Christine Marie (Chris) Ingalls was born in Worcester on St. Patrick's Day (March 17) in 1957 and grew up in Holden. She graduated from Marian Central Catholic High School in Worcester in 1975, and was named an Outstanding Teenager of America, an Outstanding American High School Student, and a National Merit scholarship recipient. She began her undergraduate studies in 1975 at then-mostly-male Worcester Polytechnic Institute (majoring in Mechanical Engineering) and received her degree in 1980. After she had relocated to San Jose, California in 1988 and then Escondido in 1998, she received her BS in Management from the University of Phoenix in 2004 and her MBA in Business (specializing in finance) from National University in 2007.
Before Chris moved from Worcester to California, she was a volunteer Director at the New England Repertory Theatre and a radio DJ for Worcester's community radio station, WCUW, 91.3 FM, at which she hosted a program of medieval and Renaissance classical music.
For most of her career Chris was a software quality engineer. She was employee #8 at a start-up, Vitria Technology, at which she worked for a decade; she then worked in the TurboTax division of Intuit in San Diego for nine years.
She became active in the United Church of Christ while living in the Bay Area, and was a dedicated and faithful member of Carlsbad's Pilgrim Church, at which she served on many boards and as treasurer, then clerk.
Chris volunteered at and contributed to many nonprofit organizations, but she was especially enthusiastic about her fundraising and volunteer efforts with Tech Trek, a California statewide program of the American Association of University Women to help introduce 7th-grade girls to careers in math and science. She was, as she put it," Dorm Mother, Videographer, Photographer, Web Master, and Computer Person" for the week-long science and math camp at UC San Diego held in late June every year.
Chris died on June 18, 2016, after a brief illness. She is survived by an aunt, Dorothy A. (Cross) Norgren and her son (Chris's cousin) Steven C. Norgren, both of Worcester; her stepfather Lew Bolton of Titusville, Florida; cousin Joseph E. Zwirblia and his wife Heather of Worcester, who attended the July 9 "West Coast" memorial service for Chris at Pilgrim UCC in Carlsbad; and cousins Edward V. Zwirblia and Joanne M. (Cross) Cock-Dear of Worcester, Mary Kate (Cross) Church of Brewer, Maine, Robert J. Cross Jr. of Crestview, Florida, Eileen M. (Cross) Mulcahy of Rossville, Georgia, and Carol J. (Brown) Russo of Brookline. She was predeceased by her parents, William D. Ingalls and Margaret M. (Cross) (Ingalls) Bolton.
The "East Coast" memorial service celebrating Chris's life will be held on Saturday, July 30, 2016 at 10:00 AM in O'Connor Brothers Funeral Home, 592 Park Avenue, Worcester. Chris will then be buried next to her father at Worcester County Memorial Park in Paxton. A calling hour will be held from 9:00 AM until the time of the service.
Gifts in memory of Chris can be made to one or more of her favorite nonprofit organizations: AAUW, 1111 16th Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20036, put "Tech Trek UC San Diego" in the memo line of your check; San Diego Symphony, 1245 Seventh Avenue, San Diego, CA 92101, Attn: Todd Schultz; or to your local chapter of Planned Parenthood.