"I would come along, too," says Allario's daughter, Janis Bautista. "She couldn't handle all five of them at once."

It was only fitting that after Allario's death on Oct. 9, her family got together for one last bacon and eggs dinner in her memory. Allario, who lived in Sunnyvale for nearly six decades, was 91.

She was born on Oct. 13, 1912, in the Niles Canyon area of Fremont. Her parents divorced when she was 6 years old, so she relocated with her mother and older sister to King City. The three returned to San Jose in Allario's senior year of high school. After Allario's graduation, all three attended San José State University—Allario's mother was a teacher who was receiving further training.

While at San José State, Allario was a music major who also sang in the choir and played the trombone in the band. "She always told the story about the football game where the trombone player sitting behind her knocked off her hat," Bautista says.

But her mother's failing health forced Allario to drop out of school. And after her mother's death, she moved to San Francisco, where she worked a number of jobs, including one with a book-binding company and one with an ice cream vendor. Allario lived in the city from 1936 to 1941 and walked across the Golden Gate Bridge the day it opened.

She met her future husband, Oreste "Rusty" Allario, first through a mutual friend and then at an outing in Santa Cruz in July 1941. The two married in November of that year and moved to San Jose, where Rusty was a rancher. They later moved to Sunnyvale, where the Allarios opened Sunnyvale Hardware near the intersection of what is now El Camino Real and S. Sunnyvale Avenue in 1947. Though the store went out of business in the 1980s, the Allario family still owns the land, where a Walgreens now sits.

Allario gave birth to Bautista, her second child, two weeks before the store's opening, but still attended the ribbon-cutting.

While her husband busied himself with the hardware store, Allario spent much of her time volunteering. "She spent eight hours every Tuesday at El Camino [Hospital Auxiliary], and she did that for more than 30 years," Bautista says. "She had more than 25,000 volunteer hours there." Allario would work as an escort for patients and their families in various areas of the hospital, and she also served as chairwoman of tours and was on the auxiliary's board of directors.

Even though she was forced to drop out of school before receiving her degree in music, Allario incorporated that interest into her volunteer service. She was a director of Mother Singers, a group that got together through mutual involvement in the PTA. After singing in a municipal chorus in San Jose, Allario was also the director of the choir at Sunnyvale's Congregational Community Church. "She sang every time she could," Bautista says. "She sang at weddings and funerals for years."

Rusty retired when his hardware store went out of business, so the Allarios enjoyed their family and the occasional trip to Harvey's Lake Tahoe, often going up with a bus of fellow gamblers. "She loved her nickel slots, and she always won," Bautista says. "When we all went up there on family trips, we always knew right where to find her."

Allario leaves behind her husband, Rusty, of Sunnyvale; two children, Stephen of Mountain View and Bautista of Sunnyvale; five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Contributions in her memory can be made to the El Camino Hospital Auxiliary, P.O. Box 7025, Mountain View, CA 94039-7025.