LA HABRA : Activist’s Loss at Polls Could Be Blessing

Rose Hernandez Espinoza’s election defeat in the Proposition 187 tidal wave may have been a blessing in disguise.

Espinoza, who last week lost her bid for a City Council seat, is stepping up the volunteer work she loves with a passion: providing tutoring services to needy children.

Known for her 3-year-old after-school garage tutoring program, Espinoza said the service will be in greater demand should Proposition 187 be upheld in the courts. The initiative would deny public education to illegal immigrants, causing some of her pupils and many other children to be barred from school.

“So many more garage schools will be needed,” she said, vowing to get her program, Motivating Adolescents to Succeed (MAS), duplicated in all La Habra neighborhoods.

She said the makeshift schools will help keep youths interested in learning and out of trouble.

Espinoza, 42, believes her outspoken opposition to Proposition 187 was partly to blame for her loss at the polls, but she said she will never stop helping youths, especially now.

She was the only City Council candidate to publicly oppose the proposition at a forum televised several times before the election. She had made it known that she believed the initiative was “inhumane, cruel, unjust and unfair to children.” Her opponents took no stand on the measure.

“I don’t regret opposing 187, because it is wrong,” Espinoza said, explaining her narrow defeat as “a backlash for being against 187.”

Espinoza came in third in a field of five candidates for two seats on the council. There was only 1% difference in her vote and that of second place vote-getter Mayor David M. Cheverton. Most votes went to community activist Dorothy May Rush. She and Cheverton begin their four-year terms in December. Espinoza said she may run again in 1996.

Meanwhile, she is organizing a dinner dance Nov. 27 at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church to raise money for MAS and is inviting the public to attend and lend a helping hand.