After college, Rose Davis, then a young laywoman, chose to work as an office clerk in the insurance billing department at Mercy Hospital San Diego. She spent so many lunch hours in the chapel that Sister Mary Alma, head of the department, asked her if something was wrong. “I like to pray,” said Rose, a recent convert. “And some day I’ll be a sister, but I’m not sure in which community.” Mary Alma immediately suggested spiritual direction, and a few years later Rose entered the Sisters of Mercy in Burlingame.

She taught seventh and eighth grades and high school for the next 25 years, including time for a master’s degree in history at Loyola University in Los Angeles and a bus trip through Mexico alone to learn Spanish from the Mexicans in the 1970s. “They were very protective of me, this Anglo sister from California,” she said. The Burlingame community asked her to explore social justice as part of the mandate of Vatican II. She moved to Tijuana, Mexico, to work for 10 years as part of a medical team at Casa de Los Pobres, a clinic just over the border. Since her return to San Diego, she has tutored elementary school children. At present she is retired and lives with her cat, Cuzco, on the grounds of Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego.