Unsung hero: Susan Kopicki is dedicated to child care for working families
For Newport Beach resident Susan Kopicki, there are few causes more worthy than helping working families.
As a former working mother, she knows all too well the need for affordable and accessible child care programs, both locally and throughout the country.
It’s why for more than 20 years she’s devoted her time, energy and leadership to a local nonprofit dedicated to the cause.
Since 1995, Kopicki has been a board member for the Childs-pace Foundation — an organization that provides child care and youth development programs to about 130 children in Costa Mesa, Anaheim and Buena Park.
She’s been board president of the Costa Mesa-based organization for about the past 12 years.
“Working families need child care and it can be extremely expensive, even for middle class and wealthier families,” Kopicki said in an interview. “Programs like ours are really important because it means those families can continue working without worrying about their kids.”
A native of Tennessee, who still sports a hint of the regional twang, Kopicki first came to Orange County in 1967 and settled in Newport Heights in 1971.
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Editor’s note: This is an installment of Unsung Heroes, a new annual feature that highlights otherwise overlooked members of the community.
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After moving west, she held a variety of jobs in trade publishing, sales and marketing and teaching. She retired from her last post as a teacher with the Orange County Department of Education in 2012.
Despite the demands of home and work, Kopicki still found time to get involved.
As board president at Childs-pace, she strives to raise both awareness of the services the organization provides and, when needed, money to help support them.
That was especially true when the recession reared its ugly head around 2009, reducing the state funding upon which Childs-pace relies.
“We had to work very hard to fill the gap between the funding from the state and what we needed to continue services without cutting off any families,” Kopicki said.
As part of those efforts, Kopicki used her own house to secure a line of credit.
During that fundraising and outreach campaign, Kopicki said the organization “found a lot of friends who recognized the importance of the kind of support we provide for low-to-moderate income, working families and they wanted to support that.”
Kopicki has also become involved in issues specific to her Newport Beach neighborhood.
She, along with neighbors such as Lynda Adams and Simone Wilson, helped lead the charge last year against undergrounding utility lines in the area.
Proponents of the effort said the poles strung with electric, phone and cable lines were unsightly and unsafe and should be placed underground. Others, though, balked at the prospect of forcing homeowners to pay thousands of dollars to do so.
Homeowners rejected the idea in a special election last summer, following what Kopicki called “an honest-to-goodness community-wide grassroots effort” to let people know about the vote and what was at stake.
“Everybody has a right to vote their own interests, so that was why we worked as hard as we did to make sure everybody got a chance to vote,” she said. “It was up to them to decide what they wanted to do with their money.”
Liz McNabb, a Costa Mesa resident who’s known Kopicki for about six years, described her as a great activist.
“She’s dedicated and she always follows through,” McNabb said. “She never asks for any credit, she always does her work and doesn’t need a lot of accolades to get things done. She really is dedicated to making the community stronger by helping families that are struggling and I think that’s so admirable.”
Kopicki, though, is quick to turn the spotlight on others.
“I have a lot of friends who do as much in the community as I’ve done,” she said. “I think ‘unsung heroes’ are the people who work for Childs-pace and have worked there for years when maybe they could’ve worked in a more lucrative field. … I’m honored, yeah, but I want to share that honor with a lot of people who I see doing a huge amount for their community and for what they believe in.”
Twitter: @LukeMMoney
