HELLO, OCALA – Meet Your Neighbor: Jennifer Munoz

Jennifer Munoz shows a watercolor of a woman and a flower she painted as she poses for a photo in the La Jolla neighborhood in Ocala, Fla. on Tuesday, February 25, 2025. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2025.

Manager, singer, actress, artist, student, cancer survivor, believer, fashionable, talented, positive: Those are all words that can be used to describe Jennifer Munoz.

Born in the Manhattan area of New York City, Munoz graduated from high school there and also from the Professional Performing Arts School, where she majored in musical theater with a minor in voice. She performed in high school plays and sang gospel music in her church choir, and attended the Missionary Training Institute for about a year and a half, with thoughts of becoming a missionary on a foreign field, as she had a desire to care for others.

Her father, Eddie Munoz, was a police officer with the Manhattan Police Department during the time of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the New York World Trade Center and was injured while working during the tragedy. A friend of the Munoz family who had visited Ocala told them about the area. After he retired, Eddie and his family, including his wife, Sonia, moved to Dunnellon, where they loved the peacefulness, horses, beauty of the area and laid-back lifestyle.

While still in New York, Jennifer Munoz met her husband. After she became pregnant with their first child, they decided to move to Florida to be near her family. She has a sister, Erica, who lives in Ocala with her husband and four daughters. They own a commercial cleaning business, Attention to Detail. Her brother, Eddie, lives in Tampa with his wife and son. He is a counselor in the field of substance abuse.

Jennifer and her husband have three children, all of whom are graduates of West Port High School in Ocala. Evan, 26, lives in Leesburg, and is a general manager for AT&T. Eliza, 24, and soon to have a baby, lives in Ocala. She has an associate’s degree and is in college now, pursuing a degree in high school counseling. Jeremy, 19, works at Sky Zone, and plans to attend barber school. He seems to have a natural talent for that, his mother shared, as he often cuts hair for friends and acquaintances.

Jennifer has a Chichon dog, named Rocco, who is a mixture of a shih tzu and bichon frise. She said she was a stay-at-home mom from 1998 to 2015, which she loved. She and her husband later divorced.

After that, her career continued as a manager at an Aldi store for about five years. In 2020, she was employed as a membership specialist at the Frank DeLuca YMCA, where she headed up the Live Strong program and helped in the rehabilitation of cancer patients. One of her first students in the program was her father, a three-time cancer survivor. Little did she know at the time that the disease would one day affect her.

Munoz also worked at the Ignite Counseling Center for a year, then went to work for AdventHealth Ocala, where she is an inspector and supervisor in the environmental department. In addition to her work, she is enrolled in a phlebotomy course.

In April 2023, Munoz was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“That day changed my whole life,” she shared.

She had a routine mammogram and was sent to UF Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville for more testing. After the third positive result, she underwent two lumpectomies in one month, followed by radiation.

During her cancer treatments, Munoz decided to start painting with watercolors as a hobby. She had seen a picture she admired and decided to try to replicate it for her own enjoyment and to focus her thoughts.

“I wanted to pour myself into something positive instead of negative. I wanted to remind myself to see beauty. Some days are harder than most. Looking at it makes me smile,” she said of one piece of art.

The picture of a woman with a beautiful flower in front of her face “spoke to” Munoz, she explained, allowing her to realize that “the flower masquerades the pain and is beautiful.”

“Looking at the flower, you don’t see if the face behind it is suffering or happy. The flower represents beauty,” she noted. “It reminds me of Isaiah 61:3 in the Bible, that speaks of beauty for ashes.”

“I am on no medications now and I have been cancer free since December,” she shared recently, and offered these thoughts for others who have been diagnosed with cancer.

“At times, we may look at cancer as so scary or something to fear, but it is important to take the negative and turn it into a positive, because no matter the diagnosis or the stage of the cancer, you are not dying of cancer, you are very much living with cancer, because you are still alive and here, and it gives you that much more reason to fight,” she stated.

“I will never allow cancer to define who I am but use it as a tool that has shown me how courageous I am. Cancer, as negative as it may seem, saved my life. It taught me how much of a fighter I am. I never ‘threw in the towel,’ not one time,” she added. “Looking at my children, I knew that was a reason to fight for my life. With much support from my family and my faith and hope and trust, not only in God and the Word of God, it transformed my life. My hope is that everyone who is affected by cancer will hold on to that hope and learn to make the days count and not count the days.”