind the counter wasnt always quiet.
One summer day comes to mind.
I
was working in the grocery store when I saw men in suits walking
down the street, she says. They came into the store and
there was Senator Joseph Montoya. He was running for office,
she recalls. He told me, I know youre too
young to vote, but I hope youll support me.
It wasnt
Teddys first experience with a political figure. Among
the men in suits was her uncle, Albert Sandoval, who served
as Tularosas mayor. The mayor also owned Sandovals
Grocery, the towns only meat market.
By age
21, Teddy was ready to leave Tularosa. She went to New Mexico
State University where she worked in the computer center and
in the library before getting married and following her husband
to fish hatcheries in Texas and Arizona. She worked in accounting
along the way.
She has
her own fish story to tell. I worked as a creel census
clerk in Willow Beach, Ariz., measuring and weighing fish and
tracking where they were caught, she says. She liked the
part time job in part because she was allowed to take her son
Gabriel to work.
Gabriel is now a father himself and living in Tularosa. Her
older son, Jason, a UNM graduate, is a nuclear engineer working
for Omicron.
Teddys first UNM job was at the Gallup campus. I
worked in the library, the business office and the bookstore,
she says. Subsequently, she held the position at CSWR.
She gave
another UNM campus a try. I worked for the childcare food
program at Valencia Campus, but it was grant funded and when
the funds ran out, I transferred to FRS data control in Scholes
Hall, she says. She would then work for computer science
and the development office before landing in her current role,
a position shes held since July.
Each
time I transferred it was for an upgrade, she says. Ive
gotten something out of each position Ive held. I take
it with me to my next job and share what I know.
Away from
campus, Teddy can be found on the basketball court. For the
past five years shes played on a senior womens 3
on 3 half-court team, the Model Ts.
We
took second place in state in Las Cruces and qualified for nationals.
Not bad for a group of ladies who learned to dribble by having
boards strapped to their hands with rubber bands and sent out
to dribble the ball down the court, she says.
Teddys
no Michael Cooper or even Abby Garchek, but Tularosa will be
ready when the Model Ts make the big time.
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