City May Name Street for Woman Who Dished Out Generosity

THOUSAND OAKS —  A short street could be named after the late Martha Zuniga, a restaurant owner who fed hungry residents with her homemade burritos and chicken enchiladas for 50 years, who lent money to cooks and waitresses in need, and who wrote checks to save homeless animals.

Councilman Andy Fox is expected to recommend Tuesday night to city officials that a street by Lupe’s Mexican Restaurant be named “Zuniga Ridge Lane.”

“I’d love to see us do it,” said Mayor Judy Lazar, adding that it would be an appropriate honor for the 87-year-old woman who died last month.

Where the street will be is still unclear but it probably will be somewhere near Zuniga Ridge, a half-acre of open space that Zuniga donated to the city and that abuts the Civic Arts Plaza.

Zuniga’s four daughters, Mary Shaw of Newbury Park, Lala Cristerna of Camarillo, Lupe Zuniga of Studio City, and Barbara Zuniga of Moraga, Calif., didn’t know of Fox’s intent, but once they heard about it, thought it was a good idea.

“Mom would like that,” said Lupe, Zuniga’s third daughter and the person after whom the restaurant is named because she has the most Mexican-sounding name in the family. Naming a street after her hard-working mother, who opened the restaurant in 1947 on a dare from her late second husband, Natividad, would be a nice way to remember her, Lupe said.

“He thought she couldn’t do it,” Lupe said of her father’s dare. “ ‘Where would she get her customers from?’ he wondered. There was no one up here at that time. Well, she proved him wrong.”

Though Zuniga has been gone a month, regular lunch-counter customers from nearby businesses still come to Lupe’s for her food, which is the same she made for her children at home.

“I’ve been coming for 20 or 30 years,” said Steve Saul, who works next door at Leslie’s Swimming Pool Supplies. As he gathered up his lunch, a giant bag of tortilla chips and chicken enchiladas, he added, “Sometimes twice a week. It’s that good.”

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Not very many people knew Zuniga was diagnosed with an aneurysm five or six years ago, Lupe said. She wasn’t a good candidate for surgery and yet she kept on working until the day she died.

Lala, Zuniga’s second daughter and the person who will most likely take over the restaurant, remembers standing near her mother the day she died.

“She was washing potholders and I was in the office,” Lala said, recalling that at that time her mother suffered three aneurysms, which eventually led to a stroke.

Waitresses say working in the restaurant, which is decorated with bullfighter paintings and deep red tablecloths, is not the same without the eldest Zuniga, who was born in Gomez Palacio, Durango, Mexico.

“The Saturday after the funeral, I had to open up,” said Diane Sahaj, a waitress since 1979. “I felt very strange. It was like she was here; I felt her presence.”

Another veteran waitress, Virginia Shirazi, said she continues to peek over the swinging doors before she barges through, an precaution she used to take to avoid knocking over her petite boss, who often stood behind them in the kitchen.

The people who worked with Zuniga describe her as tough on the outside but sweet on the inside.

“I always knew how good she was feeling when I’d ask her how she was doing and she’d answer, ‘As mean as ever,’ ” Sahaj said. But Sahaj also recounted many occasions when Zuniga would offer cooks and waitresses money when they were down and out, and how she would whip out her checkbook after reading about a needy person in the newspaper or an animal shelter, such as the Amanda Foundation in Beverly Hills, an animal rescue group.

“She never took vacation,” Sahaj said. “That’s how she spent her money.”

As for keeping her mother’s business philosophy alive, Lupe said the business will continue to run as a “decent, family place.”

Lupe, who is working on a doctorate in clinical psychology, said that somehow the sisters would keep the restaurant running.

“My mother would come after us with a rolling pin if we didn’t keep it,” she said.