Sara Berman, 53; L.A. County Director of Adoptions

Sara Berman, the Los Angeles County director of adoptions who fought gubernatorial limits on nontraditional adoptive parents, has died. She was 53.

Berman died early Tuesday at UCLA Medical Center of internal injuries suffered March 24 when she was struck by a car.

She was hit by a sport utility vehicle while walking in a crosswalk at Los Angeles International Airport after a return flight from a Sacramento business trip. The driver, who said he lost control of the vehicle when a tire blew out, was not arrested.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors adjourned in Berman’s memory Tuesday at the request of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who had worked with her on Westside interests for many years.

“It’s a real tragedy, it’s a damn tragedy, and I move that we adjourn in her memory,” Yaroslavsky told the board.

Department of Children and Family Services spokesman Schuyler Sprowles said Berman’s death was “a huge loss to this agency.”

“Not only has the [department] lost a valued and respected member of its management team . . . but the children of Los Angeles have lost a truly dedicated and committed advocate, and the world has lost a gentle, caring soul,” wrote department Director Peter Digre in a letter informing the Board of Supervisors of Berman’s death.

Berman gained statewide prominence in 1996 when Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration sought to strengthen a policy limiting adoptions to traditional married couples. Speaking at a series of public hearings set up by the state Department of Social Services, Berman argued that the plan could discourage people from applying to become adoptive parents when many children were waiting to be adopted.

“While it doesn’t say singles can’t adopt, it could give the message that single people are seen as less desirable,” she said during a hearing in Sacramento.

Representing the California Assn. of Adoption Agencies as well as her own department, she won favor at another hearing in Santa Ana with gay and lesbian leaders who also opposed the married-only adoption policy.

“These children are not sitting in their foster homes saying, ‘Only give me a married family,’ ” she said.

Of approximately 6,000 adoptions in California annually, nearly 1,400 occur in Los Angeles County and are supervised by Berman’s staff of about 430 people.

Berman worked to interest prospective parents in available children through such events as the Black Adoption Festival, explaining: “You can’t describe a child on a piece of a paper. . . . This allows us to highlight these children, their personalities.”

She had worked for the county since 1967, in the departments of Public Social Services and Mental Health and the Chief Administrative Office. She joined the Department of Children and Family Services in 1988 and became chief of adoptions a year later.

Within her community, Berman was a strong advocate for homeowners’ rights through the Westside Homeowners Alliance, a group of 3,000 homeowners organized to deal with parking and other neighborhood problems caused by the development of Westside Pavilion in 1985.

A graduate of UCLA with a master’s degree from USC, Berman is survived by her mother, Lee Berman; two sisters, Barbara and Judy; five nieces and nephews; and her companion, Edward Newman.