When It Comes to Volunteering, She’s in a Class of Her Own

I’ve been meaning for months now to tell you about Ruth Cuadra. I owe her a letter of appreciation and I thought I’d share it with you.

Whoever gets elected president this year oughta give Ruth a seat at next January’s State of the Union address, point to her and say: There. This is why the country works. This is why our neighborhoods and our schools work, because of people you never see on television, people you rarely read about, people who go unspectacularly through their lives stitching one civic chore to another. People who never give speeches because they rarely get the opportunity, and when they do get the opportunity usually smile, say “thanks” and go back to work.

Ruth is a maniacally efficient volunteer at my daughter’s elementary school in Mar Vista, a quiet section of Los Angeles’ Westside.

The joke is that we parents have to find a way to stop her son Danny from graduating in June because Mar Vista Elementary will fall apart without her.

It’s an exaggeration. Scores of parents are regular fixtures on campus, putting in hundreds of hours every year, spelling the difference between success and failure in the woefully underfunded Los Angeles Unified School District. But Ruth, whom I have the privilege of assisting in her editorship of our PTA newsletter, remains a marvel

to me.

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She has run our PTA and the PTA’s regional council. She helped create the school booster club that raises critical funds. She’s sat on the school’s parent-teacher-staff leadership council. She’s chaired the annual school auction and the annual school raffle and the annual school Halloween festival. She’s worked on back-to-school night, the yard sale and the fund-raising phone-a-thon. And the book sale. And the open house. And the new-student recruiting drive.

Every year she’s a “room parent,” coordinating volunteer activities in her children’s classes. It’s a rare day you don’t see her old station wagon outside the school.

You work with Ruth, you learn to do things her way because, in my experience, her way’s the right way. She’s done it more times than you and thought about it more than you. Some people find this occasionally infuriating, but I got over it. Here I was, a professional wordsmith, having my copy corrected by a volunteer newsletter editor--and darned if she wasn’t on the money every time, without a trace of arrogance.

You might be surprised to learn that Ruth has a mathematics degree from UCLA and works in her husband’s computer business. Don’t be. These people (as the president will say during his State of the Union address) have lives outside their volunteerism; they simply make different, more noble choices than most of us. These are the people who cut the school grass when the district forgets to schedule maintenance, who paint the bleachers, who run the Girl Scout meetings. You get enough of them, you have a good neighborhood. They matter more than property values.

I kept meaning to tell you about Ruth, and I kept putting it off. Then last month, a teacher at another school, maybe 20 minutes from Mar Vista if there’s no traffic, was shot in the head. It was the accidental shooting I’m sure you’ve heard about: Gang Member A sees Gang Member B drive by, fires wildly and sprays a bullet through the library window, hitting the teacher in front of his fifth-graders.

The attack that day brought on a particularly strong sense of hopelessness among many of the people I work with at The Times, and we were blessed, in retrospect, to be working on the story so we wouldn’t have to think too much about its implications. But finally it came time to go home, and inside the car there was no place to hide from what had happened: Nothing was safe.

It could never happen at my school, I told myself. But for once that smugness that you feel when you live in a “good” or “safe” neighborhood rang hollow. On this night, I knew, there were 23 children in South-Central Los Angeles stained forever by the sight of their teacher being mowed down. I knew that those children’s parents regarded their school as the same kind of sanctuary that Mar Vista represents to me. I was losing faith again. I needed another reason to believe. Fortunately, I was about to stumble upon one.

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I was driving to Mar Vista Elementary’s auditorium, where my daughter was singing in the senior chorus. I’d forgotten that this was part of a larger program, the PTA’s annual tribute to volunteers.

I slipped in 20 minutes after the show started, and a moment later the awards began.

There was one for Ida Freedman, a classroom aide, and four parents: John Beilock (the mastermind of our school’s computer committee), Kelly Rourke (who doubles as a classroom aide and who cracked: “I might have to have another baby because I can’t imagine leaving”), Denice Mesuro (our co-PTA president) . . . and Ruth Cuadra.

They gave Ruth a “continuing service” award because she’d already received an “honorary” one in years past. The presenter recited much of what I’ve told you, then mentioned a tale that Ruth’s husband, Neil, likes to tell: Ruth had been working late all week preparing for the Halloween festival she was running when he teased her, asking, “Yeah, but what did you make for the bake sale?” She pointed to the kitchen counter, filled with dozens of homemade cupcakes.

The hundred or so parents in the auditorium clapped warmly as Ruth walked up to accept the award.

She smiled shyly. “I can’t speak in public,” she said, “but thank you.”

Thank you, Ruth.