Service Is Key for Young Mayor of Baldwin Park

It’s tough to get Fidel Vargas, mayor of Baldwin Park since April, to stop talking about public service. Read any good books lately, Fidel? Of course. “Reinventing Government” and “Campaign of the Century!” he responds enthusiastically.

What would you most like to do if you had some free time? “Probably run a program somewhere for high school kids on leadership-type things, train them how to run a campaign or help them with their SATs or their college applications.”

Perhaps it would not be unusual for a lifelong civil servant to have such things constantly on his mind. But Vargas--who was carded at the door of his own victory cele bration--just turned 24 last month.

Fidel Vargas is used to life in the fast lane. At 21 he graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude in social studies. When elected last spring, he became the youngest mayor of a U.S. city with a population of more than 30,000.

Now Vargas, who wrote his college thesis on the history of community organizing, is trying to apply the lessons he learned within the ivy-covered walls of Harvard to the graffiti-covered walls of Baldwin Park. He inherited the reins of the working-class community of 70,000, more than 70% of whom are Latino, amid a budget crisis so severe that the city has cut nearly a quarter of its staff in the last four years.

“I don’t look at this pessimistically,” he said of Baldwin Park’s daunting fiscal situation. “I look at this as an opportunity to try to do something new, to make do with what we have.

“What we need to do is sit down with community groups and teach them how to organize,” said Vargas, who wants his constituents to take more responsibility for strengthening schools, responding to gangs and policing their own communities. “That’s democracy, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

Since becoming mayor five months ago, Vargas has done his part in confronting the city’s gang and graffiti problems. In the first seven months of the year, Baldwin Park, which has the lowest police-to-citizen ratio in the San Gabriel Valley, had suffered half a dozen gang-related killings.

In response, Vargas founded the Community Task Force, a coalition of police, business, churches, schools and city government dedicated to rooting out the city’s gangs and redirecting their several hundred gang members.

Vargas is also launching the strategic planning group, Baldwin Park 2000, and he is active in Baldwin Park Beautiful, a group founded by former Mayor Betty L. Lowe to clean up the city.

“He’s not afraid to roll up his sleeves and pitch right in,” Baldwin Park Police Chief Carmen Lanza said.

So far, Vargas’ age has not been a liability; in fact, in an era when voters are repudiating “business as usual” in favor of political change, it can be something of a selling point. Vargas hopes his example and his grass-roots campaign, run mainly by volunteers from local high schools, will encourage other young people to get involved in politics.

“He shows an element of idealism that you don’t usually see in elected officials,” City Manager Donald Penman said.

“There is a perception of a new attitude (a new spirit of cooperation) on the council,” added Penman, who lauded Vargas’ performance in budget deliberations and in controlling volatile council meetings. But he cautioned: “Of course, that lasts only so long in the political world.”

“I don’t sense his age, I sense a person who wants to be involved, who wants to be active, and who really has this community’s best interests at heart,” Lanza said. “He’s running a tight ship in the community and he’s learning as he goes along.”

Some question whether Vargas has the skills to tackle Baldwin Park’s problems. “Very young people can have a great deal of education but they don’t have the life experience,” said Lowe, whose bid for reelection was foiled by Vargas’ victory. But she said that “it’s just too soon to tell” how Vargas will perform in office.

Given Vargas’ schedule, the energy of youth is a blessing. In addition to his post as mayor, he works full time as a business consultant for Cordoba Corp., which develops computer systems and does urban and environmental planning under the direction of Latino entrepreneur and political strategist George Pla.

Vargas wakes every morning at 5 and, after reading the Los Angeles Times and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune over a bowl of Cheerios, shuffles off to City Hall or to Cordoba’s downtown suites. He packs his lunch hours with business meetings, and often rushes away from Cordoba for city functions in the evening. At night he finally tackles his mail, watches several news programs, and turns in by 11:30 p.m. Sundays are set aside for his wife, Melissa, and 2-year-old son, Max. But because Vargas lists his home phone on his business card, he often fields calls from constituents on weekends.

Vargas did not always aspire to politics. After college graduation and traveling in Europe, he returned to the community where he had played varsity baseball, basketball and football, hoping to gain work experience before entering Harvard Business School. He worked as an organizer on state Sen. Art Torres’ campaign for county supervisor, and then landed his job at Cordoba.

But disturbed by many of the trends he noticed in the community, especially the “For Sale” signs multiplying around him, Vargas shifted gears and challenged the incumbent mayor.

“I didn’t see any progress, I didn’t see any planning for the future, I didn’t see a lot of things for this community that I thought were necessary to really build for the future,” he said. “I’m an idealist. I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines and wait any longer for things to get better.’

Vargas’ leadership skills date from his childhood. His mother, Margarita, chairwoman of the East Valley Organization, remembers that Fidel’s first-grade teacher predicted that “when he grows up, he’s going to be a leader.”

Vargas, who lives across the street from his parents, was always the organizer of neighborhood games and school projects, and even tried to run the household more efficiently. “He would make schedules for all the kids to do chores,” his mother said. “They didn’t listen to him, but he tried.”

The eldest of eight children, Vargas traces his devotion to public service to his parents, who taught him to care for the less fortunate and live by a strong code of ethics. As a child he was especially impressed by Bible stories that stressed knowing right from wrong, and doing what was morally correct.

“Those are very key characteristics of a Mexican-American family and of the culture. A lot of it has to do with the (Catholic) religion and the way we’re brought up,” Vargas said. “I have very strong feelings of who I am and why I’m that way.”

And he has not lost sight of the smaller pleasures in life, even while making his way in the world of politics. He pauses to reconsider the question of what he would most like to do if he had some free time. “I’d like to hang out in Dodger Stadium with Darryl Strawberry,” he says wistfully.