The steady rhythm of a clacking keyboard joined with the rush of teachers arriving in a busy stream provides the soundtrack to the manager of Cathedral’s office services, Mrs. Christine Dancey’s morning. Does that name ring a bell? You may recognize it from your CCHS Dons email account, as Mrs. Dancey sends the daily bulletins that keep you updated on happenings around school.

However, few people truly know the lady behind the computer. As the “best kept secret on campus,” Mrs. Dancey is perhaps one of the busiest, as well. She describes her job as “consisting of basically everything.” Her action-packed days entail any of the following: arranging substitute teachers to cover classes, keeping track of absent teachers, logging and ordering necessary supplies, watching the front desk during breaks, maintaining the ink recycling program, making copies for teachers, and of course, compiling the infamous daily bulletin.

That being said, Mrs. Dancey is far from defined by the multitude of office tasks she completes to help keep the school running. As I talk to her, she offers me a piece of some delicious apple challah bread, a new recipe of hers. “I love to bake for my coworkers, and although I am gluten-free, making cookies is one of my favorite things to do,” she said. She is a self-proclaimed Words with Friends addict, and a guilty pleasure of hers is math word problems: “I’m kind of a geek,” she laughs. “Sometimes while making copies, I secretly take the math word problems and solve them at my desk.”

Additionally, Mrs. Dancey is an avid runner, and has completed “too many marathons and races to count.” For her 50^th birthday, she spent the day running fifty miles with friends and family, and has completed “countless half-marathons, about thirteen full marathons, and three ultra-marathons,” which consist of anywhere from fifty to one hundred miles. She just finished running the California International Marathon, where she finished with a time of 3 hours and 58 minutes, a Boston Marathon qualifying time.

Mrs. Dancey loves partaking in community service and is in charge of a San Diego-based community running group that forty to fifty people attend twice a week. The group encourages people to go out and exercise, and also serves as a safety device in ensuring that women don’t have to go out alone while running in the dark. She said, “If everyone did just a little bit of community service, just think of what a better community it would be.”

Mrs. Dancey credits her mother for being her role model. “My mom is really strong and independent. She’s really adventurous and knows what she wants, and I try to be like her,” she said. This past summer, Mrs. Dancey traveled to Alaska with her mom and sister on her favorite vacation yet, and  she aspires to run the Solstice Marathon in Alaska on her next birthday.

Currently, Mrs. Dancey has been a part of the Cathedral family for seven years, and says that she couldn’t ask for a better place to work at. She loves the beautiful campus and is impressed on a daily basis by the fact that students never fail to open doors for her and smile and say good morning.

She said, “There aren’t many places with such a sense of community among the faculty and students. When you add in the beautiful campus and wonderful environment… how lucky am I?”