Alma Alicia Gamboa, 67, passed away in her home on September 19, 2026, leaving behind a family who loved her deeply and a lifetime of memories that will never be forgotten.

Alma was born in July of 1959 in San Diego to Miguel and Alicia Gamboa. She grew up in Santee and graduated from Santana High School in 1976. As an adult, she lived in Valley Center, and for many years, in Escondido and Ridgecrest, California. Wherever she was, home was never really about a place. Home was the people she loved.

To know Alma was to know that she loved to talk. She loved catching up, hearing what was going on in someone's life, and never seemed to believe that a quick trip to the store had to actually be quick. If she ran into someone she knew, you could count on at least 20 minutes of talking before she was ready to leave. It was one of the things that made her who she was. She cared about people, and she made connections everywhere she went.

She was caring, strong-willed, and stubborn in a way her family will probably smile about for years to come. As children, her kids sometimes thought she was strict. As adults, they came to understand something they couldn't always see back then: she was simply trying to protect them. Every rule, every warning, every question about where they were and whether they were safe came from a mother's love. She wanted her children to be okay. That was always at the heart of it.

Alma loved the little things. She collected postcards, stickers, pens, hearts, and gnomes. And if you happened to be somewhere that sold postcards, there was a very good chance you would hear her voice in your head saying, **“Pick me up some postcards!”** It was such a small thing, but it became one of those memories that her family will hold onto forever.

She loved food, too—especially salad, so much salad; steak and a baked potato, and pretty much anything with nuts. She loved music, especially Earth, Wind & Fire, Marvin Gaye, and The Temptations to name a few.

And then there were Saturdays.

Saturday meant cleaning.

Everyone knew what that meant because once the music started playing, it was time to clean. Those ordinary Saturdays—music playing, everyone busy, Alma making sure things got done—may not have seemed important at the time. But those are the moments her family will miss the most. The ordinary moments that were simply part of life with Mom.

Alma spent much of her working life cleaning and caring for children. She worked hard and spent much of her life taking care of other people. But the role that meant the most was being a mother a grandmother and a great-grandmother.

She loved her family fiercely.

She is survived by her children, Myra, Ami, Maggi, Jessi, James, and Jackson; her grandchildren, Wesley, Toni, Amaya, Mykha, Milo, Liam, and William and Ezra; her great-grandchildren, Anthony and Benedict; and her siblings, Laura and Ray. She is preceded in death by her parents, her brothers Michael and Raul, her sister Trish, a troop of grandchildren and a great grandchild. 

There will be an emptiness in the places where Alma used to be. There will be moments when her children reach for the phone to tell her something, hear a song she loved, see a postcard, pass someone she would have stopped to talk to, or walk into a store and instinctively think, *“Mom would love that.”*

And there will be moments when they can almost hear her voice.

**“Pick me up some postcards!”**

Her family will miss her conversations, her stubbornness, her caring nature, her music, her Saturday cleaning, and all the little things that once seemed ordinary but now mean everything.

A mother's love doesn't end when she is gone. It stays—in her children's memories, in the lessons she taught them, in the traditions she created, in the stories they tell, and in the pieces of her that each of them carries forward.

Alma was Mom. She was Grandma. She was a sister, a friend, a caretaker, and a woman who left her mark on the people around her.

She was deeply loved.

She will be deeply missed.

And she will always be remembered.