Cricket Rubino keeps Bingo games alive, volunteers for Leadership MH
Published in the Aug. 19 – Sept. 1, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Morgan Hill Life file photo
Cricket Rubino, standing, verifies Leona Anderson’s Bingo card during a 2013 game. The weekly Bingo games raise funds for the senior center.
Since settling in Morgan Hill with her husband 40 years ago, Cricket Rubino, the Chamber of Commerce’s 2013 Woman of the Year, has kept involved in the town she has grown to love.
She and her husband Mike ran the Live Oak Emerald Regime Band for 27 years before retiring in 1998. She and John Tarvin organized and run the weekly Senior Bingo games that raise money for the Morgan Hill Senior Center. She serves on the board for Leadership Morgan Hill, a program she graduated from in 1999. And she does all this while running her Claremont Executive Services, a secretarial outsourcing and resume writing business.
“I just love this little town,” she said. “I like the fact the community pulls together to make things happen. It’s a very welcoming community.”
Rubino grew up in Sacramento and attended California State University, Sacramento, eventually earning a degree from Heald Business College. She met Mike while he was in the Air Force Reserve Bands program performing at Cal Expo in Sacramento.
“Knowing he was going to be a band director, we just kind of fit together,” said Rubino, who marched in a drum corps in Sacramento and advanced through all the ranks before becoming an instructor.
The couple married in 1974, the year they moved to Morgan Hill and still live in the same house.
While Rubino worked as the assistant director of the Live Oak band, Mike was the director. The couple influenced hundreds of kids, including their daughter Brandi and son Mike.
“We just kind of worked together for most of it,” she said of the 27 years they spent as a team, teaching generations of teens the love of music and marching bands. “He handled the music, and I taught the marching and other things.”
After 27 years as part of the campus’s music scene, leaving Live Oak was not easy, she said.
“It was hard to leave something you put so much love and sweat into,” she said. “You leave behind a legacy and hope it’s going to continue to grow.”
Now, every Tuesday evening she runs the Bingo games — in its fourth year — at the Community and Cultural Center in downtown Morgan Hill. Money raised benefits the city’s Senior Center.
During the recession, she was on the YMCA board, which at the time managed the Senior Center, and cuts were made to keep the center open. A committee she was on began searching for ways to make money.
“It became obvious we needed to do something,” she said. “We did a dinner/dance one year but realized we needed something more sustainable.” So with the Bingo contacts she’d made organizing fundraising games for the Live Oak band, she proposed the idea.
“John Tarvin and I were the instigators and we’re both still at it,” she said with a laugh.
Rubino handles the operations and Tarvin handles the finances. She arrives at 4:15 p.m. every Tuesday to set up, and oversees her staff of 40 or so volunteers, 10 of whom come out once a month.
“The volunteers at bingo are really what make this all happen,” she said.
Among her many other activities, Rubino was the Leadership Morgan Hill coordinator for 13 years beginning in 2001 and she still serves on the board of directors. She believes the organization is an important asset to the community.
“The reason I love Morgan Hill is its compassion and this program accentuates that,” she said of Leadership Morgan Hill which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. “You really get an immersion into how the city works and you get to work with a great group of people who are all passionate about Morgan Hill.”
