Beloved Local Counselor Who Helped Others Stay Sober Killed by Drunk Driver Near Laytonville

Sally Ann Teegarden

Sally Ann Teegarden spent decades helping others find clarity, healing, and sobriety. On Monday afternoon, her life was cut short by the very thing she worked to prevent: a drunk driver.

According to a press release from the California Highway Patrol Garberville Office, the crash occurred on July 21 around 2:40 p.m. on U.S. Highway 101 near milepost 76 in northern Mendocino County. Forty-three-year-old Justino William Faenzi-Glass was driving a Porsche Macan northbound with two juveniles in the car when he crossed the double yellow lines and collided head-on with Teegarden’s white Honda CRV. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Faenzi-Glass was arrested for gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated (PC 191.5(a)), felony DUI causing injury (VC 23153(f)), and child endangerment (PC 273a(a)).

The juveniles in the car were unharmed and released to a relative. Faenzi-Glass was booked into the Mendocino County Jail.

Teegarden, age 74, was well known throughout Southern Humboldt and Northern Mendocino for her decades as a counselor, where she specialized in helping others overcome substance abuse but she was also well known for marriage counseling and more. She called herself a “personal growth counselor,” and was a recovering alcoholic who had been sober for nearly 37 years her partner Mitch Peirson told us.

“She was like the wisest person I’ve ever met,” said Emily Brady, a former client. “She was just incredibly calm and patient and an incredible mentor and asked great questions. One of the things she said when I first met her is she’s gonna teach me listen to my own voice and be the guide to…my own wisdom. … She really did help lead me to the answers within myself when I was struggling with things. She also had a fantastic humor…We would laugh at like, you know, ludicrous things in life…There was both this incredible depth and incredible… joy and levity.”

The loss feels especially personal here at Redheaded Blackbelt. Staff reporter Lisa Music was a longtime client of Sally Teegarden and credits her with helping save her marriage. “Sally is the reason why my husband and I are about to celebrate 25 years together,” Lisa said. “We walked into her office barely speaking, on the edge of divorce, struggling to navigate everything life was throwing at us.”

Sally’s guidance extended far beyond relationship advice. “She counseled us through the death of parents, the loss of a child—through some of the hardest moments of our lives. Sally may have known us better than anyone.” Lisa recalled joking that she’d start making house calls to Sally’s Mendocino home after her retirement, unwilling to give up the insight and care that had become a cornerstone of her life. “Her gift,” she said, “was in seeing you clearly, meeting you exactly where you were, and gently walking with you toward the person you wanted to become.”

Teegarden’s partner of nearly 40 years, Mitch Peirson, said she had been on her way to an appointment in Laytonville when the collision happened. He hadn’t been able to hug her goodbye that morning—he was covered in poison oak and didn’t want to give it to her. “I didn’t get to hug her, which was…terrible,” he said. “Sally was the love of my life.”

Peirson said he learned of the crash in a harrowing way.  He, too, was headed south on Highway 101 later that day. “I had gotten in that line [of backed-up traffic]… turned around, came back home, and waited till I knew the highway was really moving.” He finally drove by the scene and saw the white Honda but not its license plate, he feared the worst. “I pulled off the highway and started walking back down… A CHP [officer] came over. I said, ‘I’m really worried that that’s my wife’s car.’ He asked my name, and he said, ‘She didn’t make it.’”

For years, Sally kept a small counseling office in Garberville—first near the cemetery and later in Redway—meeting with clients three days a week. “People come up to me and say, ‘Your wife helped me so much,’ and I don’t even know who they are,” Peirson said. “She was really kind. Really, really fucking kind. Always willing to help anybody.”

She was also intensely private and spiritual, he said, with a deep connection to her land near Grapevine Creek, and an affinity for animals—once keeping 13 cats and a black lab named Coltrane, who followed her up the hill with the feline entourage trailing behind. Now she leaves a dog and one cat to navigate their quiet home without her.

In her younger years, she studied at Antioch College in Ohio, where she earned a degree in natural science and psychology. Later, she became a certified drug and alcohol counselor, working at the Laytonville clinic and on local radio with a brief stint on a show called Recovery on the Radio.

“She always tried to help people,” Peirson said. “She loved her family… loved her animals. We had a good life.” Then he added, “She had the best smile on the planet…And she snored. I can’t sleep now. It is too fucking quiet.”

Plans are underway for a memorial gathering. “We will have a service,” Peirson said. “Not a service—that sounds too religious…a memorial…So the people she helped can come.”

Earlier: Man Arrested in Alleged DUI Near Laytonville Yesterday That Left One Dead

Note: An earlier version was missing two paragraphs through a mistake on my part~Kym