Lucia Wu Chen

Lucia W. Chen (巫寧寧, Wu Ning Ning), 79, of Fremont, California, passed away on October 21, 2026.

She was born on August 27, 1947, in the aftermath of World War II, to Wu Chi (father) and Ding Chi Ho (mother) in the Canton province of China (now Guangdong). Soon after, her family fled to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War. She spent her formative years there, where she attended Chia-Yi Girls’ High School and graduated from National Taiwan Normal University (國立臺灣師範大學) with a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.). In the early 1970s, Lucia’s sister, Ruth Lee, sponsored her emigration to the United States. She met Alan Chen while attending graduate school at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, and they married on March 23, 1974. They moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where they started a family together, and later moved to Chicago, Illinois, and Saudi Arabia. They were together for 37 years until their divorce.

Lucia was a devoted mother to her two children, Angela and Andrew. A teacher at heart, she was a catalyst for her children’s love of learning, often enriching their education by enrolling them in extracurricular programs in music, math, science, creative writing, and athletics. She juggled working different jobs while being a wife, raising her children, and supporting her elderly mother, whom she helped relocate from Taiwan and cared for until her mother’s passing in 1991. Her various professional roles included being an operations coordinator at King Machinery, a real estate agent, a teller at Savings of America, and later a secretary in the real estate and HR departments of Savings of America.

She cared for her community, often finding ways to be of service to others. She was a Girl Scout troop leader, a singer in several Chinese community choirs, a hospice volunteer, a hospital volunteer in the baby ward, and an altar server. In addition to caring for her mother, Lucia also looked after her older sister, Ruth, during Ruth’s later years until Ruth’s passing in 2018.

One of her favorite hobbies was travel. When she moved with her husband to Saudi Arabia for his work in the mid-1990s, Lucia had opportunities to travel with her family and friends to countries all over the world. In her life, she traveled to destinations in China, the United States, Canada, Europe, the UK, Bahrain, the UAE, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Thailand, Singapore, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. She loved learning languages. In addition to being fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese, she learned a bit of Arabic, French, German, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese.

Her language ability and down-to-earth personality enabled her to connect with people from all walks of life. For example, the staff of the restaurants she frequented knew her well, and all the healthcare workers she encountered recognized her by name, as well as by reputation.

Lucia enjoyed watching old movies with her family, which influenced her children’s love of movies. Her favorite movie stars were Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, whose movies she would rewatch regularly.

At her core, Lucia was a lifelong learner. She took classes, such as food preparation, at local community colleges throughout her entire adult life and loved watching programs on YouTube about Chinese cooking, health, and personal finance to expand her knowledge. She moved from Saudi Arabia back to the US in 2006 to pursue a degree in Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture at South Baylo University in Anaheim, California. She spent the next two years engrossed in classes, tests, and clinics studying a subject which she loved. Her crowning achievement was graduating in 2008 with a Master of Science in Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine (MAcHM) at the age of 60.

Towards the end of her life, even when her body was failing her, she managed to keep her sense of humor. She often joked with hospital staff that she was Joe Biden when they repeatedly asked her her name to test her cognitive ability. She was grateful to the caregivers who looked after her and to the neighbors in the building where she lived with her son. She always went out of her way to thank the medical and allied staff at Stanford Health Care, DaVita Dialysis Center, and Washington Hospital, who did a great job looking after her.

Lucia was preceded in death by her parents and 12 of her brothers and sisters. She is survived by her brother, John Mo; her son Andrew Chen; her daughter Angela Chen; Angela’s son James Wilkie; her ex-husband Alan Chen; and the family dogs Money, Riley, and Major.