Victoria's obituary
Victoria was seven when she had her first exposure to show business while playing with the daughters of celebrities who lived in her Hollywood apartment building. Actress Cheri Caffaro and husband Don Schain made low-budget sexploitation movies and world-famous magician Shimada performed down the street at the celebrity hangout and private club The Magic Castle.
But her real education in film started at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota where she got a B.A. in English with a concentration in Film and Literature. The high point there was co-producing “Looking Down Division” about the lives of four troubled kids from Northfield. The production received an Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Award for best regional documentary.
In 1989 she moved to New York to take New York University ‘s Intensive Filmmaking Program which resulted in her working on her first major movie Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet.”
For the next 13 years she thrived in independent film production working on an impressive list of movies including “It Runs in the Family,” “Mr. Jealousy,” “Flirting with Disaster,” “Walking and Talking,” “The Journey of August King”, and “Little Odessa.”
Certainly the most noteworthy was “The Myth of Fingerprints” where Victoria as line producer interviewed Pietro Lorino for a production accountant job. When one of his buddies asked whether the female producer was a cute chick, he replied: “Hey, I’m only going to work for her—not marry her.” The result: two very talented and extremely bright children Giacomo, now 23 and Ava 21.
Victoria then made the not very easy pivot to education and went back to school to get an advanced degree in Master of Arts: Instruction and Curriculum from Kean University. She brought 15 years of experience to Bloomfield Middle School where she taught Language Arts and developed and implemented curriculum to increase reading comprehension and writing fluency in middle school learners in 7th and 8th grade English. She was also heavily involved in special education inclusion classes.
Victoria was born in Dallas, Texas on November 13, 1964 where her foreign correspondent father Terry covered the Kennedy assassination before the family moved to Mexico City followed by Montreal then Los Angeles where Victoria and her older sister Veronica grew up.
Although her life was cut short, it was a life well-lived with many accomplishments. Her love of adventure took her from jumping out of airplanes to exploring Kathmandu. She is survived by her children Giacomo "Jack" and Ava, her mother Marlane, and her sister Veronica.
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We lived next door to Victoria, Pietro, Jack and Ava on Summit Avenue in South Orange. We loved living there beyond wor…
We lived next door to Victoria, Pietro, Jack and Ava on Summit Avenue in South Orange. We loved liv…
We lived next door to Victoria, Pietro, Jack and Ava on Summit A…