By Erin Beresini
MOUNTAIN VIEW—Maria Marroquin is one of Mountain View’s most tireless community activists.
Because of her efforts to “give back to the city she calls home,” the Mountain View Senior Center garden is thriving, St. Joseph Church’s parking lot was striped, blood was donated to the community, and Huff Elementary had desks when school started in 2008.
So why doesn’t anyone want her as a neighbor?
Marroquin, 51, has established a presence in the community through her position as Executive Director of the Mountain View Day Worker Center (MVDWC), a position she’s held since 2000.
She originally came to the Center in 1999 looking for housecleaning work after moving to the United States in 1997 from Mexico City, where she worked in a law firm as an administrative assistant.
Just like Marroquin did 10 years ago, about 100 people come to the Center Monday through Saturday hoping to be matched with employers. Typically, employers are residents of Los Altos Hills and the surrounding communities looking for help with gardening, construction, and house cleaning.
The workers fill out a form providing their address, phone number, and an emergency contact to be eligible for employment through the Center. However, only 15 percent of the workers find jobs each day, so despite the $10 minimum wage imposed by the Center, the average worker’s total income is only $5,000 per year.
But Marroquin views the center as more than a job placement service. The predominately Mexican and South American workers come to the Center every day for the sense of community the Center creates, she says.
They also come to use the job-advancement services the Center offers, like college scholarships, job training, and ESL classes. Marroquin has made the ESL classes, taught every day by volunteers, mandatory for anyone wishing to work.
However, for all of Marroquin’s efforts to integrate the Center and its workers into the Mountain View community, the Center routinely comes under fire from neighborhood organizations who do not want it located by their homes.
The Center became a point of controversy last May when the City Council upheld its decision to allow it to open its own facility at 113 Escuela Ave. Currently housed in Trinity United Methodist Church, at the corner of Hope and Mercy streets, the MVDWC plans to move on March 21, 2010, according to Marroquin.
At a May 12 city council meeting, eight Escuela Ave. community members voiced their opposition to the center’s move. Residents expressed concerns about parking, traffic, zoning laws, and the legal status of the workers. Escuela Ave. Nancy Raciti submitted a petition with 130 signatures opposing the move.
Twenty-one people spoke in favor of the center, including former Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View). In 2003 she honored Marroquin with the 22nd Assembly District’s “Woman of the Year” award, calling her “an inspirational leader with a long history of hard-work and accomplishment.”
The City Council unanimously voted to uphold the Zoning Administrator’s approval of a conditional use permit to allow MCDWC use of the building at 113 Escuela Ave. as a community center, not as a business, keeping within the use designation for that property. The city also is renting land next to the Center for $20,000 per year, forgiving payments for the first 20 years of the lease.
This decision infuriated some Escuela St. residents. One angry resident who lives a few doors down from the future Center refused to be named because, she said, “the city council doesn’t care about what the neighborhood has to say.” She said she was concerned about traffic and parking on her street, and about having undocumented workers in her neighborhood. Escuela Ave. Residents had “lost the battle,” she said.
But the Center already has established a presence in her neighborhood. Marroquin made sure it would, as much of her day is spent looking for ways the Day Worker Center can help the community.
Megan Garverick, Recreation Coordinator at the Mountain View Senior Center, which is located on Escuela Ave., said Marroquin had contacted the Senior Center “looking for outreach.” Marroquin’s workers now help cultivate the Senior Center garden, located across the street from the new Center building. Marroquin “is very helpful to us,” said Garverick, “She’s great to work with, very responsible, and always gets back to us on time. She works pretty hard and is a great asset” to the Day Worker Center.
Marroquin and the Center are inextricable. “There is no [worker center] without Maria,” said Rich Strock, 62, of Los Altos, one of 12 volunteers who teaches ESL classes at the Center. “She is its durable leader. She is the place, at the end of the day.”
Marroquin’s efforts to make her center “the trophy of the community,” as she put it, through community service, have made a favorable impression on city management. In the words of Mountain View Councilmember Tom Means, the center is viewed as “a benefit to Los Altos and Los Altos Hills residents.”
On March 13, 2008, the City of Los Altos Hills recognized the Center’s importance to their community by pledging $25,000, or $3 per Los Altos Hills resident, towards the Center’s purchase of property on Escuela Ave.
Marroquin’s efforts to make the Center a service that is highly regarded by the cities of Mountain View and Los Altos Hills came at a cost. Her 4-year marriage eroded in 2004, “no doubt because of my commitment to the center,” she said. “My job is my passion. The time I devoted to it was too much for him.”
She runs a tight ship. Not only is she adamant that her workers participate in their community as workers and as volunteers, but she is also an advocate for their education. Workers must attend the Center’s daily English classes if they wish to work, because, says Marroquin, “if you speak English, you are stronger.” Employers look more favorably on workers with whom they can communicate, and most employers only speak English. No class, no work.
If history repeats itself, the center’s new community might come to accept it as the “glue of the community that brings people together” as Marroquin envisions it.
As Jack Dinan, neighbor to the current facility on Hope and Mercy Streets, says, “At first we thought it was going to be a problem, but it turned out to be no problem at all. Sometimes [the workers] sit out there and barbeque and play guitar and it’s actually kind of cool.”
