County Librarian Dies of Cancer at 42
Debra J. Miller, acting librarian for San Diego County, died Friday after a struggle with cancer. Miller, 42, a La Jolla resident, died at Kaiser Permanente Hospital, where she had been hospitalized for less than a week.
County spokesman Robert Lerner said Miller had been conducting business from her hospital bed for the last four days before dying Friday morning.
She joined the county as assistant county librarian in 1985, before she was appointed acting librarian last April and put in charge of the county’s 31 branches. Catherine Lucas, who retired earlier this year as county librarian, described Miller as “a marvelous professional person with a very human approach and all-embracing manner.”
Miller was fluent in five languages and won a prestigious Public Library Assn. international study grant in 1990, which she used to conduct research in Australia. She is survived by her husband, Nazmi Sharabi, professor of civil engineering at San Diego State University and two children, Andrew, 12, and Safa, 8.
Services will be private.
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