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Keith Garlock and Edna Rodriques at the retirement party.
Keith Garlock and Edna Rodriques at the retirement party.
August 10 was her official last day at work, but her retirement party was held on August 24. Edna Silva Rodriques, a well-known and respected resident of Rohnert Park is closing one chapter of her life to embark on the next. The party was held in her former office, the Garlock Insurance Agency located at 6201 State Farm Drive in Rohnert Park. This is the State Farm agency at which Rodriques has been employed for the last 25 years. She started with Garlock in 1997 as one of his first employees when he opened his agency. She was with State Farm since 1990 having worked with three other agents before joining Garlock’s agency.
Rodriques, a widow, lives in the D Section of Rohnert Park and is a California native originally from San Rafael, CA, moving to Petaluma where she graduated from Petaluma High School. After marriage, she and her husband Joe Rodriques moved into their new home in Rohnert Park. She has two adult children and four grandchildren and like most moms and grandmothers her children mean the world to her. Her husband, who once served on the school board, tragically died in a car accident in February of 1991. That was a difficult time for her, dealing with her loss and depression, but she pulled herself up by her bootstraps, taking a job answering phones for a State Farm agent.
Rodriques continued to progress in her career with State Farm. From answering phones, to customer service to managing Garlock’s office. She studied hard, obtained her California licenses along the way and was able to write policies for customers of the agency. Garlock described her as a “caring person to our customers and extremely dependable.” He went on to say she was “The kind of employee you always hope to have, one that treats the business like it was her own, working extra hours and training other employees.”
Besides a reliable employee, what else earned her the respect of her neighbors and residents of our city? Raising two kids, one thing was her involvement in the Parents Teacher Association at their school for a couple of years. Not only a softball player in an Adult League, being a coach for a girls’ softball team was another. Like many moms she was active in her children’s sporting events, especially soccer.
To use her words “back in the day,” she was involved in the Rohnert Park Woman’s Association. They did fundraisers to help build playgrounds in the city. They also participated in Founder’s Day when it was held in “A” Park. They organized the Miss Rohnert Park event for that celebration. She also raised funds for Project Graduation events in the Santa Rosa school system. Rodriques was also a previous Executive Director for the Miss Sonoma County scholarship program. She served 12 years before Edy King took the reins for the next 20 years then Cathy Slack became Executive Director in 2022.
In retirement, Rodriques intends to remain active hoping to reconnect with old friends and do a bit of traveling to see friends and family in Arizona, Idaho, and Oregon. She said she’s “hoping to stay busy but doesn’t want to be committed all the time.” She wants to maintain the flexibility to do things of interest to her. For example, she recently applied to be on the City’s Advisory Committee for the Senior Center, but she hasn’t heard back about that yet. She also intends to be active in the “Friends of the Library” program for the Rohnert Park – Cotati Regional Library. As she closes the door on one chapter of her life and opens the door on the next, her advice was “Count your blessings! They are there.”
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