THE SUNDAY PROFILE : McMOM...

Tucking up her navy suit pants, Isabelle Villasenor kneels to mop up a spilled soda at her Cypress McDonald’s. Quickly, she dispatches a clerk to fetch a refill, flashes the frazzled mother an I’ve-been-there smile and assures her, “We’ll getchya another one.”

Customers pushing strollers toss her hellos. They ask about her daughters, whom they’ve watched grow up. “So Jenny’s getting married!” says a cheery woman slurping a Coke.

During the lunch hour, Villasenor, 48, parks her gleaming white Mercedes outside her newest addition, a McDonald’s shoehorned inside a Cerritos Walmart. Over a cup of black coffee, she can hardly focus on telling her life story for watching the counter operation. “. . . Opened this store in July and I was . . .” The conversation trails as her blue eyes rake the perimeter, checking the niggling details that can bring you back for a Quarter Pounder or send you off for a Whopper.

“I walk, talk, eat and breathe McDonald’s,” she admits with a dimpled smile. “It’s who I am.”

She’s Sonia Braga meets Sally Field, a businesswoman who takes in more than $7 million a year but someone much more than a burger maven with golden arches. The child of an immigrant gardener and a secretary, she used her smarts to turn misfortune into her defining moment, yielding not just riches but contentment.

Hers is a feel-good tale, one of triumphs over challenges--a loving but low-income childhood with no hopes of college, a young marriage, early and painful divorce, single parenting with little job experience.

A working single mom who once ran her business from her bedroom--her two daughters, nonetheless, can’t remember a day when she did not pick them up after school.

How many high school students, assigned a term paper on heroes and inspiration, would write about their mom? Hers did. Now college graduates in their 20s, they manage three of her five--soon to be six--franchises and visibly adore her.

Before they marry, they intend to have graduated with their degrees from Hamburger University at corporate headquarters in Oakbrook, Ill. At a time when other twentysomethings complain about having McJobs, Villasenor’s daughters dream of owning their own franchises. They consider her their best friend, someone who gave them values and responsibility and the true meaning of love.

She has talked free trade with President Bush and Vice President Quayle and wears her wealth with ease. She has been interviewed by the New York Times and Fortune magazine, employs 200 people and has the affections of the Sisters of the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart.

She has presided over the national McDonald’s Women Operators, a group that helped earn the company an award this year for promoting females and has helped raise scholarship funds for college-bound Latinos.

She earns the admiration of senior Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, who strained a 20-year friendship with native son Carl Karcher by granting her a lucrative franchise at John Wayne Airport.

She may own a charming house in Corona del Mar and a cabin at Lake Arrowhead, two Mercedeses and other luxuries, but none of it will ever match her joy at being a good daughter, and her original childhood dream come true: being a great mom.

“She’s not a do-gooder. She’s a good person,” says Sister Catherine Marie Stewart at the Heart of Jesus Retreat Center in Santa Ana, an oasis for children where Villasenor has helped with fund-raising. Stewart never stops smiling as she talks about Villasenor--how she supplies the cups for meetings, how she starts and ends every visit praying in the chapel but never misses a visit to the kitchen for Sister Hermine’s chocolate chip cookies.

“I’ve known her six years. What I like about Isabelle is that she’s very personable. She’s a good mother and a good friend. She’s given those girls a great view of life, but not overprotected. She’s been loved, too; you see that. Life hasn’t been always rosy, but she’s come out of it stronger.”

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Avitachese como una mujer , her father, Jesus, would say. Buck up! Be strong like a woman! It was the kind of ironic thing you’d expect to hear from a man who “invented the word macho “ but admired the women who fought beside their men during the Mexican Revolution.

He had left his small town outside Guadalajara to fight in the war before migrating to the United States in 1927. Here, he met Villasenor’s mother, Magdalena, an El Paso native 24 years younger. The two settled in Culver City.

Her father maintained the gardens of the wealthy and famous--actors such as Van Johnson, for one. Her mother was a secretary who kept her husband’s invoices in order. Their first child was a son, stillborn, which may be why their daughter believes she was always overprotected, though never spoiled.

Her parents managed to pay for little Isabelle’s Catholic school education, and, although Spanish was her first language, she learned English in school. Her father did not want Isabelle to lose her heritage. “My mother used to say that the only time they fought was after she had spoken to us in English,” Villasenor says, giggling.

Given that she attended St. Bernard High in Culver City, a prep school, it came as a shock when her parents informed her near graduation that, no, there wasn’t money for a college education. Besides, her father’s dream had been to return to his hometown after her graduation. And so they did. But her family there was of two classes, and the wealthy bunch frowned on her working for a living. So she did volunteer work until she thought she would go stir-crazy.

After six months, what was to be a visit with girlfriends in Southern California turned into a permanent move. She wrote long letters home to her folks about why she was staying here and got her first paying job as a bilingual dental assistant for a Crenshaw dentist, Armando Lopez.

