The pain of losing a child can be agonizing. Taking this
horrific experience and bringing good to the community is heart
warming and gratifying for Joan Perreira.
The pain of losing a child can be agonizing. Taking this horrific experience and bringing good to the community is heart warming and gratifying for Joan Perreira.
“When a mother loses a child there is always an ache,” she said. “But you can make it feel better by helping others.”
Perreira has spent the last eight years doing just that. Her 26-year-old daughter Connie Colleen Gibson O’Connor was killed in a tragic car accident in 1996. A month before the accident, Perreira and her daughter were attending a friend of the family’s funeral when Connie turned to her mother and said, “Mommy, if you’re alive when it’s my time to go, instead of flowers, please make sure all the money raised goes to my children.”
O’Connor didn’t have any children of her own. She was talking about her second- and third-grade students at Sunnyslope Elementary School. Every year around April 10, which was the day of her death, Connie’s family puts together a raffle and raises money for the Connie O’Connor Education Fund, which helps purchase school supplies for local schools. More than $20,000 has been raised since 1996.
“Ever since elementary school, she always knew she wanted to be a teacher,” Perreira said.
Connie day dreamed about one day being a teacher as she grew up in Hollister attending Sunnyslope Elementary, Sacred Heart and finally San Benito High School. She later went on and made that dream possible by earning a bachelor’s degree in English literature and drama at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., and finally a teaching credential at Chapman University.
Perreira said education was very important to Connie, and bringing her love for children and teaching back to Hollister was never questioned.
“Hollister was home,” she said. “This is where her family was, and this is where she wanted to raise her children.”
Before finishing her teaching credential, Connie, who was the oldest of four children, took a summer vacation to Ireland with friends and gave her mother one exciting phone call.
“I think they had known each other three weeks when they got engaged,” Perreira said. “It was truly a Cinderella story.”
After arriving back to the states with her Prince Charming, Connie married Michael O’Connor, of Ireland. They lived with her mother while they worked and planned to buy their first home.
“She was so excited, because O’Connor is my maiden name, and now it would be her married name,” Perreira said.
Always full of energy and extremely passionate about her work, Perrier said, she would often find Connie up until all hours of the night making things for her students. One night, she found her in the front room, surrounded by sewing materials, play dough and all sorts of school supplies and said, “Connie, you really should get some sleep.”
“Mommy, I can’t,” she replied. “God isn’t going to give me the time I need to get everything I want to do done.”
While Connie’s time was cut short, her mother is working overtime to make sure her daughter’s spirit and love for education is remembered.
“I will continue to hold this raffle until I draw my last breath,” she said. “It’s a beautiful feeling to know I did something in her memory that I know she would have loved, and the community has been, and continues to be, so supportive.”
The funds have been appropriated to Sunnyslope School, Sacred Heart School and the Children’s House Montessori School. To help raise funds in Connie’s memory, a raffle will be held April 11, with tickets sold for $5 each or five for $20. More than 20 prizes will be awarded, including a DVD player. Tickets will be sold locally at The Hair Cottage, Fast Travel, Shelton Insurance, Blue Ribbon Carpet, Mi Casa Taqueria and Enterprise Electric. Checks may be made to the Connie O’Connor Education Fund.
For more information, call Debbie Parga at 637-8131 or Joan Perreira at 637-7185.
