Karen Engelen Schulke, a Granite Bay resident who was a leader in the Northern California grocery industry, died Saturday of cancer, her family said. She was 73.
Mrs. Schulke was the first woman chosen to lead the Northern California Grocers Association, a Sacramento-based trade group representing independent grocers and suppliers from Bakersfield to Oregon. She joined the group in 1975 as director of member activities and was named president and chief executive officer in 1986.
She promoted in-store training programs and top customer service as ways for small stores to remain competitive with large, publicly owned grocery chains. She organized industry seminars and spoke widely on grocery issues in the press until she retired in 1991.
Karen Deanne Engelen was born in 1938 in Midland, S.D., and moved with her family to Hillsboro, Ore.
She left Oregon College of Education and Portland State College to live in the San Francisco Bay Area and met Robert Schulke, an Oakland Tribune reporter who later served as an assistant state treasurer.
They married in 1966 and lived in Granite Bay for the last 33 years. In 1975, at the request of the U.S. State Department, they sponsored a Vietnamese family who fled the fall of Saigon.
A private service is planned for Mrs. Schulke. Besides her husband, she is survived by an aunt and uncle, Frances and Gerald Engelen of Tigard, Ore., and many cousins, nieces and nephews. Donations in her memory may be made to the Salvation Army Roseville Corps, P.O. Box 1372, Roseville, CA 95678-8372, or christmas.salarmyroseville.org.
- Robert D. Dávila
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