Leah Becks Passed Away but Fulfilled Longtime Dream in Imperial Beach

Leah Marie Becks was born on January 10, 1944, in Hudson, Kansas, and raised in San Bernardino, CA.

But when she was diagnosed with cancer that doctors deemed terminal 14 months ago, she knew the place she wanted to spend the rest of her life wasn’t in her place of birth or the mountainous city where she grew up. Instead, she wanted to live in the small beach town of Imperial Beach.

“After she was diagnosed, she just didn’t accept it and she said ‘I want to live on the beach,’ and so we packed her up from San Bernardino and we moved her down here in her own place,” said her daughter Andrea Plumlee.

“Imperial Beach was like her way of living her dreams because it was affordable and it was everything that she wanted.”

Becks always dreamed of living near the ocean. Now she is part of the ocean as her ashes were spread out to the sea off San Diego.

Plumlee said Becks lived on Calla Avenue, which was close enough to the beach that she was able to hear the crash of the waves from her window. Becks enjoyed walks along the beach and spending time with her children, which included her son Logan and his wife, Starr, who are Imperial Beach residents.

Becks, a retired elementary school teacher in the Rialto Unified School District passed away on June 20 at the age of 65. Starr Becks said after Leah’s diagnosis, doctors gave her two months to live. She died 14 months later.

Becks became a teacher later in life. After 26 years of marriage she divorced and went back to school, and at the age of 45 she got her teachers credential. While teaching she earned her master’s degree at the age of 52.

As a teacher, Becks made sure each one of her students were treated equally, her daughter said.

"She taught at Rialto, which is like a hardship school. Her students where students who came to school without income and she would buy them lunch,” Plumlee said. “She really believed that each child had potential and each child was a star, and she really encouraged that development and growth.”

Becks was a devoted Christian and spiritual person who enjoyed listening to Kenneth Copeland and Joyce Meyer’s sermons. Her devotion to the Lord was the reason she didn’t take chemotherapy as she believed in God's good healing, Plumlee said.  

Starr Becks said she wants to start the process of making Becks Saint Leah Becks.

“She was definitely a saint. The woman didn’t smoke, drink, wasn’t a curser. I think I’ve only heard her curse once on a bad, bad day and it was like damn,” said her daughter-in-law Starr Becks. “She was really just a living saint. You gotta do a lot of things to become a saint in the Catholic Church. She was a Christian and all that stuff, but she’d definitely fit in. She’s paid her dues. She’s got golden rewards up in Heaven,” Becks said.

Becks is survived by two siblings; four children, Dawn Marie Peterson, Andrea Plumlee, Sarah Alexander and Logan Becks; and thirteen grandchildren.