John Rucker, chemistry teacher at Righetti High School for 21 years, passed away on Jan. 4 near the end of Righetti’s winter break. On the first day of the new semester, students behind The Legend—Righetti’s monthly magazine—began working on a special issue dedicated to Rucker’s memory.
Rucker started teaching at Righetti in 1996, the same year as film and broadcasting instructor Robert Garcia—although he didn’t take over The Legend until 2013.
“I’ve heard a lot of gossip from students over the years, but I never heard a single negative thing about Mr. Rucker,” Garcia told the Sun. “There was a huge outpouring for him when the news broke.”
Garcia formed a casual friendship with Rucker over the past two decades, which evolved from small talk in the school’s mailroom to having each other’s families over for dinner.
“The last time I saw John was when he came over to my place with his wife, Margaret, and son, Daniel, for a small get-together a couple weeks before he passed away,” Garcia said. “He looked terrible. I asked him, ‘Hey, when are you going to get rid of this thing?’ And he said, ‘I don’t think I can.’
“I found out later that was the last time he got out of the house before passing away,” Garcia added.
Rucker was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer four years ago, but that didn’t stop him from teaching. Rucker waited until fall finals were over before going into hospice care at the end of last year.
Some of Garcia’s journalism students were students of Rucker’s, some weren’t, but they all wanted to do something special for the beloved science teacher.
“I never had him as a teacher, but everyone I know who did loved him,” Righetti senior Gabby Hendrickson told the Sun.
Hendrickson contributed the lead article to the Rucker issue.
“I interviewed Mr. Rucker’s wife. We talked a lot about how much he cared about his students,” Hendrickson said. “He was so worried about not being able to say goodbye.”
What Hendrickson found most inspiring was hearing about Rucker’s difficult childhood, she added.
It’s an issue so many high school kids face, she explained, and Rucker certainly offered a great example in how to overcome it.
“Instead of letting negative circumstances define his life, Mr. Rucker managed to put a positive spin on everything,” Hendrickson said. “He decided to become the kind, caring person that he was, and inspired others to make that same decision.”
Although Hendrickson isn’t enrolled in Righetti’s journalism class, she is in Garcia’s broadcasting class, which shares fifth period with The Legend. Although the two classes are taught simultaneously in the same room, this is one of the few occasions where Garcia united students from both to contribute to a single project.
“Mr. Garcia wanted everyone working on this,” Righetti junior Isis Maldonado told the Sun. “It was a bit more hectic than normal issues because we wanted to get it out as soon as possible.”
Maldonado and sophomore Naomy Gutierrez are the editors of The Legend. They are both extremely grateful for all of the help from their peers in the broadcasting class.
“The broadcasting students were especially helpful with compiling interviews,” Gutierrez said. “They recorded all of them for us, which we usually do ourselves. It saved us a lot of time. We were able to just focus on transcribing and writing.”
Students and colleagues of Rucker were interviewed for the special issue, which include loving letters, memoirs, and photos celebrating Rucker’s life.
“We really worked as a team on this one,” Gutierrez added. “We all felt how important it was to tell these stories of Mr. Rucker and the positive impact he made on so many lives.”
Intern Caleb Wiseblood is proud to call Ernest Righetti High School his alma mater. Contact him through Managing Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 16-23, 2017.