Lucy Lopez Center: Helping Kent’s Hispanic community; needing help itself

When Cristina Cianca needed help, the Lucy Lopez Center was there for her.

The Panama-born mother, who immigrated here seven years ago, was in serious need of legal assistance last year regarding her immigration status.

She’d spotted the center as she was driving along Washington Avenue. Curious to see if they could help her, she stopped in.

Cianca, who has two grown children living in Washington, wanted to ensure her ability to stay in this country. To do that, she needed to embark on a complex immigration pathway that started with a paper trail.

Within minutes of walking through the door, Cianca was getting assistance from Lucy Lopez Center staff, ensuring her access to an immigration attorney willing to talk with her for free.

Sitting at the center Tuesday, with the center’s executive director Rodrigo Barron interpreting for her, Cianca explained the center quickly became more than just a stopping point for legal assistance.

It became something of an extended family.

“When she first came here, she sensed a very friendly, welcoming place,” Barron said, interpreting Cianca’s rapid-fire Spanish. “She wanted to come back here and help. She has been here ever since.”

Today, Cianca pitches in wherever she can – answering the phones at the non-profit center, or helping sort items for the monthly clothing bazaar. She’s happy to be helping her neighbors.

“This is a total community here,” Barron said, carefully selecting English for the Spanish Cianca expresses with such vivacity.

“There are different problems, but everybody has a need.”

How it started

The Lucy Lopez Center got its start in large part to local restaurant owner Roberto Gonzalez. Coming to the U.S. from Mexico at age 17, Gonzalez was first employed in the farm fields, then began working his way through the restaurant business. One of his employers happened to be Seattle restauranteur Lucy Lopez, a pioneer of the Puget Sound Mexican restaurant industry in the 19060s. Gonzalez was one of many young Mexicans whom Lopez took under her wing, helping them to achieve their own dreams as business owners and restauranteurs.

While making a living as a business owner in Kent, Gonzalez never forgot his desire to return something to the community which had nurtured him. Lopez had helped him greatly, and by the same token he wanted to continue that sense of giving.

“I started the Lucy Lopez Center because being in the restaurant here, I saw so many needs in the community,” Gonzalez said, reiterating the questions he was always hearing from immigrants in the community: “’Where can I get a license? Where can I get help?’

“I always had the vision to have a community center. We are giving back because we are very blessed. We have my family here, my wife and I – we are very fortunate. We’re not rich, but we’re happy.”

He added, “I’m very happy to be doing something.”

And so, working with his longtime friend Paul Ramos – a former planner for the City of Kent and a private real estate developer – Gonzalez co-founded the nonprofit center in 2006, and proudly attached Lopez’s name to it.

Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Ramos came from a migrant family. Education was his way to success – he earned a masters degree in planning from the University of Washington, enabling his planning career.

What it offers

The Lucy Lopez Center has been earning plaudits for its work with the local Hispanic community. Some people – like Cianca – are willing to come from as far away as Olympia to seek assistance, as well as to volunteer here.

Regardless of their immigration status, visitors to the center can tap into a wealth of assistance. In addition to the pro bono immigration advice, the center also offers courses in English, distance-learning programs for getting high-school diplomas, immigration workshops, computer access, interpretation services, public-health assistance and homeowner-education forums, to name a few services.

The center has been seeing a steady increase in people coming through the door, needing help.

“From April to mid-July we had over 1,000 people come in,” Barron said, saying prior to that “the volume was nowhere near what we have now.”

He added,”there’s a needy segment of the population that we serve.”

Who supports it

The Lucy Lopez Center’s work has not gone unnoticed. The center was in the spotlight earlier this month, at the Consulado de Mexico celebration at the Washington State Convention Center, where the center was named as the recipient of proceeds from the event.

And on Monday, Mexico’s newest consulate to Washington, Alejandro Garcia Moreno, dined as a guest at Gonzales’ restaurant, where he was welcomed by city and state officials, as well as Lucy Lopez Center board members.

“This is my first visit to Kent,” Moreno explained, noting the Lopez Center’s importance to his office.

“Lucy Lopez Center is important because we’re living in a city which has a large Latino community,” he said. “Now that I’m arrived in Kent, what I want to refine is where we can help.”

Help is needed

The Lucy Lopez Center continues to need help. The nonprofit entity, which has support from a number of public entities, continues to see more clients. And according to Barron, they would like to develop a 19,000-square-foot building from which to offer more services, including culinary classes for future business leaders in the restaurant industry.

But that will take money, as will continuing to offer the programs it already has in place.

Barron doesn’t see an end to the need the Lopez Center has only just started to tap into.

“The growth is very real and it is continuing to grow,” he said of hispanic community, both in Washington and across the nation.

Learn more

To learn more about the Lucy Lopez Center, and how to assist with the center’s needs, visit the center’s Web site at www.lucylopez.org. Or call the center at 253-854-0042.