I skipped school one day last week to go drinking liberally.
Well, it wasn't really school-it was a school board meeting at Big Picture High School in SeaTac. (In another life, the Big Picture building was Glacier High School, where my brother Phil held court on the tennis and basketball courts as a coach and in the classrooms as a chemistry teacher. When Glacier closed, Phil transferred to our alma mater, Highline High.)

My truancy had nothing to do with alcoholism and everything to do with a remarkable Burien woman named Cherisse Luxa.
Cherisse founded the Burien chapter of Drinking Liberally that meets every fourth Wednesday at Mick Kelly's Irish Pub in Burien.
The January gathering was special because it was a memorial service/wake for Cherrise, who died Dec. 13 of stomach cancer at the age of 62.

Though short and thin, she could easily kick their butt, several women-and a couple of men-confessed.
Cherisse was feisty, intense, organized and inquisitive.

The tragically ironic thing is that the last time I talked to Cherisse, she told me how thrilled she was because the chronic fibromyalgia pain she had felt for years had gone away. She participated in a University of Washington experimental treatment and it had apparently worked.
With the fibromyalgia possibly in line, a fast-moving stomach cancer killed her within a few months.

As several people noted, life is not fair.
So what career did this diminutive woman with outspoken liberal views choose?
She was a cop.

SeaTac Police Capt. Annette Louie said Cherisse joined the King County Sheriff's Office in June 1976.
Her request for patrol duty was denied because she was a woman. She sued the sheriff and won. Cherisse was assigned to the Burien precinct as a patrol officer.

She later joined the Green River Task Force. She kept in touch with the families of several victims of Gary Ridgway, even after the task force disbanded.
Suffering from the effects of fibromyalgia, Cherisse very reluctantly retired in 1993.

At the wake, a male cop said he knew that if a burly suspect in a dangerous area ever attacked him, Cherisse would have had his back despite her small stature.
"Even if she had to be like Woody Woodpecker around his neck."
Capt. Louie recalled her adventures with Cherisse out of uniform.

There was the time, they went to a "low-rent Chippendales" male strip bar. Cherisse ended up dating the dancer billed as "the Italian Stallion," who during the day was a lineman for Seattle City Light.
Cherisse revealed to friend Liz Giba why she had a weakness for Italian men:
"They press the creases in their jeans."

Giba's friendship with Cherisse began during the Howard Dean 2004 presidential campaign. At a Dean "meet up" in the Burien Library, Giba was "incredibly impressed" with the enthusiasm and organizational skills of the leader, Cherisse.
They were active together in the 34th District Democrats and worked diligently for North Highline's annexation to Burien.
Ivan Weiss, former 34th District Democrats chairman, described Cherisse as "the quintessential policy wonk and political organizer."
"She could just spew advice," Weiss recalled. "She was only wrong once-when she insisted (former King County Sheriff and Republican Congressman) Dave Reichert was a closet Democrat."

The tough-talking Weiss admitted he was a "softy" for Cherisse, but that was only because "we were the all-time crazy cat people. We could talk endlessly about cats and then suddenly switch to talking about some arcane tax policy."
After her death, Cherisse's friends scrambled to find worthy homes for her four cats, including Howard and Harris, two four-year-olds who are feline leukemia carriers and preferred to stay together.

In a final twist on the story of this outspoken Democrat, the person singled out at the wake for his care of Cherrise during her final days is the chairman of the 34th District Republicans, Jim Clingan.

(Jim also had been a great help to another feisty liberal, Shirley Farley, a dear friend of my family.)
Clingan said Cherrise entered the hospital with two large empty spiral notebooks, determined to fill them up with information on her treatment options.

"She was going to send those notebook
s to Obama so he could straighten out health care," Clingan joked.
Clingan said Cherisse refused to stay in bed as she became progressively weaker.
"She fought like a dog right up the end," Clingan reported.

State Democratic chairman Dwight Pelz concluded, "The successful people are those who have their wake in a bar with friends."
For that reason and so many more substantial ones, Cherisse was an extraordinary success.

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Photo by Eric Mathison