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Three local women known as exemplary leaders in the community are set to be honored by the Latino Coalition of San Benito County on Aug. 22 at the 29th Annual Visionary Women’s Luncheon.
The coalition will recognize Lucy Rodriguez, Ann Marie Sayers and Rachel Perez at the luncheon for their outstanding work and leadership.
California State Treasurer Fiona Ma will be the keynote speaker and California State Sen. Anna M. Caballero will serve as the event’s honorary chairperson.
Lucy Rodriguez
Born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, Lucy Rodriguez has been teaching folklorico, a traditional Mexican dance style, for more than 50 years.
“Being from Guadalajara, that’s the mariachi and folklorico place so I figured I need to keep my roots and my traditions alive,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez moved to Hollister in 1968 and graduated from San Benito High School in 1971. She taught at both Hollister and San Juan School District, teaching English as a second language and did Spanish translation.
She began teaching folklorico to her daughter and other kids in her neighborhood, quickly gaining the interest of the wider community.
“People started getting excited about it and I started getting more and more kids,” Rodriguez said. “So then I decided, ‘well, I have this group so I’m going to name it Folklorico Juvenil de Hollister.’”
Five decades later, she still teaches folklorico every Tuesday at Bulldog Boxing.
“I say everybody can learn to dance,” Rodriguez said. “If your heart is there, no matter who you are, you can learn to dance.”
Rodriguez makes up her own dances and steps, and alters them to her students’ level of dancing skill. She said she also ensures that they understand the cultural significance of each dance.
“I tell them the story of a certain dance, what it represents, and I tell them the history of the music,” Rodriguez said. “With the steps, I tell them, ‘This is zapatear; this is remate,’ so that they learn the Spanish words as long as we are performing.”
When Rodriguez first started to teach, she and her mother would make the costumes themselves. Over the years, she has created a large collection of dresses and suits, all of which her daughters, granddaughters and now great-granddaughters have worn.
“If you have your own dresses, it’s a big treasure,” Rodriguez said. “It represents who you are. It just shows that you have pride in who you are. Your beautiful dresses, they make it lively and this is part of Mexico, so never be ashamed of where you came from.”
Rodriguez also said that she does not want parents to spend money on costumes, so if she has a dress or shoes that will fit the kids, she loans them out at no cost.
Rodriguez said she found out she was being honored at the luncheon on an early Saturday morning with flowers and a knock on her door by Mickie Luna, president of the Latino Coalition of San Benito County.
“I just started crying,” she said. “I couldn’t believe that all my work had been recognized, I felt very proud.”
Rodriguez said she hopes to leave a legacy where the kids she has taught feel proud of who they are and of their culture.
“As Mexicans, we have to show that we are proud of who we are,” Rodriguez said. “We were here before they were and now they’re trying to run us out? No, we’re here to stay, and that’s what I try to teach the kids.”
After many years, Rodriguez still has a passion for dancing and sharing Mexican culture and roots with her community.
“I’m 73 and I’m still dancing,” she said.
Ann Marie Sayers
Ann Marie Sayers, 77, was born at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital in 1948 and raised just outside of town in Indian Canyon. Sayers, who is Ohlone, has ancestors who trace back more than 4,200 years at Indian Canyon, according to her daughter Kanyon Sayers-Roods.
Despite traveling the world and having a brief stint as a stockbroker in Beverly Hills, Sayers came back to Indian Canyon to steward the land.
“She came back in her 30s and she committed her efforts and her legacy to honor truth and history and to open up her family’s trust allotment for all indigenous people in need of life for ceremony,” Sayers-Roods said.
For more than four decades, Sayers has been managing Indian Canyon, making it available for Indigenous peoples.
“She doesn’t have to do it,” Sayers-Roods said. “It’s not her responsibility. We don’t get funding from the government. We don’t get assistance.”
Throughout her career, Sayers has dedicated herself to fighting for Indigenous rights, civil rights, cultural resource management, protecting her ancestors, raising awareness of truth and history, and for acknowledgement of non-federally recognized tribes in California. She also worked extensively in Washington D.C. on the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act and California Environmental Quality Act.
“So many times there were places that she was the only native in the room or she was the only non-federally recognized California native present, offering perspectives,” Sayers-Roods said.
“So, she was at many times that person in the room that people were able to understand.”
In the early 1990s, Sayers fought for water rights with the late Josh Jensen, founder of Calera Wine, and she fought to ensure water would travel through Indian Canyon so they could take care of their livestock and conduct ceremonies. She also fought alongside Jensen against fracking in San Benito County.
“She’s been an inspiration to people,” Sayers-Roods said. “There are people who come up to us one, two, three, four decades later and say, ‘When I met your mom she inspired me to take action, she inspired me to do this. I changed my career, or, I started taking action on one of her recommendations and it shaped how my life unfolded.’”
Sayers is currently retired and is now the tribal chair emerita. She has been diagnosed with early onset dementia.
Sayers-Roods told BenitoLink her mother found out that she was being honored at the women’s luncheon when Mickie Luna visited Sayers, had lunch with her and presented her with a plaque. Sayers-Roods said her mother’s “long-term memory is great” and she remembered Luna.
“A lot of what she has done and how she has inspired people is just her being her authentic self,” Sayers-Roods said. She’s unapologetically Indigenous.”
Rachel Perez
Rachel Perez serves as the Gavilan College District 6 trustee on the Board of Trustees. She has been involved in education for over 50 years, and even after her retirement in 2014 enjoys volunteering at a local daycare once a week.
Perez began at Gavilan in 1988, serving in numerous leadership roles throughout her tenure. Perez said her most important project came in the early 2000s when she developed the Noncredit Education Program.
“My task was to start this program for the college,” she said, “because the college would get growth money if enrollment improved and at that time we were losing out on that portion.”
The program’s purpose was to provide free adult educational services, general education and English as a second language classes to adult and underserviced learners.
“I made my way to Hollister and met with the school officials there, and we talked,” Perez said. “Then I met with Morgan Hill, because Morgan Hill and Gilroy Unified have pretty healthy adult ed programs, so it was kind of like putting everything on the table and talking because we don’t want to compete, we wanted to compliment.”
Perez said it took a while to get the program started. It started with classes at the Briggs building in Hollister and received positive feedback from the community, specifically from Spanish speakers.
She said the success of the program allowed Gavilan College to extend resources and start a similar program in the San Benito County Jail.
Perez said the program has grown since her departure from Gavilan.
“It’s a major revenue-generating program for the colleges, as it stands right now, in terms of our budget,” she said.
In 2016, Perez said she was encouraged to run for Gavilan College trustee by college staff and her husband, John Perez, who had been a district at-large trustee starting in the late 1980s.
“He told me, ‘You know, I can’t think of anybody who would be better suited for that job than you,’” Perez said.
Perez has been on the Board of Trustees since 2016, representing parts of Santa Clara and San Benito counties, including the northwest quadrant of Hollister.
“I’ve always tried to be the type of person that teaches people that systems change and try to instill in them that they have the ability to get things done,” she said.
Perez said it’s an honor to receive recognition from the Visionary Women’s Luncheon.
“This award to me validates the work you do in education,” she said. “Sometimes you don’t know how you impact the system or students so it’s a validation of the work that I have done.”
Perez said she hopes her work and legacy continue to make sure education is affordable and equitable.
The BenitoLink Internship Program is a paid, skill-building program that prepares local youth for a professional career. This program is supported by Monterey Peninsula Foundation AT&T Golf Tour and Taylor Farms.
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