Gilroy – Judy Hess holds her award gingerly, like a fragile
thing she doesn’t own. A photographer, brandishing a camera, asks
her to hold it up to the light.
Gilroy – Judy Hess holds her award gingerly, like a fragile thing she doesn’t own. A photographer, brandishing a camera, asks her to hold it up to the light.
“We all do this work,” she said, shaking her head. “Why should I get it?”
Hess shies from the spotlight. It’s not her element. She’s more at home knocking on her neighbors’ doors, planning block parties and cleanups; this fall, when she was awarded the 2006 Dorothy Richardson Award from NeighborWorks, a nationwide affordable housing organization, she had to skip the ceremony in Houston for a Girl Scout camping trip, planned months before.
“I don’t want to run the show!” Hess insisted. “I just want a neighborhood, like when I was a kid.”
But when few people know their neighbors, and asking for a cup of sugar seems quaint, Hess’ efforts stand out – even if Hess herself would rather not. As a neighborhood leader in Los Arroyos, a mixed-income neighborhood of more than 300 homes, she’s led the charge to clean up yards and open parks, to gather neighbors at barbecues and parties. She’s penned the neighborhood newsletter, dodged empty-nest syndrome by leading Girl Scouts, and dispatched soup to a sick neighbor’s door. She’s willing to meet anywhere, any time – 9am in a parking lot, last-minute in a driveway – but no matter where neighbors meet, the chairs form a circle.
“Before you know it, you’re saying yes to Judy,” said Aida Zaldivar, director of neighborhood development at South County Housing. Zaldivar nominated Hess for the award last year, seven years after the two first met. “She has this talent to bring people to her cause. You say yes to Judy, because it’s for the community, and it’s going to be fun.”
Long before Hess built a neighborhood, she built her own house. The tidy two-story was among the first homes built in South County Housing’s sweat-equity program, which lets wannabe homeowners swap sweat for a place to call home. At the time, she and her three teenagers split a cramped apartment, pinched for money and for space. The program was “a miracle,” said Hess. For 18 months, the family logged 40 hours a week nailing frames and painting walls, until a home sprung up from the dust. Between building, Hess worked full time as a landscape designer.
“Sometimes, it seemed like it was going to be impossible,” said Hess. But in December 1998, the house was complete, and Hess hurried to bring in a table, so her sister and mother could join her family for Christmas dinner. The first thing she did in that house, she recalls, was bake Christmas cookies.
For most people, a house of one’s own would be enough. But Hess didn’t just want a house: she wanted a home, and for her, that meant a place where neighbors knew neighbors. Already, she’d reached out to the neighbors building their homes alongside her. Erin Cerdan barely knew Hess, a friend of a friend, when Hess volunteered to help her finish building her house. Cerdan’s father had passed away, and she’d had trouble working the hours required to get and keep her dream house.
“She’s there for anyone in a pinch,” said Cerdan. “She jumps right in, there to do whatever you need.”
By nature, she’s demure: an unassuming presence in her blue jeans. Her soft, gravelly voice has a Cali-girl lilt. When Zaldivar met her, Hess was happy to lend a hand on a neighbor’s house, but was nervous about taking the helm of her neighborhood association. A few leadership trainings later, Hess “blossomed,” Zaldivar said. She’s snagged funds from NeighborWorks and United Neighborhoods of Silicon Valley for projects like Neighbor Day, a Los Arroyos block party that brought hundreds of residents out of their homes, the grand opening of a nearby park, cleanup days and even a movie night, where neighbors watched a family-friendly film, projected in the park, under the stars.
“She’d never let us down,” said Desi Cataluna, a Martiri Drive block leader. “You couldn’t ignore her – you were almost forced into being part of it! And if someone didn’t follow through, she’d do it herself.”
At first, Hess papered her block with flyers, advertising neighborhood meetings. Few people bit. So Hess changed her tactics. It came easily to her: making friends instead of contacts, sharing meals instead of meetings.
“The challenge is getting people to catch the dream,” said Hess. “You have to get involved with people. Who wants to go to another meeting?”
Often, she just asked neighbors what they wanted from their neighborhood. Margie Lawrence, a resident of the Monticelli Apartments in Los Arroyos, recalls the day that Hess knocked on her door and introduced herself.
“I told her, I was born and raised in Ohio,” said Lawrence, “in a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody. When you walked down the street everyone said hello. But when I moved to California, I saw that people can live somewhere for 10 or 15 years, and not know anybody.”
Years later, they still meet for dinner with their ‘LANA’ sisters: Los Arroyos Neighborhood Alliance. The neighborhood, composed of smaller areas such as Glenbrook, Los Arroyos and Summerhill, where Hess lives, now has a unifying alliance, with representatives from each area. It’s an idea Hess devised, that brings the resources of every neighborhood together.
“She’d always share expenses,” Cataluna said. “Summerhill has a mixture of market-rate and subsidized homes, so they had a higher budget than other area. Judy had a way of making sure the profits we got from events like Neighbor Day were distributed fairly. A few people griped, but we resolved it.”
As a Girl Scout leader, she passes her down-to-earth leadership style to Los Arroyos’ girls. Unlike most Girl Scout leaders, she doesn’t have a young daughter herself. Six years ago, she started doing the program with her daughter, who has since moved on. But for Hess, children of the neighborhood are her children, too.
Recently, she heard two kids bickering – over what, she can’t recall. One turned to her and said, ‘Judy, you’re the boss of the neighborhood – you decide.’ Hess was mortified. This isn’t her neighborhood, she insists – it’s everyone’s neighborhood. Even the NeighborWorks award feels awkward to her, an honor she can’t quite accept. When a NeighborWorks representative traveled from Anaheim to present Hess with the award she couldn’t go to Houston to accept, she was bashful.
“There’s no way I’d get anything done by myself,” she said. “I’m not alone. Everything we’ve done, has been done together.”
Even as she shrugs off the acclaim, her neighbors clamor to praise her.
“She makes you want to be a better person,” said Yvonne Hyatt, a Summerhill resident. “She’s been our driving force.”
“She’s a motivator,” said Lawrence, “and she doesn’t give herself enough credit.”
“She’s a go-getter,” said Cerdan. “When you work with her, it doesn’t even seem like work. That’s the best part of it.”
As she gazes at the award, an ethereal house suspended in glass, she smiles, then looks away.
“Maybe I was a little spark,” Hess says, “but they’re the fire.”
