In Honor of Rafael Lopez
IN HONOR OF RAFAEL LÓPEZ -- (Extensions of Remarks - June 25, 2004)
SPEECH OF
HON. SAM FARR
OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 2004
Mr. FARR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor one of the great young leaders I have had the privilege to know and work with. Rafael López of Watsonville, California, will be leaving his post as founding Executive Director of First 5 Santa Cruz County to attend Harvard University and pursue a Master's degree in Public Policy and Administration.
Rafael is a native of Watsonville, where his family worked as migrant agriculture workers. One of the many noteworthy facts about his life is that he was the first in his family to graduate from both high school and college.
Rafael graduated from Watsonville High School and attended Vassar College in New York and the University of
California, Santa Cruz, where he earned a degree with honors in American Studies and was awarded a Distinguished College Service Award. Rafael's resume reflects his deep commitment to his community and our nation: an internship with a Member of Congress, staff member of the UCSC Chicano Latino Research Center; Coordinator for Residential Education at Merrill College, UCSC; working with groups such as the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County, the El Andar Foundation, the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, the City of Watsonville, the County of Santa Cruz, the list goes on and on.
Most recently, however, Rafael has truly shown what it means to be a community leader. In 1999, he ran for a seat on the Watsonville City Council in a special election, and won with over 70 percent of the vote. At the time, Rafael was the youngest person in Watsonville's history to serve on the council, and he approached this position with a passion and commitment that reflected his love of his hometown. As in all things in his life, he felt called to serve his constituency to the best of his ability, and reached out to those he served in an unprecedented manner.
Shortly after his election victory he was tapped as the founding Executive Director of First 5 Santa Cruz County, a countywide program implemented through the passage of the California Children and Families First Act (Proposition 10). Once again Rafael rose to the challenge of working with and implementing a program aimed at serving children from zero to five years old and their families out of whole cloth. While the act itself does provide many specifications for how each county's commission would operate, it also provides the flexibility necessary for each commission to implement the act in a way that helps its constituency best. For Rafael and the commissioners, this included grant funding to large and small programs; countywide analysis with partners such as the United Way on the state of families and children in Santa Cruz County; and perhaps most groundbreaking is the upcoming implementation of guaranteed health care for all children from zero to eighteen. This last program has been the vision of many individuals and organizations in the county, and is the result of a unique and exciting partnership, but without a doubt Rafael's energy, focus and passion for this program shines through.
Mr. Speaker, there are few individuals who have left as large an impact on the Pajaro Valley and Santa Cruz County as Rafael López. I am honored to know him, and equally saddened to see him go. I would like to take this opportunity to wish him and his wife, Rosa Ramírez, all of the best in success and happiness as they enter this new stage in their lives.