A veteran, a stand-up comic and a rose gardener walk into El Charro Hipster Bar & Café. She orders a cappuccino and a plate of mini Alfajores.
“I should’ve told you that you need to have something to drink with these,” Sharon Presley said, as I bit into the small, melt-in-your-mouth Peruvian sandwich cookies made by an elderly friend of the restaurant.
Presley, 50, retired in 2019 from the U.S. Air Force after nearly 30 years. Last year, a trip to the Arizona Science Center gave her a new purpose in life. Kari Carlisle, executive director of the Heritage Square Foundation, praised Presley for single-handedly saved the Memorial Rose Garden from the brink of destruction.
“If it weren’t for Sharon, we’d have probably torn out the rose garden by now,” Carlisle said.
In November 2019, Presley noticed no one was tending to the overgrown garden on her visit to the science center. She would later return to start “weed eating” the area herself. She said someone from the foundation had noticed her working and asked what she was doing. She gave them the choice: let her finish or send her home.
Most days, Presley arrives at the garden at noon to inspect and photograph the area, looking for fungal infections, and cleaning up the garden a bit.
While Presley has no certifications or licensing in landscaping, she has years of experience working with her mother.
Presley said finds purpose in tending the 40-year-old garden that belongs to “all who have ever loved Phoenix.” The most difficult part of her job is protecting it from the social norms of people that have damaged the vegetation by trampling it and picking flowers.
Carlisle said the garden survives on an average cost of $2,000 per year, but could use a fence around the garden to protect it from people wandering through it
“It’d be a shame if we couldn’t take care of it after all the hard work she’s been doing,” Carlisle said.
After Heritage Square, she heads to St. Mary’s Basilica, Encanto Park, and sometimes, Sahuaro Ranch Park in Glendale.
She said “the sense of purpose is huge” when she works on these beacons of the community that should be in full bloom by the end of March, beginning of April.
At 7 p.m. on Wednesday nights she arrives at El Charros for Comedy Night Open Mic where she meets up with other stand-up comics from around the Valley.
This is where the retired Lieutenant Colonel with eight combat deployments takes the stage and fights off another kind of enemy/thorn in her side: hecklers.
In 2006, while visiting a comedy venue in Virginia, she was pulled on stage and immediately became interested in it, but her job in military intelligence made it difficult to perform full-time.
“Never the twain shall meet,” she said, until she walked off terminal leave from the military and into comedy.
Today, she finds parallels with gardening and stand-up: “You’re going to get hit with thorns,” she said. “You got to have thick skin.”
While comedy seems at odds with the current “cancel culture,” Presley finds the courage to get on stage and share her stories, and grievances, with the world.
“I can piss off the planet one person at a time, or all at once,” she said, inviting anyone who’s always dabbled with the thought of telling jokes to get on stage, because it doesn’t take much to do so. “Your only job the first day is don’t pass out.”
She tries her best to “live deliberately” and that comes from her philosophy of continuous improvement.
“Challenge the notion of who you think you are,” she said. “If you never change, you never grow.”
She will be performing at JP’s Comedy Club in Gilbert on Sunday, March 21 from 7-9 p.m.
Contact the reporter at jorteg23@asu.edu.
