Tessa was born to Frank and Beth Tarica in Pittsburgh, PA and had two brothers, Harry and Frank, Jr. She had a pleasant, middle-class suburban childhood until her older brother Frank, Jr. died in a motorcycle accident when she was 12. Her mother started drinking heavily and died of alcohol poisoning when Tessa was 14. At that point, her dad moved her and her other brother, Harry, to Frederick, MD, where he was from and where family rallied around them. Her Aunt Suzy, Frank's sister, was especially close to them, and brought her brother into the family's contracting business.
Looking back, Tessa realized that this move from Pittsburgh to Frederick was a lucky one for her, despite the circumstances that brought it about. It was a quieter pace of life and realistically, Tessa doubted that she'd end up on the college track if she'd stayed in Pittsburgh. Her friends there didn't really challenge her the way her friends and neighbors in Frederick did, and while she wishes above it all that her brother Frank and her mother were still with them, she recognized that it was music and a love of sharing it with friends that pulled her through some difficult developmental times.
In high school, she reveled in alternative music, making mix tapes and CDs and intricately planning out what would be played at any gathering. She got into theater tech in high school, which introduced her to AV and later, broadcasting. She tried to learn how to actually play a musical instrument, but found reading music impossible and instead pursued celebrating the music of others as a radio DJ.
While attending Montgomery College in Rockville, MD, she became deeply involved in the college radio station, attending and organizing events around all sorts of concerts -- and not just for music she personally enjoyed. She learned to appreciate music of all genres, finding that all music had to do was find an audience to be considered worthwhile. While alternative music was her favorite, she grew tastes for classic rock, early rhythm and blues, blues, bluegrass, folk music, hip hop, rap, jazz and classical.
Graduating college the summer previous, she applied to dozens of radio stations along the east coast. The only one that agreed to give her a chance, though, was out of Hagerstown - smooth jazz. Arguably, this was the one kind of music that didn't do much for her. But a job in radio programming was a job in radio, and a start. So she relocated from Rockville north to Hagerstown, where she was a late-night DJ twice a week and a junior programming assistant (read: glorified coffee girl/secretary) for about a year...until the superflu hit.
In the span of a week, she saw most of the radio station stricken ill or dead. When she couldn't reach any of her friends in Rockville or Frederick, she returned to Frederick to be with her family. Luckily for her, her father was still clinging to life when she arrived. Aunt Suzy was not. Harry was nowhere to be found, and all telephones quickly became useless. She pulled out the CB radio she'd built with her father as a sophomore college project, and started broadcasting into the lonely silence that surrounded her.
She'd seen what a mess the cities had become and having barely made it through highway blockades on her way in, she was afraid to physically venture outside of her safe place - her father's home in Frederick. There, she waits for her brother Harry, never giving up hope that he or perhaps one of her cousins is still out there. At this point, she'd welcome anyone.
