October 5, 1959-May 1, 2025
Agnes (Aggie) Mary Zepeda Laubacher passed away on May 1, 2025, at home with her son, Charlie, her older sister Peggy and Peggy’s husband Paul, praying at her bedside. The third child of Hank and Betty Zepeda, Aggie, was born on October 5, 1959, in Omak, Washington.
In 1965 Aggie moved with her family to Forks, Washington where she enjoyed beachcombing with her family, clam digging, canoeing, learning to sew and knit her own clothes, winning 4-H prizes for her jams, jellies and cooking, her horse Chiquita, and marching with drill team.
In her Junior year at Forks High School, Aggie was named first princess of the Forks Old Fashioned Fourth of July. Her father (Pater) called her “Princess” thereafter.
After graduating from FHS in 1978, Aggie followed her older siblings to Thomas Aquinas College in Southern California and graduated in 1982. She was graced to have Mother Teresa of Calcutta as her commencement speaker, and the photos taken of Mother Teresa, Aggie and her family are genuine second-class relics.
Aggie taught at St. Casimir’s parish school in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. In 1984, Aggie moved to Washington, D.C., where she initially worked at the Eagle Forum under Phyllis Schlafly. She showed her interior design sensibilities decorating a home in Arlington she shared with her girlfriends.
She worked as an event planner for the Knights of Columbus and as an assistant to the Grand Knight, Carl Anderson. In 1992, Aggie returned to Southern California where she served as nanny to Andy and Anita’s growing family. That project didn’t last long because within months Anita’s siblings introduced Aggie to the most eligible bachelor, Joel Laubacher.
Finding that they shared the same sense of humor, they married on November 20, 1993, at beautiful Santa Clara Church near Joel’s childhood home in Oxnard, California. After a short stint in Fremont, they re-located to Tracy, California where Aggie home-schooled their two sons, Charlie and Vinny.
Aggie formed deep friendships with other home-schooling moms and their children, organizing snow-skiing outings, amusement park days and other field trips to round out the academics and hosting an annual waffle and berries breakfast early on the Fourth of July mornings.
Aggie and Joel were very involved in St. Bernard’s Parish and were instrumental in supporting the perpetual adoration chapel there. Aggie had a side gig making beautiful one-of-a–kind rosaries of semi-precious stones and selling them at some of the California mission gift shops.
When the boys became men, Aggie served as a school aide at St. Bernard’s parish school in Tracy. Aggie enjoyed cooking, entertaining, gardening, reading, collecting a library, playing cards with friends, following Monday night football, and spending parts of summer at the Laubacher cabin near Echo Pass overlooking Lake Tahoe.
More recently, she had taken up quilting and knitting baby blankets. She rarely missed the Laubacher clan’s large Easter gatherings in Oxnard and spent nearly every Holy Saturday baking cardamom bread and decorating eggs with Andy and Anita’s kids in Pasadena.
Aggie lost her beloved Joel on September 5, 2023. Aggie was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2024. Suffering through much pain and discomfort, she gave uncomplaining witness to her love of God.
She is survived by her son Charlie (Lieutenant U.S. Navy) and his wife Faith and three doted-upon grandchildren, Becket, Siena and Fulton, and by her son Vincent (already a local coaching legend in youth football).
She is also survived by her siblings, Andy (Anita), Peggy Caldwell (Paul), Tom “Ham” (Teresa), James “Luke” (Ruth), Matt (Monica), Mark (Katrina), Mary Kate “Jake” (fiancée Tom VanDamme), and Nick (Wendy-Irene) and by her brothers-in-law Paul (Barbara), Harold (Andrea), Tim (Lisa), and Bill Laubacher (Diana) and sister-in-law Mary Alyce Laubacher Gisla and many scores of nieces and nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews. Services were handled by Tracy Memorial Chapel (Tracy, CA)
