Edgar Beteta in 2023. A popular coach and teacher at Archbishop Riordan High School in San Francisco — as well as a proud alumnus— Beteta died Feb. 18 at age 59.
Courtesy of Stephanie Beteta
Edgar Beteta in front of a Riordan Crusaders team bus.
Courtesy of Stephanie Beteta
Edgar Beteta with the Stanfel Cup, which goes to the winner of the annual varsity football game between Archbishop Riordan and Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep, in 2023.
Courtesy of Stephanie Beteta
Edgar Beteta in Hawaii, 2025.
Courtesy of Stephanie Beteta
Edgar Beteta on graduation day at Loyola Marymount University, 2025.
Courtesy of Stephanie Beteta
When Edgar Beteta was hired to teach and coach at Archbishop Riordan High School in San Francisco in 2020, he already had a wardrobe in the school’s purple and gold. Hanging in his bedroom closet were his satin varsity baseball jacket and purple letter jacket with the four block “Rs” he had earned for baseball and band as a Riordan student four decades earlier.
During his five-year tenure as a coach and teacher, he added to that collection with enough “Big Purple” jackets, jerseys and school swag to overflow into a second closet. Larger items like football and batting helmets, school banners and rally towels hung on the walls of the garage.
All of those items were gathered and put on display at a March 9 reception following the Catholic Mass for Beteta, who died Feb. 18 at Kaiser San Francisco. His letter jacket was not part of the shrine because his sister, Amelia Beteta Seymour, was wearing it.
Article continues below this ad
The cause of death was lymphoproliferative disorder due to lupus, which he developed as a teenager and later required a kidney transplant, said his wife, Stephanie Santa Maria Beteta. The teacher, nicknamed “Gumby” by his classmates and called simply “Beteta” or “Coach B” by his students, was 59 and a member of the Riordan Class of 1985.
“He absolutely loved the place,” said Stephanie, who graduated from Riordan’s all-girls sister campus, Mercy High School San Francisco. “That’s all he wanted to accomplish, was to teach at his alma mater. He was always so proud of being part of the brotherhood.”
Coach Edgar Beteta, far right, in a team photo from 2023.
Courtesy of Archbishop Riordan High School
Beteta was hired at the cusp of a crucial five years at Riordan, as it emerged from the COVID-19 lockdown to become the last traditional all-boys Catholic high school in San Francisco to go coed. That shift in 2020-21 led to a surge in enrollment — which has nearly doubled, to about 1,200 students — and launched a golden age of championship seasons for Riordan Crusader sports.
San Francisco Chronicle Logo
Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.
Add Preferred Source
Beteta, who had been all for the controversial push to go coed, taught in the social science and modern languages departments, coached football and baseball at all levels and was a constant presence in the hallways, offering high-fives. He regularly spent 12 hours a day on campus, cutting back only to pursue his master’s degree in educational leadership from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He would study online late into the night until his illness required him to take a leave of absence from teaching in March 2025. But he finished his master’s, proudly walking in cap and gown at the ceremony in Los Angeles on May 18, 2025, one day after the birthday of his sister. She was in the audience, along with Beteta’s wife and his mother, Aura Lila Beteta, a Nicaraguan immigrant who is a human rights advocate in San Francisco.
Article continues below this ad
“He had just finished a round of chemotherapy three weeks before his graduation,” said Seymour, a Mercy graduate who is an escrow officer in El Dorado Hills. “That’s why I call him a true Crusader. He was always a fighter. Whatever he set out to do, he did it.”
Edgar Emilio Beteta Jr. was born Dec. 23, 1966, at UCSF and grew up in a rental house in Bernal Heights. Both his parents were immigrants and worked full time. His father, Edgar Sr., worked a series of jobs and ended up a P.E. teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District. His mother was an administrator at San Francisco State University and later was appointed Nicaragua’s Consul General in San Francisco.
Edgar, called Emilito by his family and Eddie by his friends, attended Fairmount Elementary and St. Anthony parochial school. At age 9, he was on the sidewalk in front of the family’s house on Coso Street when he witnessed his sister getting hit by a car that had lost its brakes and rolled backward down the hill. She was stuck underneath it and her little brother ran to get help, which she said “saved my life because nobody else was around.” Her brother remained protective of her after that incident, which put her in the hospital for a month, she said.
After graduating from St. Anthony, he attended Riordan, the boys high school run by the Brothers of Mary in the Ingleside district across from City College of San Francisco. Beteta, who was nicknamed Gumby on account of his hair sticking up like the rubber toy figure, went out for the freshman baseball team.
Edgar Beteta’s baseball photo from the Archbishop Riordan yearbook, 1985.
Courtesy of Riordan High School
He was a second baseman and right-handed pitcher, both a starter and reliever with a wicked curveball that he was willing to teach to his teammates even if they ended up taking innings away from him.
Article continues below this ad
“I knew he was going to be a coach,’’ said Nick Castora, a centerfielder with Beteta on the JV and varsity teams, which practiced and played most of its home games on an infield littered with broken glass and an outfield pocked with gopher holes at Crocker Amazon Playground. Beteta would cram five players and their gear into his 1972 Volkswagen Beetle for the commute to Crocker Amazon and the school’s other field, Balboa Park.
