Melissa Joy Woodcock

Melissa Joy Woodcock, 70, of Tijeras, New Mexico, set off on her final ghost hunt on June 17th - and this time she didn't come back to tell us about it, which, if you knew Melissa, is honestly the saddest part.

For more than 30 years she served as a pharmacist at Walgreens, faithfully filling prescriptions, but her true calling was the paranormal. Melissa pursued ghosts, haunted houses, and Bigfoot with a devotion most people reserve for actual hobbies. Her finest hour came at Alcatraz, in the pitch dark, when the floor began to move beneath her feet. She spun around for backup - only to find her husband Larry's flashlight already sprinting toward the exit. Forty-some years of marriage, and that's the man she chose to keep.

She was also at work on a memoir about one of Larry's hospital visits, a manuscript of truly heroic length. Larry maintains the story "gets better every time she tells it." We will never learn how it ends, but rest assured it was long.

Long before the ghosts - and long after - Melissa was the family's quiet fixer. She drove a sister to sort out car registrations, covered a sibling's mortgage when times were hard, and paid for her parents' funeral without being asked. She loved fiercely and showed up - usually with food, occasionally with a flashlight. She did, however, never forgive her older brother for making her pick up every spilled popcorn kernel one by one. She brought it up for decades. Justice was never served.

Melissa was preceded in death by her parents, Warren and Amelia; her brother, Robert; and her beloved sister, Mary Nilchee, whom she now rejoins. She is survived by her husband, Larry; four sisters; one brother; and more friends and extended family than any of us can count - every one of them funnier for having known her.

A Visitation will be held Tuesday, July 7, 2026, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at FRENCH – University. A Funeral Service will be held Wednesday July 8, 2026, 10:00 a.m., at FRENCH – University. Burial will follow at Santa Fe National Cemetery at 1:00 p.m.