Sister Leaving a Ministry Built Helping the Poor

By DAVID KELLY

Jan. 31, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It happened when she was a young girl, the daughter of migrant workers, who draped curtains over her head and pretended to be a nun.

“God seduced me early,” recalled Sister Carmen Rodriguez. “And I have never looked back.”

She was drawn like a magnet to the aid of the poor and the sick, cruising the streets of Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood handing out coffee and sandwiches to people living under porches and in alleys. While building her ministry among society’s castoffs, she found people with pride, dignity and bursting with creativity.

“I love the poor. My heart aches for them, and I have loved being here,” the serene, silver-haired nun said. “I have been taught so much by them.”

Now, after 21 years of heading the health ministry at St. John’s Regional Medical Center, which sees 30,000 6cli6ents a year, Rodriguez is leaving for Burlingame, near San Francisco. There she will spend the next few months contemplating her next move.

Gloria Chinea, director of community health education at St. John’s, will take over for Rodriguez.

“There are no words to express the charge I have been given,” Chinea said. “It is a hard act to follow.”

Rodriguez, who is also a registered nurse, said it’s time to consider a life outside of health care.

“I’m going . . . to see where God is leading me. I know I have to leave health care. I’ve been in it for 30 years, and it’s time to do something different,” said Rodriguez, who celebrated her 65th birthday Tuesday.

Burlingame is home to the Sisters of Mercy religious order, to which Rodriguez belongs and which ran St. John’s for years.

Her departure surprised not only hospital leaders but Oxnard officials and activists who had grown used to working with the gentle but assertive nun who always seemed to get her way.

“It’s going to be a huge loss to the community,” Oxnard City Councilman Tom Holden said. “She had one of those rare talents of getting people to support her programs without them realizing it.”

Jesus Rocha, a co-founder of the El Centrito program that provides literacy and other services in La Colonia, said Rodriguez embodied the true face of Christianity.

“She definitely lives by her Christian convictions with the idea of giving and not expecting to receive anything in return, but to trust that God will provide it,” Rocha said.

Rodriguez was born in Santa Paula to migrant workers who followed the harvest up and down the state. But her parents wanted better for their daughter, so they left her in Bakersfield where her grandmother raised her and kept her in school.

In 1963, she joined the Sisters of Mercy.

“I was asking, ‘Where do I belong? Where do my skills lie?’ ” she recalled. “It was my way of asking God for guidance.”

After working as a nurse at several hospitals, Rodriguez decided her mission was to help the poor.

She went to impoverished neighborhoods, visiting homes and talking to families. She drew information from those too proud to admit they needed help.

“I would remember asking people what their needs were, and they would say, ‘Nothing,’ ” Rodriguez said. “People with one chair in their home and wearing tattered clothes, and they would say they didn’t need anything.”

She set up an office at St. John’s for people who needed health care, counseling, housing or just someone to talk to. No one came, so she persuaded a local priest to let her put a 44-foot trailer behind Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in La Colonia.

“God and life are synonymous for Hispanics,” she said. “If they are fighting with their wives, they go see a priest. If they need help with money, they go see a priest. They see a priest for everything.”

And when the priest was busy, he sent them out the back door to see Sister Carmen.

She handed over money, food, clothes, blankets, bus tickets, whatever it took to get someone out of a jam fast or feed a family that had fallen on hard times.

“She was a forceful advocate. You don’t normally hear that about a nun,” said Oscar Gonzalez, an Oxnard attorney and community activist who sat with Rodriguez on the Cabrillo Economic Development Corp. “She was a whirlwind of activism.”

The ministry grew from seeing 100 people a year to 30,000, and it moved from the trailer to rooms at Christ the King Mission Church in Oxnard.

Friends and associates treated Rodriguez to a party with a mariachi band in the St. John’s cafeteria Tuesday, thanking her with gifts and testimonials.

“Vaya con Dios!” said Dan Herlinger, regional head of Catholic Healthcare West, which owns St. John’s.

A tearful Rodriguez said, “I want people to know that I really cared about them.”