Career of caring inspires generations of Sharp team members

Much has changed in the way lab tests have been done at hospitals over the years. But at Sharp Memorial Hospital, there was one constant for nearly six decades — Anna Joe. An advanced clinical lab scientist who inspired generations of co-workers, Joe retired in 2024 after a remarkable 59-year career.

Of her decades of service to ensure patients received the highest quality care, Joe is characteristically modest. “There’s nothing to brag about, really,” she says. “I was just a clinical lab scientist that was part of a real team that worked. If they needed me, I was always there.”

It’s precisely that standard of reliability that stood out to Joe’s co-workers.

“She inspired me so much,” says Julius Cristobal, who teamed with Joe for more than 10 years at Sharp Memorial and now works in the lab at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center. “Her quality of work was outstanding. My thinking was ‘If Anna can do it, I can be inspired to do it with the same quality and accuracy.’”

Choosing a different path

Though Joe ended up spending her entire career dedicated to the lab, she didn’t initially intend to work in health care.

In the early 1960s, Joe began studying to be a librarian at what was then called San Diego State College (now San Diego State University). She wanted a job to help pay for school and asked a couple of employees at Sharp Memorial who were helping instruct some of her classes if they had any openings.

It turned out to be a momentous decision.

Joe got a job in the lab. As she settled in, the profession appealed to her so much, she decided to stay. And rather than the library, the lab would remain her work home for the rest of her career.

Joe saw many significant changes from the time she started at Sharp Memorial in 1965 to the day she retired in 2024. New procedures, methods and technologies enhanced the ability to test samples from patients, giving additional and more accurate information for doctors and nurses to provide care.

“In the olden days,” Joe says, using a favorite phrase to describe that early period at Sharp Memorial, “it would take an hour and a half to do a glucose test. Now it can be done in five seconds.”

It takes a team

But for all the change over those 59 years, Joe says the cooperation and dedication among the Sharp Memorial lab staff never wavered. “They would back each person up,” she says. “If someone needed help, they would help. There was a lot of teamwork. And the leaders helped foster that environment.”

As Joe’s final day at Sharp approached, there were several gatherings and parties, including in the break room that is now named in her honor. For coworkers, it was a chance to celebrate her service and share how much she meant to them. But though she’ll no longer see them every day, Joe says she won’t be a stranger.

She still feels a commitment to patient care. So, in retirement, Joe plans to volunteer at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women and Newborns.

Being so close will give her plenty of opportunities to visit her friends in the lab, a place where Joe’s standard of excellence has left a legacy that may last as long as her own career at Sharp Memorial.

Perhaps her former co-worker Cristobal put it best — “How can you not be inspired by that?”

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