COUNTYWIDE : Red Cross Official Assigned to Africa

Francois (Pancho) de la Roche, a longtime assistant director of the American Red Cross in Ventura County, has been appointed director of relief operations in Guinea, West Africa, Red Cross officials said.

De la Roche, an Oak View resident since 1966 and assistant director for the county chapter from 1978 to 1988, will leave Monday for his yearlong assignment.

He will coordinate relief efforts for 150,000 refugees from Liberia who are living in camps within Guinea’s borders, by providing food, shelter and medical assistance.

His wife, Bonnie, and their two children will stay in Oak View but will visit him next summer, he said.

“Hopefully it will be a fun assignment,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot of work. . . . I’m always excited, getting ready to go out on a mission.”

De la Roche left his post at the Ventura County chapter three years ago to become logistics officer for CARE International in Khartoum, Sudan, said Brian Bolton, executive director of the county chapter.

He returned to the United States to work at American Red Cross headquarters in Alexandria, Va. In December, 1990, he was appointed head of the American Red Cross operation in Armenia, Bolton said.

While in Armenia, he became the Red Cross delegate to the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies. The federation’s mission was to build and staff a hospital in Armenia to treat people with spinal cord injuries resulting from the 1988 earthquake there, Bolton said.

In April, 1990, an earthquake occurred in nearby Georgia, and de la Roche headed simultaneous relief efforts there and in Armenia.