“He was always there as a guide,” said Castora. “He loved to play, but he had something in him that just loved helping people out.”
Riordan has always offered to teach anyone a musical instrument, and as a sophomore Beteta took up the alto sax with his buddy Randy Bickel. They stuck with it side by side for three years, playing in the pep band in yellow windbreakers with the Riordan crest to fight the night chill during rivalry football games against Sacred Heart, at the old Kezar Stadium, and basketball games against Sacred Heart or St. Ignatius in Kezar Pavilion.
During sophomore year, Beteta started noticing that his fingers were sore when he came home from baseball practice. The symptom led to a diagnosis of lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes widespread inflammation. His sister could see the swelling in his face in class pictures.
“He may have missed classes but he never complained,” said his sister. “He was very dignified and courageous.”
Article continues below this ad
At the same time, he was navigating his parents’ breakup. They divorced his senior year, and his father moved to Nicaragua — one reason he chose to live at home while attending UC Berkeley, commuting in his VW Beetle. His progressive lupus caused him to take extensive time off for chemotherapy treatments and infusions. He eventually transferred to San Francisco State, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1994.
“He was always very smart,” his sister said. “I remember watching ‘Jeopardy! ’ with him, and he knew all the answers.”
“You need to be a teacher,” she told him.
So he became one, earning his teaching credential from Notre Dame de Namur in Belmont, and starting out as a substitute in the San Bruno Park School District. He then was hired full time to teach seventh grade at Our Lady of Mercy in Daly City. When he was hired at Riordan, about 20 of his former Our Lady of Mercy students came with him, helping form the first coed class.
“I just loved how outgoing and kind he was,” said Adrieana Diokno, who had Beteta as a teacher for two years at Our Lady of Mercy followed by two years at Riordan. “He was like a friend to all of his students and he made class really fun and engaging.”
Article continues below this ad
Beteta’s lupus was in remission when he met Stephanie Santa Maria in the mid-1990s. They’d known each other from San Francisco’s SoMa nightclub circuit — Holy Cow, DNA Lounge, Release and so on — and when they ran into each other at TGI Friday in San Bruno, they figured they were destined to date. They were married in 2002.
One year later, Beteta suffered kidney failure that required dialysis. With help from family, the Betetas bought a townhouse in the Serra Highlands neighborhood of Daly City. He leaned on that same support again in 2007 when he needed a kidney transplant — his cousin was his donor. During his two-year recovery, a steady rotation of eight or 10 high school pals came to visit.
“Danny, Freddy, Rudy, Norm, Marvin, Russ, Ernesto, Nick,” said Bickel, ticking off the names. The group became so tight that they all referred to any of their mothers as “Mom.”
The transplant bought Beteta nearly 20 years of vitality, said his wife, noting that he felt so good that he became active in the Transplant Games sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation. As part of the Northern California team, he traveled to Pittsburgh and Madison, Wis., to play in the basketball tournament and run the mile relay. The athletes exchanged pins like Olympians — his collection remains in the closet next to his purple-and-gold necktie.
Ed Beteta’s varsity letter jacket from 1985.
courtesy of Amelia Beteta Seymour
He’d wear that tie to school and even pull out his old letter jacket to boost morale for a particularly crucial game against St. Ignatius or Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep. He had more Riordan hats than there were school days to wear them all.
“During spirit week for the kids, you would always see him dress up and participate to support the students,” said Viggen Rassam, a member of the class of ‘87 who has been on the faculty for 32 years. “When Riordan would lose, it hit him badly. That was a passion of his.”
Because he was immunocompromised, Beteta often wore an N-95 mask long after the COVID-19 mandate was lifted.
But as his illness progressed, he had to go out on medical leave. He promised his students he’d be back but several rounds of chemotherapy took a toll and he was hospitalized after a fall. On Feb. 17, his old gang of the Riordan boys were summoned by Amelia and they all drove in from Antioch, Shingle Springs, Concord, Pleasant Hill and Rohnert Park. beyond. Six of them crowded into one hospital room on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 18 and stayed with him until the end.
“He passed in front of all of us, and we notified the nurse,” said Bickel.
After his death, Rassam was asked by administrators to make a video tribute to him. He reached out to the alumni community and got enough video testimonials to form a 45-minute reel. He edited that down to a 15-minute tribute posted on the Crusader Nation YouTube channel and shown during home room at Archbishop Riordan on Feb. 25.
“Mr. Beteta was the goodness in this world,” said one student in his on-camera testimony.
The funeral was at Our Lady of Mercy in Daly City. After the reception, at Dominic’s, the Riordan shrine was moved to Beteta’s sister’s house in El Dorado Hills, where it remains on display in her dining room, complete with a Gumby figurine. She decorated it for Easter and is already planning for the next holiday.
“It’s my way of celebrating holidays with my brother even though he’s not around,” she said. “He saved my life and was the sweetest little brother you could ever have.”