Service Details

The Center for Spiritual Living
Laurel St
Ventura CA 93001
Saturday November 28, 2015 at 2:00 PM

Ventura Center for Spiritual Living
101 S. Laurel Street
Ventura
California
93001
805-643.1933
Ventura Center for Spiritual Living
101 S. Laurel Street
Ventura, CA 93001
Map / Directions

The Story

Hiroko had a brilliant mind and excelled in numbers. She was also a very determined and courageous woman as demonstrated by her coming to the United States when she was only 20 (against the wishes of her family whom she had to convince by staging a hunger strike.) Once in the U.S., she enrolled in a special school in Arizona to better learn English and then transferred to Arizona State University in Tempe where she studied psychology. There, she had recently been in a motorcycle accident and had both legs in a cast but that didn’t stop her from attending classes. It was there she met Bob Pugh and they married, were together for 20 years and had two sons, Nathan and Geoffrey. Hiroko and Bob then went to the University of Arkansas where Hiroko earned a Masters Degree in computer science. She also recently completed course work for a PhD in psychology. During her years in Ventura she puttered in the antique business, did tax preparation and worked devotedly to the care and training of women who were developmentally disabled.

Hiroko was a very vibrant and energetic woman, she accomplishing much with the time she had. Snowboarding and traveling were some of her favorite things. She loved looking for treasures in thrift stores. She loved crafts. One of her favorites was pique assiette, the use of broken china for mosaics. There was a big surge of interest in it after the Northridge earthquake. Hiroko did stained glass. She was a gifted and accomplished artist and excelled in drawing and painting. She loved to mend everything and could make the finest of lace flawless when it had been torn. She was a searcher for beauty and she found it everywhere. Sea glass delighted her. She entertained, sometimes for a houseful, and often the fare was traditional Japanese. Before moving to Cambodia In 2013 Hiroko hired an auction house to sell everything she owned, all of her treasures that she had collected over the years. In Kampot Cambodia, she purchased a piece of property for $7000.00 and she and Stephen Gates built a 2 story house on stilts next to a body of water. They could hear the children early in the morning as they passed by on their way to catch crawdads. Hiroko and Stephen lived in comparative wealth, she riding on the back of a scooter traveling roads too narrow for an automobile. They made many trips while there as she continued to explore the world.Fortunately the physical pain of Hiroko’s illness was limited but over the 2 ½ months before her death she gradually lost some of her motor skills and could no longer stand alone or walk. Hiroko was a Reiki II practitioner and she loved to give and receive Reiki. A week or so before her death she dragged herself, face down the length of a house to visit and give Reiki to a cat that was recovering from surgery. Animals loved her and she them. She was exquisitely feminine, always polite, never said a negative thing about anyone. We were safe in her hands.