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The story of how she got her first car is typical of how many people react to her. She was without wheels, so friends drove her to and from work every day, but it was becoming a strain. A patient listened to her worry one morning, and the next day he returned with news: A Manhattan Beach couple had agreed to sell her their aqua Volkswagen bug, and she could make monthly installments on it.

“I said to him, ‘Who would do such a nice thing?’ And he said, ‘Isabelle, you have a smile that people would do anything for.’ ”

She worked there for four years and, during that time, met her future husband--21-year-old stockbroker Pat Smith--through friends. A few years after they married, his parents bought the Artesia McDonald’s, the same year the corporation opened its 1,000th store.

It was 1968. Isabelle and her husband became part-owners of a second store, in San Clemente, with his parents, but they still ran them. When Smith’s father became ill, his parents asked him to step in. They wanted Isabelle to run the business side, she said, “but I told them no, all I really wanted to do was be a mom to my two little girls.”

Villasenor eventually did step in and kept the books, working out of the back office. When her in-laws died, she and her husband bought out other siblings and together ran the two restaurants.

The couple divorced in 1981, and, although Villasenor is reluctant to discuss why they split, her daughters say they were encouraged to maintain close relationships with their father.

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Friends say that Villasenor used the divorce to reinvent herself, from suburban housewife to working mom.

The divorce settlement left her with ownership of the Artesia restaurant. But that didn’t mean McDonald’s would grant her a franchise license.

Villasenor had learned on the job, but she had never been through the formal mandatory training at Hamburger University that all owner-operators must pass. Only then can one earn a license.

“I think,” she adds, “they were thinking, ‘Here’s this lady who’s been playing tennis every day and she wants to be an operator.’ ” Was she playing tennis every day? “Pretty much,” she says, laughing. “They figured I wouldn’t get through it.”

But after she finished her training, took over the store and remodeled it, the Artesia store’s volume increased 121%, a corporate record that stood for five years.

Her Artesia, Cypress and John Wayne Airport restaurants generate annual sales volume of about $7.4 million, not counting the Walmart, snack-bar-sized restaurant that opened in July. An experimental venture that the corporation is trying at other locations, that McDonald’s is performing double its projected sales.

Next year Villasenor opens a McDonald’s in Norwalk.

“I never dreamed I would be where I am today,” Villasenor says, applying a quick coat of lipstick without aid of a mirror before throwing her car into reverse to head to her Cypress office. “Never dreamed.”

*

Like the communities surrounding them, each store has its own flavor.

Its customers are “multicultural,” Villasenor says, fingers tapping. “ Very multicultural. There were dairies around us when it was first built there. Artesia used to be called Dairyland. There’s a large Asian community there--Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese communities. Also Eastern Indian and, to a smaller degree, Hispanics.

“Cypress is Middle America. Families. It’s a younger crowd, too,” she says, pointing out the excellent location a half mile from Cypress High School and a mile from the local community college.

Also multicultural are her employees. Maria Tablado, 41, has worked for Villasenor seven years, starting as a crew member making biscuits and salads. She spoke no English when she applied for a job at Villasenor’s Artesia McDonald’s. She had been a secretary for 14 years in Nicaragua before fleeing in 1984 with her children and husband, who, she says, left them to return to their homeland.

“Isabelle, she give me a lot of opportunity,” Tablado, now an assistant manager, says emotionally, her eyes tearing. She is taking English courses, she says, and wants to continue advancing her work skills. She knows that Villasenor values bilingual staffers. The more languages you can speak, the more customers you can talk to.

“If I can help one small part, it makes me feel better. She trusts her people and gives you the opportunity to let (you) go more, get better. The Spanish people here say, ‘Mama Isabelle is here.’ ”

When Villasenor’s second store opened--eight years after her first, when her daughters were older--it was a very different feeling, because that store was built for her alone.

“It was all mine, and I did the whole gamut--I was really excited about this store. I had a reception for city officials and the neighbors; I had speakers and the Chamber of Commerce. My family was very proud of me. My godfather came all the way from Guadalajara for the opening. We had Mexican food and drinks, mariachis.”

Wait, no burgers? Why the Mexican theme? She hits her hand to her chest. “It’s me! That’s who I am!”

Besides, she points out, there are fajitas on her menus now.

Next to open were the John Wayne Airport restaurants, the “twins” bookending the newly built terminal. It was Villasenor’s first big brush with politics. There had been city officers and sign approvals and code matters to navigate before, but this time McDonald’s had competition, and it was from Orange County’s home-grown burger master, Carl Karcher.

To get grant money, the county had certain requirements required by the FAA to find a food franchisee who was an ethnic minority or woman who lived in Orange County and had five years’ experience in the business. Fifty-seven applicants were whittled down to two. Villasenor, with the guidance of veteran lobbyist Lyle Oversby, met each member of the Board of Supervisors so they would know that she was the real McCoy.

