Jean C. Alvarado

June 7, 1940 - January 14, 2019

Jean Carroll Alvarado, 78, of Greenbrae, CA, passed away Monday, January 14, 2019 following a brief illness and hospitalization. “Jeanie” was raised in Whittier, CA by her parents Virgil and Doris (Bishop) Asendorf. She attended Whittier College, then transferred to UC Berkeley to study Nutrition Sciences. There, she met and fell in love with a handsome student from Costa Rica, Jorge Alvarado. They married in 1962 and moved to San Francisco, where they raised three daughters, Maria, Julie and Amy. Jeanie worked for the San Francisco Chronicle in the early years of their marriage and then devoted herself full time to being an amazing wife and mother. The family moved to Marin and finally settled in Greenbrae.

Jeanie had many talents and interests. She was a creative fixture and volunteer at her daughters’ schools throughout their education, a period lasting twenty years. She was a DIY-er long before it became a trend. Her gift to each daughter as they left the nest for a first apartment was a huge soup pot and a cordless drill. She taught her daughters by example to make your house with your own hands and make it a home with your heart...

She had a passion and talent for cooking and entertaining and loved trying the latest restaurants and recreating her favorite dishes at home. Her Costa Rican Christmas roast pig was legendary, and her quesadillas were simply known as “Grammy’s World Famous”, by her granddaughters. She loved to travel and visited many wonderful places in the Americas, Europe and Asia with Jorge over the years. Every few years, she would combine her love of travel with her passion for cooking and travel to new exotic places with her dear friends and culinary comrades to learn about new cultures and cuisines and how to prepare them. She also discovered she could bargain like a Berber in the souks of Marrakech, and filled her house with wonderful textiles and art from her travels. Jeanie was a warm, kind, extremely generous and loving wife, mother, grandmother and friend. She was a devoted and adoring grandmother to her four granddaughters who were all equally as adoring of their grandmother. Jeanie’s life and passion were her family. We all felt it and benefited from that devotion. She will be dearly missed by her family and friends near and far. Jeanie was preceded in death by her father, Virgil, and her loving and adored husband, Jorge. She is survived by her mother, Doris and her three daughters, Maria, Julie and Amy (Richard), her adoring four granddaughters, Phoebe, Honor, Bella and Georgia, her brother, Ronald (June), as well as numerous nieces and nephews. The family will have a private service for Jeanie.