Contact: Teresita Saenz 277-4257 Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales 277-5920

October 29, 2002 UNM'S SAENZ RECALLS EARLY YEARS IN TULAROSA As an accountant, Teresita "Teddy" Saenz has tallied and totaled in travels through New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and Nevada. Currently working at UNM's Institute for Social Research, her journeys don't 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. Teddy's 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 father's side. Great-grandfather Wesley Fields resided in the community - information Teddy found out during one of her UNM stints, as office manager in Zimmerman Library's Center for Southwest Research. "I found him in a book called 'California Column,'" she said. Small town life behind the counter wasn't 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 you're too young to vote, but I hope you'll support me.'" It wasn't Teddy's first experience with a political figure. Among the men in suits was her uncle, Albert Sandoval, who served as Tularosa's mayor. The mayor also owned Sandoval's Grocery, the town's 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. Teddy's 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 she's held since July. "Each time I transferred it was for an upgrade," she says. "I've gotten something out of each position I've 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 she's played on a senior women's 3 on 3 half-court team, the Model T's. "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. Teddy's no Michael Cooper or even Abby Garchek, but Tularosa will be ready when the Model T's make the big time. # # #

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