A Smile Sparked Lifelong Commitment

* Lilia Serio Powell, 42

Occupation: Coordinator of Talent Search, a federal program to help minorities

Organization: United Way of Orange County board member

Address: 18012 Mitchell Ave. South, Irvine 92714. (714) 660-7600

Lilia Serio Powell can pinpoint the moment she became interested in doing charitable work and helping others.

It happened, she said, 30 years ago at Miami International Airport.

She was 12, and she and her 11-year-old sister had just fled from communism in their native Cuba. Their parents could not immediately join the girls, who spoke no English.

“For about a day and a half, we were on our own at the airport because we couldn’t link up with our aunt in Miami,” Powell said. “But the Red Cross was there. They had little friendship boxes they gave us. They smiled and were friendly. That, to me, said an awful lot about this culture and this country I had come to. And that started something in my life.”

What it started was Powell’s lifelong commitment to help others, just as she had been helped.

Today, Powell, 42, is a board member of the United Way in Orange County, based in Irvine, and is also active in the American Red Cross in the county. She has many charitable and civic interests, but she specializes in helping people from minority groups.

Powell this fall was appointed coordinator for a new federal program designed to boost the chances of minority students to enter colleges and universities. The program, called Talent Search, is headquartered at Cal State Fullerton, but its span includes UC Irvine and most community colleges in Orange County.

“This is an outreach program that aims to do a non-traditional type of recruitment of students of underrepresented groups, including Hispanics and blacks,” Powell said. “This is a partnership of institutions of higher education. We’re trying to help kids with tutoring, mentoring and financial aid so that they might be able to get into college.”

Powell said that her own experience has taught her the value of a college education. Moreover, she added, she knows the importance of words of encouragement.

“When I was in high school at Foothill High (in North Tustin), I never thought I could go to college,” Powell said. Her immigrant parents were working hard to make ends meet; the thought of college seemed impossibly expensive.

“But I had a high school counselor, John Sauers, who all the time told me: ‘Of course you’re going to go to college.’ That personal attention he gave me made a very big difference.”

Powell worked her way through UC Irvine, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1971. She earned her master’s degree in education from Cal State Fullerton in 1986. She and her husband, Tom Powell, an attorney, now live in the North Tustin area with their three daughters.

Her Talent Search duties fill her day, but Lilia Powell said she is never too busy to exclude work for the United Way, the Red Cross and other charities. She still remembers, she said, “when people were there to help me and my sister when we needed it.”