Yvonne E. Khamashta

Yvonne E. Khamashta passed away at her home in Campbell California on February 22, 2023, at the young age of 63.  She was born in San Francisco California on September 17, 1959.

As a child, Yvonne lived with mother, Joyce, and father, William (Red) Raleigh’s in San Francisco California.  Yvonne’s family was a large family of 8 children, with brother Kevin, sisters Kim, Sally, Sandy, Laurie, Shirley, Sharon.  The family then moved to San Jose California area in 1973, during her teenage school years. She graduated Cupertino Highschool in 1977. 

After high school she landed a job with a small team pioneering home computers in 1979, circa the days Apple computers was born.  At the same time, she entered San Jose State University where she graduated in year 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Marketing/Business.  Yvonne then went on to work for Hewlett Packard for many years, 1984 to 1999, as a Marketing Researcher and Trainer for customers purchasing HP Enterprise Computers.   After HP, she went on to develop her passion in home design, where she joined a Kitchen & Bath Design-Contractor company in San Jose, California. This affirmed her new career path choice, ultimately leading to opening her own business called Design Wise, Kitchen, and Bath.  Through Design Wise, Yvonne successfully delighted hundreds of private homeowners throughout both the Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley areas.  Armed with her design and contact management expertise she then taught many adult education Home Remodeling classes at most of the local Community Colleges.  In addition to her business she was actively involved in the CoDA.org charities for nearly 20 years, successfully completing her 12 steps in personal improvement, and then achieving the lead chair director position, where she contributed her corporate management experience to improve the quality and effectiveness of the organization, in order to increase its benefit to the world-wide constituents.  She always enjoyed participated charities, like United Way and giving her personal time to local community benefit events like helping build parade floats for San Jose Annual Christmas parade.

Her most fulfilling and creative outlet was the challenge of design.  When she was not remodeling kitchens, she would turn to sewing her own clothes, whereby these creations in life became wearable works of art.  She graciously volunteered to sew for select friends and family too and even joined online sewing competitions.  In addition, she loved visiting botanical gardens, and creating a lovely home garden successfully achieved by studying and researching horticulture to order to enhance the result of this rewarding hobby.

Her second passion was combination of cooking and heathy living.  She embraced ongoing self-education and continued a life-long approach to “what works” from a vegetarian lifestyle and everything in between until she ended her search when finding KETO.     She enjoyed bodybuilding, but her favorite idea of cardio was mountain biking.   She joined a Santa Cruz area biking group that called themselves, the “Redwood Riders”, and continued to mountain bike her way through breast cancer and 1 or 2 spills that resulted in a concussion.

She was a world traveler, starting in 1979 with her 1st European tour driving a used VW bug everywhere.  Later she would make multiple trips across Europe, visiting most every country in the continent.  Other trips included Mexico, Canada, Australia/New Zealand, Costa Rica, and naturally Alaska and Hawaii.  Her 2nd marriage honeymoon was a purely romantic and relaxing month of travelling throughout Italy

She loved dancing; everything from Disco to Bruno Mars and even took professional lessons to Country Western and Swing dancing.

She was a moderate snow skier and skied the slopes of Canada, our Sierras, and Utah.   

She was willing to try new adventures and learned how to water ski behind a Zodiac inflatable boat and later learned to wakeboard in her late 40s, and even tried white water rafting.

Her life learned, and shared mantra; was to “be kind”, to “be supportive”, whilst keeping true to, and protecting your own personal beliefs.  

Yvonne was the “middle child” (5th in 8) in the large Raleigh family, yet she embraced her role as a “Big Sister” to her younger siblings throughout her entire life.  She chose not to have children of her own during her first marriage in her 30’s. 

Upon celebrating her 50th birthday in 1999, she found the love of her life, Robert Khamashta. They married in 2015 and Robert is her surviving and most beloved husband.  

Her very early demise was caused by an aggressive cancerous brain tumor taking her life in just 5 months after discovery upon return from Yvonne and Robert 7th wedding anniversary annual vacation.

Yvonne was deeply loved by her family and friends, and she will be dearly missed.

Rsvp attendance and/or live streaming information to be provided by Yvonne‘s husband and family.

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