Sequoia Elementary School community mourns death of kindergarten teacher

<p>Counselors are assisting students and staff at Santa Rosa's Sequoia Elementary School today after the death of a kindergarten teacher who went home for lunch Thursday and never returned to her class.</p><p>Authorities said Linda Mosier, a veteran teacher who taught in the Rincon Valley School District for 35 years, apparently took her own life.</p><p>Sequoia Principal Matt Reno went to her home mere blocks from the school when he couldn't reach her by phone after lunch, authorities and school officials said.</p><p>Mosier's car was out front but she didn't come to the door, so he contacted a neighbor who discovered her dead a short time later, Rincon Valley School Superintendent Diane Moresi said.</p><p>Reno already had called Mosier's husband, Mark, to meet him at the Gold Lake Drive house with a key, she said.</p><p>When he arrived, a police lieutenant told him what had happened.</p><p>Moresi said she's known Mosier, 64, as both a friend and a colleague for decades.</p><p>“She was everything you would want in a kindergarten teacher - a very loving and caring individual who enjoyed teaching very, very much,” she said.</p><p>Described as grandmotherly and sweet, Mosier was well-loved - especially by the girls, one parent, Mary Brierly, said.</p><p>Brierly, whose son was in Mosier's class this year, said her fifth-grade daughter was even more distraught over the loss.</p><p>“There are a lot of the kids that are older that had her that just adored her,” Brierly said.</p><p>Some of her current students' parents noticed in the past week or so that Mosier seemed less approachable than usual - less verbal or less likely to make eye contact with parents.</p><p>“She did not seem depressed. She didn't seem sad or gloomy,” Brierly said. “She just seemed off somehow. She didn't ever slow down.”</p><p>“She was an extremely, extremely dedicated teacher. None of this - how her life ended - doesn't make any sense to me about how she lived her life the rest of the time as a teacher,” she said. “It doesn't fit to me. I'm having trouble putting that piece of the puzzle together.”</p><p>“For all of us, it's completely out of the blue,” Moresi said.</p><p>Moresi said Reno and another kindergarten teacher called each family in the school of about 430 students K-6 students on Thursday afternoon to inform them Mosier had died.</p><p>Moresi also left her own message with school families by computer-automated phone system later in the afternoon.</p><p>Members of the Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chaplaincy and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospice counselors were on campus Friday, along with the district psychologist and head counselor, to talk with students and offer whatever assistance they could, Moresi said.</p><p>Reno also went class to class to talk with students, beginning in Mosier's class.</p><p>“The kids are handling it pretty well,” Moresi said.</p><p>Mosier taught at Sequoia for seven years, school personnel said. </p><p>She taught kindergarten and other primary grades at several other district schools, as well, including Binkley, Madrone and Spring Creek, officials said.</p>