Norma Pino-Rutkowski

Admitted to Methodist Medical Center because of low blood pressure, after three days her condition took a turn for the worse, and Norma Elizabeth Pino-Rutkowski passed away on July 24, 2024. Family members wish to thank MMC staff for their valiant efforts to keep her alive.

Norma was born on September 21, 1954 in San Francisco, Calif., the first child of Casey and Aurora Sevilla Pino. She attended St. Paul’s Grammar School and High School, graduating in 1972. After graduation, she attended two years at St. Mary’s College, Moraga, California, with a major in Clinical Medical Assisting, a decision which was to prove significant later in her life. She expected to live out her life in the Bay Area.

However, Norma enjoyed travel. Growing up, she went on a number of car trips to Colorado to visit numerous relatives in that state, the birthplace of her father. In 1975, she accompanied her mother and a family friend on a Holy Year trip to Europe, a trip which was to alter the course of her life. Included in this trip were stops at Fatima, Lourdes, Rome, Florence, and Venice. A couple years after returning from this trip, she moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where her son was born. She lived the rest of her life in Oak Ridge, except for five years in the early 1980s, when she lived in Vienna, Austria, where her daughter was born. During her lifetime she visited over half of the US states and Canada.

The bulk of her career in Oak Ridge was spent as an employee of Methodist Medical Center, where she was Unit Secretary in the Critical Care Units. She was a proud and active member of the Service Employees International Union Local 205, when MMC was the only Union hospital in the area, advocating for employee rights and encouraging new employees to join. She was active in several organizations, especially the Girl Scouts, in which she served as a Troop Leader and often worked directly with the Tanasi Council (now named ‘Girl Scouts of the Southern Appalachians’). The year when she was Cookie Sales Chairman for the Oak Ridge area, furniture in the dining room had to be pushed aside to make room for several hundred cases of Girl Scout cookies.

Norma is survived by her children, Robert Rutkowski and Katherine (Paul) Carney; her brothers, David and Daniel Pino; her nephew, Connor James Pino; and her nieces, Bonnie Pino, Elizabeth Gomes, Grace Wheeler, and Casey Pino. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11 am on July 31, preceded by visitation of friends, at St. Mary Church, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. After cremation, her ashes will be carried by her son to San Francisco, where they will be interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma at the gravesite of her parents. Mott-McKamey Funeral Home and Cremations is in charge of arrangements.