Susan Luzzaro’s voice lives on

Susan Luzzaro did not like to sit around.

She was, her friends insist, an activist to the end.

Luzzaro died last spring, cutting short a remarkable retirement that followed a remarkable teaching career at Southwestern College. Her family, however, is determined that her spirit and strong sense of social justice lives on in future SWC students.

Luzzaro retired as a popular and much-respected English professor in 1999, only to remake herself as one of the region’s most important investigative journalists. She helped to uncover illegalities and misappropriation of public funds as she investigated the notorious South Bay Corruption Scandal of 2008-10, when administrators and board members at SWC and the Sweetwater Union High School District were charged with more than 160 felonies. She was presented the 2011 John Swett Award for Outstanding Coverage of Education, a statewide honor.

Her family has established a $5,000 scholarship fund to support SWC journalism students. The Southwestern College Foundation is now accepting donations to the Susan Luzzaro Scholarship Fund.

San Diego Free Press reporter Barbara Zaragosa described Luzzaro as  “an icon, a gifted writer who spoke truth to power.”

“Any student who receives a scholarship named for Susan should feel very honored, because they are inheriting a great mantle,” she said.

Luzzaro was born in San Diego on October 12, 1948 and lived her entire life in Chula Vista. She graduated from Chula Vista High School in 1966 and soon after married her high school sweetheart, Frank Luzarro. Susan and Frank were married for 50 years and had two kids, Frank Jr. and Vanessa. Susan Luzzaro attended San Diego State University, where she earned a BA in creative writing and an MFA.

Besides being a dedicated student and a talented professor, Luzzaro was also a great mother, according to her daughter, Vanessa.

“My brother and I were lucky to have a mother like her,” Vanessa Luzzaro said. “She was devoted, kind and patient. We grew up with the sense that our mother would do anything for us.”

When Luzzaro retired she also became a loving grandmother, said Vanessa Luzzaro.

“My mother was equally devoted to her two grandsons,” she said. “She retired early to help care for them and each day they came to her house she shared with them the beauty of life.”

Frank Luzzaro said Susan’s devotion extended to social issues. He said she was a woman who stood up for what was right.

“Sue has always been politically involved and committed to civil rights, democracy, socio-economic justice and equality,” he said. “She was unwavering in her fight against injustice and oppression of any sort. We marched and demonstrated together many times for what we felt were just causes.”

Susan Luzzaro was also an accomplished poet who embraces Shakespeare’s dictum that “Action is eloquence.”

She worked at SWC as a creative writing professor for more than a decade. She helped establish the Baja Border and Latin American Literature courses that are still being taught online, and inspired hundreds of students, including Francisco Bustos, who is now an SWC English professor.

“Her teaching, along with the motivation and inspiration, gave me drive,” he said. “It helps you realize that what she knows how to do, you could also learn to do.”

Bustos said he originally had no intentions to be an English major. Taking classes with Luzzaro opened his eyes to Mexican and Baja Literature, he said, and his hobby for reading literature became his passion.

Governing Board Member Norma Hernandez, who once served as a president of Southwestern College, said she was “a huge fan of Susan.”

“She was a dear woman who loved our college and our community.”