In Memory

Rosenda Rios

Rosenda Rios (Burns)

September 4, 1957 - July 16, 2020

Rosenda Rios Burns passed peacefully from this world and into the next last Thursday, July 16th with her husband of 31 years by her side. In July of 2019, she had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer. With the incredible help of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Rosenda was able to share another year with her family and friends.

Rosenda’s deepest commitment was to be a wonderful mother & spouse. In 1979 she gave birth to her first son, Gabriel. With the help of her mother & step-father, she raised him as a single parent. In 1989, she married Larry Burns and through his adoption of Gabriel, they formed a family that became the one true focus in her life. In 1996, they added Noah to the family and the joy of raising a child together was her biggest dream fulfilled.

Of all her accomplishments professionally, Rosenda was most proud of her children. She often repeated to them “Your success is my success”. She was able to see both boys grow into adulthood and set out on their own successful careers.

Professional Career

San Antonio radio listeners will remember her 15 years of news & award winning public affairs broadcasts for WOAI, KKYX, KISS, KXZL, KMMX & KQXT. She was known as Rosenda Baker through many of those years, transitioning to her married name Rosenda Burns after 1989.

Always wanting to grow and advance her broadcast career, she added television news to her workload in 1990 by first accepting an internship at KENS. Now known by her maiden name, Rosenda Rios, the internship quickly evolved into a part time reporter position and she maximized her time there by adding anchoring skills to her resume when the opportunities arose. Over the next 5 years, she would pull double duty, by arriving early to the radio station for the “morning drive” shift then quickly dashing to KENS to put in a full day in there, often doing live reports for the 6PM news.

Her hard worked paid off and in 1995, when she was offered a full time morning anchor position at KEYE-TV in Austin. She’d spent the next 20 years in TV news, moving first to the short-lived startup TXN - The News of Texas in 1998, and then to her weekend anchor & investigative journalist positions at KSAT in 2000.

While at KSAT, Rosenda formed her own award-winning video production company, Rios+Burns Media Group with her husband. They produced projects for many clients, including their final one together, a Telly Award winning piece for Habitat for Humanity San Antonio.

In 2010, she hung up her broadcasting hat and moved to USAA where she worked as a lead content strategist for the past ten years. Rosenda was a founding member of Adelante, and leader with Elevate. Both organizations are focused on helping companies achieve greater innovation & leadership through diversity & inclusion.

In 2016 Rosenda had the honor of representing the Latin American Heritage Society as Fiesta Queen. She relished the role and enjoyed every minute of the fund raising, visits to schools & seniors in care facilities and of course riding the float in the Flambeau Night Parade. Her court raised thousands of dollars in scholarship money for aspiring Latina Youth.

Rosenda was preceded in death by her mother Gloria Benitez Molina and is survived by her husband of 31 years, Larry, sons Gabriel & Noah, the love of Gabriel’s life Naomi Gonzales, her father, Rudy Rios Sr. & Debbie Rios of Hondo, brothers Rudy (Sheila) Rios Jr., JD (Barbara) Rios & Bill (Lisa) Rios, Step Father Jose Molina, Larry’s parents, Clayton & Norma Burns of Cotulla, sister in-laws Linda (Dan) Marx & Lori Visalga, numerous nieces and nephews and of course Pumpkin Kitty.

Obituary Link

https://www.theangelusfuneralhome.com/obituary/rosenda-burns

Facebook

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