In this past year La Luz Center, and its founder Ligia Booker, have been honored with three awards, The Heart of Sonoma County Award, from the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership (CVNL), the Spirit Award, from the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women, and the Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce Nonprofit of the Year. The nonprofit will celebrate its fortieth anniversary this year.
Speaking for the Chamber of Commerce, Mark Bodenhammer said that the work of La Luz “builds trust, resilience and economic opportunity across our community.” Executive Director of La Luz Leonardo Lobato stated that the award affirms that, “families that are struggling have inner strength and agency,” recognizing that their contributions are essential to the social and economic vitality of our Valley.”
The introduction to the nomination of Ligia Booker for the CVNL was written by Karina García, whose family was one of the early beneficiaries of La Luz help. It states simply that Booker has devoted more than four decades of her life to serving Latino, immigrant, farmworker families in the Sonoma Valley, guided by a deep belief in compassion, dignity and the power of community. Ligia herself, at the celebration of La Luz Center’s 35th anniversary, ascribed to the founding of La Luz this “Birth Certificate”: “The Child of a need, a hope, a dream and a call to action,” whose “godparents” were “two diverse communities ready to meet and make great things happen.”
Lobato detailed some of the current work of La Luz. It provided over 7200 services, which in particular benefitted more than 30 percent of the Valley’s Latino families, in five core areas – meeting basic needs, ensuring community safety, continuing investment in long-term opportunity, stability and belonging.
The basic needs include housing stability, healthcare access, mental health support, legal assistance, income stability and food security.
When Anna Pier sat down with Ligia Booker to talk about the remarkable institution that began with her, and to learn the remarkable story of the La Luz founder, who will be 89 in December, we prayed together. All Ligia’s work is guided by God, and this reflects in her intrinsic humility and endlessly generous spirit.
Please talk about your childhood. I was the oldest of eleven children, born in a small town in western Colombia, and raised in Bogotá. As a little girl I had a great love for México. The music, and films. I loved American cowboy and Indian movies too. I loved hearing English. My mother died at 38, and as the oldest I was responsible for all my siblings.
As a young woman? My father was a doctor but thrombosis at age 52 left him unable to practice. He sent me at 17 tostudy ESL in a two-year program at a college in Minnesota, and I returned with excellent English. Then I studied general ed and bilingual administration, and started to work for international companies in Bogotá. I became an unofficial social worker then, arranging everything for the international families living there.
That’s how I met Don Booker, who was working in the oil fields as a helicopter pilot for one of those companies. We fell in love. My father really liked him, but refused to consent to a marriage which would mean my leaving Colombia. So we eloped, and were married in Miami with his parents present. I was blessed with Don, who was always very generous, and I could continue to help my large family in Colombia.
How did you get to Sonoma? God put me here, but it was a long journey. Don and I moved with his jobs. I was a “visa bride,” and I saw the US. We went from Miami to Ohio to San Francisco to Alaska to Texas. Our first three children were born there, Preston, Diana and Pamela. When Don began as a pilot for United, we went to Denver for his training, then he was based in New York where Julie was born, next Miami, where Ellen was born. We have seven children, with Don’s two, Cathy and Denver, who came into the marriage.
Next we went to San Francisco, then a year in Cleveland, and finally back to San Francisco in 1970. In ‘71 a pilot friend who had a house in Sonoma suggested Don look there. As soon as he saw it, he said “this is it.”
Getting settled in Sonoma? We moved here with our large family. But we always felt the need to be of help in our community as well, so Don and I began delivering meals for F.I.S.H. (Friends in Sonoma Helping). That was how I found a hidden community, hidden behind their culture and the language barrier. La Luz has existed in my heart since then.
Please tell about your early work in this hidden community. I rented a little space at 17777 Highway 12 in Boyes Hot Springs. We were open three days a week. We helped people find work, connecting them to the English-speaking community. We tried to help them with their needs. La Luz was always a grassroots effort, a family. The people we were helping were themselves the stakeholders, the “owners” of the early La Luz. It was very gratifying. I would love to have a fiesta with all those original “promotores” of La Luz. For our first fundraiser, everyone involved, the stakeholders brought in their piggy banks, and we raised $167.29. I get very emotional when I think about those early days, the birth and infancy of La Luz.
How did La Luz get to the present location? Way back at the beginning, when we were on Highway 12, we were offered to gather in a church that belonged to the Redwood Methodist Mission on Greger Street, one block west of Highway 12. We began to work from there, and hold meetings. We began to get major funding support from local groups. FISH, which was still tending to the basic needs of our community, gave us $10,000. Vintners and Growers gave us $6,000 from the proceeds of their Wine Auction. Local businessmen, including Neils Chew and Dirk Lily, had lent us their bilingual workers to help run the office. Mike Cale, who was a Supervisor at the time, worked to help us acquire that property at 17560 Greger Street for $1.00, from the Redevelopment Agency with the support of the Faith-Based Community Organizing Project.
Other help? The Catholic Church helped by announcing our needs and possible solutions. The Sonoma Index-Tribune created a bilingual column for us to report and promote what La Luz was doing. St. Andrew’s Presbyterian sponsored an annual Christmas concert. We held our first fundraiser, Noche Mexicana, at the Sonoma Barracks, with Bob Rice’s help. It was very successful, and it included both communities.
Some of the other accomplishments? We created “La Casa de la Amistad” – House of Friendship – where all-volunteers provided hot meals, some ESL, and attention to minor medical problems. We established a housekeeping cooperative that found work for 16 women. And we brought to the Plaza celebrations that shone a light on us and our culture – especially Mexican Independence Day.
La Luz has had an incredible development and evolution over these 40 years. Currently La Luz helps serve over 2,000 families a year. They not only address unmet basic human needs, but they are active toward the issue of immigrants’ safety, they are doing early childhood education to increase school readiness, they offer programs to increase the earning potential of Latino families, and they are still building community through sharing and celebrating Latino cultures.
And you, 40 years later? I am only an advisor, and I’m a member emeritus of the La Luz Board. But I have overseen it from its birth and infancy to now.
Any final thoughts for the community? I am always grateful and honored for opportunities like this, to say what a blessing it has been to live in this wonderful and caring community. A community that embraces dreams like the one I had about La Luz, and makes them happen.
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