Salome learned to speak Quechua as a teen growing up in the Andes. She married a Pittsburgher and settled here on the South Side. When the Pitt community needed to find someone qualified to teach Quechua to anthropologists and other scholars in 1978, she accepted the challenge. Under the close supervision of the late linguist and educator Robert Henderson, Salome became a successfula and popular instructor, always integrating music, folklore and dance into her language teaching. In 1992 she was asked by the Center for Latin American Studies to learn Aymara, a second Andean indigenous language spoken in southern Peru and in Bolivia. She spent the summer studying to earn certification and returned to Pittsburgh to make Pitt one of the few universities offering both indigenous languages. Along the way, Salome decided to matriculate and earned a B.A. in Anthropology with a Certificate in Women's Studies.