Tragic End for Schoolteacher’s Joy

Dorothy “Dottie” Mullins in Mexico in 2011. Mullins, 54, died Dec. 9 on her way back from Mexico when her car hit an icy patch. (COURTESY OF city of faith christian fellowship)

It had become dangerous enough in the past few years that the usual number of faithful folks who annually delivered Christmas gifts to needy children in Ciudad Juárez had noticeably dwindled.

“The violence down there deterred a lot of people,” said Sylvia Garcia, who with her husband, Carlos Garcia, founded Amigo Fiel, a Santa Fe nonprofit that provides food and fellowship to children throughout Mexico, particularly in border towns like Juárez. “Only the diehards keep coming.”

One of those diehards was Dorothy Mullins.

	Remembering Dottie Funeral services for Dorothy “Dottie” Mullins: 10 a.m. today, Christian Life Fellowship, 121 E. Siringo Road, Santa Fe. Graveside services 2 p.m. today, Guaje Pine Cemetery, Los Alamos. Kearny Elementary School’s memorial service: 1:30 p.m. Thursday, main gym, 901 Avenida de las Campanas, Santa Fe. Please bring wrapped children’s gift to memorial or school to be distributed to local children in need. Memorial contributions may also be made in Mullins’ name to Amigo Fiel at www.amigofiel.org or 505-474-6267; or Operation Christmas Child at www.samaritanspurse.org.

You might not have expected Dottie, as her friends called her, to be fearless enough to feel at home in a city that at the height of the violence was bloodied with an average of eight homicides a day, the collateral damage of a deadly war between drug cartels.

Mullins, 54, was small and lithe from years of Jazzercize. She was a third-grade teacher at Kearny Elementary School, and she looked like one – sweet, studious, bespectacled.

Friends say she had concerns and a great deal of sorrow over the violence and poverty that surrounded the children she played Santa to every year in Mexico as part of Operation Christmas Child, which Amigo Fiel participates in.

But her faith was stronger than her fears.

And so, she went.

In the end, though, it was not the dangers of the Juárez streets but the perils of a snowy, slick stretch of interstate 10 miles from her Santa Fe home that took her life.

Mullins was driving back on the evening of Dec. 9 from what had been a joyous four-day trip to Juárez with about 20 members of Amigo Fiel and other local church groups when her car hit an icy patch on I-25 north of the La Cienega exit.

Her four-door Chevy spun out and skidded into a barrier wall, slipping back across the middle of two lanes when it was struck by a pickup truck that could not stop on the ice, according to the Department of Public Safety.

Mullins was pronounced dead at the scene as snow fell from the first winter storm of the season.

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

“We had heard about the weather,” Sylvia Garcia said. “People offered a ride to Dottie, but she told them she would be OK, that she had her own car and was going to stop in Albuquerque on the way back to run some errands.”

Gale Aycock, a neighbor and Mullins’ friend for more than 20 years, learned of the crash when State Police came knocking at Mullins’ door.

“They told me she had passed away,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. I don’t think I believe it yet.”

Aycock called her friend a good Christian woman with a sparkle in her eye and a knack for making children and adults alike feel like they mattered.

“Her faith in Christ and willingness to share her life and her faith with others made her who she was,” Aycock said. “She really lived the principles that she learned in the Bible. Anybody who knew her felt anchored to her.”

Mullins never married, never had children, but in a way she had more children than most. They were the students she taught over her 30-year career. They were the children she taught at Sunday school at City of Faith Christian Fellowship in Santa Fe. They were the children of Ciudad Juárez.

“She poured her heart into her work – I believe she had a calling to be a teacher,” said Almi Abeyta, chief academic officer of the Santa Fe Public Schools, a friend and former roommate of Mullins’ when both were young teachers. “You can tell how many lives she touched, how many souls she taught, by the amazing outpouring we’ve received. She really had a legacy.”

Abeyta was there when Mullins’ third-graders at Kearny were escorted into the school library and told their teacher wasn’t coming back.

“They cried,” Abeyta said. “And then that sorrow shifted into the good memories they had of her, how kind she was, how much they loved her.”

Those memories were gifts, the last ones to her students.

Next Monday is Christmas Eve and the day my column features this year’s crop of unsung heroes who have made a difference in this world. I call the annual feature Angels Among Us.

Mullins would have surely been a nominee, though she doesn’t need it. She’s already earned her wings – the heavenly kind.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to ABQjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal