No matter the mission, a company is only as good as the people
in it.
No matter the mission, a company is only as good as the people in it.
So maybe that’s why South County Housing, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, is Santa Clara County’s leading affordable housing organization.
Among 80 dedicated employees, people like Dolores Ferreira can be found.
Ferreira is the assistant to the Executive Director of South County Housing Dennis Lalor. It is one of a handful of other jobs she has held with the company since its inception in 1979.
And, she was involved with the company even before day one.
Ferreira, a longtime Gilroy resident and the daughter of farm workers, saw the plight of the area’s less fortunate and experienced it, too. Her involvement with South County Housing the past two and a half decades is not about picking up a weekly paycheck. It’s about the company’s mission of helping others, she says.
In the ’70s, Ferreira had a comfortable job with The Gilroy Dispatch, managing the office at the Morgan Hill bureau. In her free time, she lobbied government officials on behalf of migrant farm worker families who needed places to live.
“The need was evident all over,” Ferreira said. “There was a grassroots movement starting to form, and I became involved with that.”
Ferreira’ ongoing desire to work for a company that helps others in need stems partly from her own tragedy. Several years ago, when her eldest of four children was only 18, her husband died.
“Working for a company like this helps because on a daily basis you see how people are struggling and it makes me realize how much I have going for me,” Ferreira said.
Once the grassroots group incorporated as a non-profit company, it began hiring for office workers, including assistant to the executive director. Ferreira had found a job and her niche.
Described by co-workers as the “glue that makes everything work,” Ferreira’s boss calls her “the heart and soul of South County Housing.”
“She’s our longest tenured employee. She understands our mission, and she is an inspiration to everyone here,” Lalor said. “Beyond her terrific skills as a secretary, she’s just a good-natured person and people around seem to feel they need to match that.”
While Ferreira now lives in Morgan Hill, she was born in El Centro, east of San Diego near the Mexican border. But with working and spending most of her life in Gilroy, Ferreira says she has strong roots to the garlic town.
“I was raised in Gilroy. I’m a product of the Gilroy Unified School District,” Ferreira said. “I graduated from Gavilan College.”
At work, Ferreira is a combination of assistant, secretary and manager. Her other jobs with the company include project manager and property manager, wherein she played landlord and developer over South County Housing projects.
“I guess I’ve gone full circle,” Ferreira said. “I have a wonderful job with a lot of new things to work on every day. I love my job because there is no typical day.”
Besides performing her secretarial duties for Lalor, Ferreira can work the front desk, train new employees, communicate with board directors, arrange and organize meetings and play the role of company historian, too.
“She’s a repository of company history,” Lalor said. “She knows and remembers not just the technical stuff but personnel issues, too. She’s always in touch with those things that make us who we are.”
