Stanton Woman to Head State Rehabilitation Dept. : Appointment: Brenda Premo, who is legally blind, will oversee 2,000 employees in an agency that assists people with disabilities.

In the latest in a long line of achievements, Orange County disability activist Brenda Premo was appointed Wednesday to head the state Department of Rehabilitation.

Gov. Pete Wilson elevated Premo, who is legally blind, from her post as deputy director of the agency’s independent living division. Wilson appointed her to that position in September, 1991.

Wilson said in a prepared statement Wednesday that he was honored to appoint such a distinguished woman to the post.

“I’m pleased and overwhelmed,” Premo, 41, said of the appointment. “But I believe that we have a great ability to do some good things to get some people who have been viewed as dependent into productive positions in the community.”

In the $95,000-a-year post, Premo will oversee 2,000 employees and a department that assists people with disabilities, particularly those with severe disabilities, in finding jobs and living independently.

Premo, a longtime resident of Stanton who was once a client of the Department of Rehabilitation, was serving as executive director of the Dayle McIntosh Center for the Disabled in Anaheim when Wilson tapped her for the Sacramento post in 1991.

In a 1990 interview, Premo said: “My brains aren’t in my eyes. Yet somehow, if you have a disability, they think of you only as someone who is so incapable, so helpless. But I wasn’t going to lie down and give up, and say: ‘OK, system, take care of me. You owe it to me.’ ”

Premo is accustomed to overcoming or circumventing barriers. Despite her near-blindness, which she said is caused by her albinism, Premo said she likes “to play Nintendo on my 40-inch TV.”