\n\t\tJohn Enriquez, tireless volunteer and model of kindness, dies at 72\t<\/a><\/p>\nThey were heavily involved in the Fox Theater Foundation, the Houchin Community Blood Bank and an assortment of other organizations.<\/p>\n
Kern County Museum executive director Mike McCoy said he learned a lot from Carola Enriquez, his predecessor at the museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not gonna lie \u2014 I shed a tear when I heard she passed,\u201d he said. \u201cFor John too \u2014 I went to his service (in November 2024). But they were just a real dream team. He was quiet, she wasn\u2019t, he could do blue collar stuff, she did the brain part. They were a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCoy notes that the museum\u2019s world class neon sign collection started 20 years ago under Enriquez\u2019s direction. She acquired the first eight and it\u2019s now at 40.<\/p>\n
Lori Wear, the longtime museum curator of collections under Enriquez, and now a state park ranger, said her former boss was full of energy and optimism.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a friend, a mentor, and just instrumental and a huge supporter of history throughout the county,\u201d Wear said. \u201cOur community is certainly suffering at the loss of those two individuals who were such great champions for Kern County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carola Enriquez was a proud breast cancer survivor but she succumbed on April 27 to pulmonary fibrosis caused by her autoimmune disease, Sj\u00f6gren\u2019s Syndrome, according to her family\u2019s Facebook announcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She is survived by adult daughter Lauren and adult son John Patrick. No word yet on services.<\/p>\n
Carola Rupert Enriquez was 72.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) \u2014 Former longtime Kern County Museum executive director and all-around community advocate Carola Rupert Enriquez…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-299140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}