In memoriam: Caroline Vierzba

On Sept. 7, 2012, Caroline Vierzba, a beloved staff member of seventeen years, passed away after a five and a half year battle with lung cancer. Among the students and the staff at Peninsula, she will be remembered as the woman with the warm smile and compassion with which never failed to greet new members of the Panther family with.

“She took it very seriously,” Principal Mitzi Cress said. “Sometimes new parents would break into tears but Mrs. Vierzba wouldn’t want them to feel embarrassed about being scared.”

Although Vierzba made it her personal duty to welcome new students with sincerity, her primary job was as Peninsula’s registrar.

“All this time that she would spend [with the families] meant that some of her other work wouldn’t get done,” Cress said. “She was usually the last person to leave and stayed until the job got done. She was so meticulous.”

Students, namely those Vierzba took under her wing, keenly feel the loss of such a valuable character.

“When I moved to Palos Verdes from Virginia, she helped me out a lot during the transfer process,” junior Alice Lee said. “She was really sweet and considerate and always friendly and full of smiles.”

Before her passing, she made a decision to keep working as hard as she could and fight the cancer for herself and for the students who she cared so much for. However, Vierzba’s cancer soon started to spread rapidly from her lungs to her jaw and surgery did not ensure a full recovery.

“She did chemo, but it still didn’t look good,” Cress said. “They gave her six months. But that was in April 2007; she lived close to 2,000 days after her diagnosis.”

Caroline Vierzba will forever be missed by the Panther family.