Beatriz Valdez dies at 69; L.A. County’s first female registrar-recorder

Beatriz Valdez, a stenographer who rose to become the first woman to serve as registrar-recorder of Los Angeles County, died Dec. 5 at Beverly Hospital in Montebello of complications related to a heart attack, said her sister, Ofelia Valdez-Yeager. She was 69.

When Valdez was appointed registrar-recorder in 1993, she also became the first Latino to hold the position since Ignacio del Valle was voted into office in 1850 in the county’s first elections, said former U.S. Rep. Esteban E. Torres in the Congressional Record upon her retirement in 1995.

As head of the largest election agency in the United States, Valdez was in charge of 700 permanent employees and directed an annual budget of $60 million. She was responsible for conducting elections within the county for local, state and federal offices and oversaw voter registration.

She found the apathy of the more than 3.5 million voters then registered in the county “just appalling,” Valdez told The Times in 1994, pointing out that the county spent $13 million on each major election to inform voters and provide sample ballots.

“It’s definitely a problem when you get 70% of the people basically saying the other 30% can decide for me,” she said.

In 1957, Valdez joined the registrar-recorder’s office as a stenographer and was quickly promoted. By 1975, she was a deputy voting registrar involved in publishing the county’s first Spanish-language ballot materials.

The process of translating somewhat legalistic English into what was intended to be easily understandable Spanish could be tricky, she said.

“Smog” and “freeway” defied translation and were part of the linguistic netherworld of “Spanglish,” Valdez said in 1976 in The Times. “Small businessman” threatened to describe a candidate’s physical stature rather than a modest business enterprise, so the “small” wasn’t translated, she said.

The eldest of eight children, Beatriz Eulalia Valdez was born in 1939 in San Ignacio, Mexico, to Miguel and Maria Valdez. Her father was a U.S. citizen who returned to Mexico during the Depression to work in mines.

For about five years, she lived in Tijuana with her mother and siblings and attended parochial school across the border in San Ysidro while her father was a steelworker in the U.S. The family moved to Montebello in 1953.

Valdez was a top student, her sister said, but went straight to work at the registrar-recorder’s office after graduating from Montebello High School to help support her family.

When Valdez was offered the top job at what had become the registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office 36 years later, she was somewhat reluctant to take it because she preferred to stay out of the spotlight, her sister said.

“Bea was a quick learner and . . . had worked for five registrar-recorders,” her sister said. “She knew everything about the position and asked herself, ‘Why not be chief?’ She would just have to train someone else if she didn’t do it.”

In addition to Ofelia, Valdez is survived by five brothers, Rudy, Mike, William, Bob and George.

Instead of flowers, the family requests donations to the City of Hope, www.cityofhope.org, or the American Diabetes Assn., www.diabetes.org.

valerie.nelson@latimes.com