“I remember I told Supervisor Tom Riley that, since the passengers would be seeing McDonald’s almost the first thing off the plane, that I fancied myself the unofficial ambassador to the county,” Villasenor recalled. “And I think he liked that idea.”

It was no sweetheart deal though, Oversby says. The press was looking into the angle that corporate big-shot McDonald’s was chasing Karcher out of his own playground when, in fact, Villasenor was the deal-clincher.

She was Latina, a county resident with 10 years of franchising experience; her first restaurant increased sales volume more than 100% in her first 18 months, and her parent corporation would guarantee payment of her lease and sales percentage were she to fail to perform, Oversby said. She came into meetings with pages of proposals on how best to zip diners in and out, and in the end she gave the board the best business pitch, Riley said.

“I first met her when we were looking for the installation of a food stand,” says Riley, a retired Marine general whose supervisorial district encompasses the airport that was rebuilt and reopened in September, 1990. “Obviously she was a winner. But she first attracts your attention by always looking in your eyes when she’s talking to you. In the Marine Corps, we called it command presence.

“I wanted somebody who was gonna be successful. Yes, there was a lot of pressure. The only time in my 20 years on the board when I called somebody and said, ‘You’re not gonna get it, and you might not want to be at the meeting,’ I called Carl.

“But this young lady was far and above in her presentation. She had done the most work and preparation. . . . I’ve always felt the decision we made was a good one.”

Despite the brush with politicians and meetings she was invited to for Latino business leaders to discuss NAFTA and other matters with Bush and Quayle, Villasenor remains nonpolitical. She is a registered Republican whose only campaign donations were a couple hundred dollars to Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez.

She declines to discuss Proposition 187. Childhood friend Cecilia Preciado Burciaga, who served in the White House under Jimmy Carter, says they avoid discussing politics beyond fun-minded barbs. Like when she sent Villasenor this framed saying: “Clinton jogs every morning to a McDonald’s.”

Perhaps it is because Oversby by trade deals with the sometimes cynical business of politics that he is so filled with superlatives about Villasenor. Five years ago, he introduced her to the Catholic order of nuns in Santa Ana, where a serene new children’s facility has since been built with donated millions.

“She is not at all in the crowd of people who think of themselves as political. In five years I’ve seen her at three functions, and they were all for the retreat center,” Oversby said. “She’s exactly what you see. She’s a very charming, successful woman in a business that normally grinds people up and spits them out. . . . She’s a rare commodity.”

Nobody would agree more than daughters Lisa, a UCLA graduate who flirted with the literary world before returning to the family business, and Jenny, who graduated from USC this year and a couple of months later was managing the Walmart McDonald’s.

“I admire my mother’s determination. She worked her buns off to get where she is. I’ve always said she’s like a celebrity in the McDonald’s world. People respect her; they look up to her. We’ve been going to meetings with her since we were little. It was exciting. But I think I appreciate her love and understanding the most.”

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Family values were pulled into sharper focus in recent weeks. Villasenor’s father, 95, lay fighting for life in the Huntington Beach home she bought her parents. His wife and daughter stayed up through the nights with him and by day dozed a few hours beside his bed. On Wednesday he slid into a coma and died. Villasenor and her daughters, Jenny, 23, and Lisa, 25, were all there.

“There was a period of time when Isabelle’s girls were little, and I was in Washington, D.C., when we did lose touch, but a good friend is like a very comfortable blanket: You come back to it, and all the creases are there, and you know each other without the masks,” says childhood friend Preciado, whose 96-year-old father was friends with Villasenor’s.

The fathers came together from Mexico before the women were born here, and both joke that they’ve known each other “since the womb.” To this day they refer to each other by childhood nicknames; Isabelle is Biki; Cecilia is Chila.

“We have the same core background. We both view our fathers as the tie to Mexico, and a real deep culture, and yet we’ve both navigated here well, and certainly Isabelle has become very successful as an entrepreneur and a woman in her own right.

“I deeply respect and admire Biki, because she may be driving a (Mercedes) and calling me from her cellular phone and going off for ‘R and R’ in Hawaii, but when we connect it’s really the basics--’How are you; I need to lose weight; how are your parents, and who are you dating?’ ”

“The side of Isabelle that I find fascinating is that because of her looks--blond and blue-eyed--she’s always looked white, just like her father,” says Preciado, associate dean and registrar of Cal State Monterey Bay and a Clinton appointee to the Presidential Commission on Excellence in Education for Hispanics.

“She could have melded in (to a white world). She could’ve chosen to remain Isabelle Smith after her divorce. But it’s real clear she’s chosen to be Isabelle Villasenor. She’s traveled to Mexico and is very comfortable there, too.

“That’s the wonder of Isabelle: She’s been able to straddle two worlds gracefully, beautifully, with apology on neither side.”