It Will Be the Sun Editor’s Moment to Shine

It’s hard for Thelma Barrios to be on the other end of an interview, since for nearly 40 years she’s been the one asking the questions.

As editor and publisher, and at one point owner, of the San Fernando Valley Sun, Barrios is seen not only as the backbone of the nearly 100-year-old newspaper, but also as a vital link in keeping this town a community, of giving a voice to the public, and of being a conduit of information between government and citizens.

It’s lofty praise and makes her squirm to hear it.

But that’s why she’s being honored June 3 with the Chief Dominick J. Rivetti Award, presented by the San Fernando Police Advisory Council for “years of dedication to the citizens of the San Fernando Valley.” The award is named for the current police chief, who was the first recipient.

Barrios is astonished that anyone thinks she has had an impact on San Fernando, or done anything remarkable. She was just doing her job, she said.

Write a story about her? “Oh, honey, I’m not very interesting.”

Give a dinner in her honor? “Oh, honey, who’d want to come?”

“Thelma just doesn’t think she’s done anything remarkable,” said Isabel Boniface, a member of the Police Advisory Council. “She’s so modest and unassuming, it took almost two months to get a bio from her. She’s been the backbone of the northeast Valley without receiving or wanting any Brownie points.”

Ask folks about Barrios and the same descriptions keep popping up: modest; honest; reliable; big-hearted; backbone of the community; totally dedicated to her neighborhood and her newspaper.

“Thelma has always recognized the need to have a newspaper grounded in the San Fernando Valley to cover local stories that are lost in bigger papers,” says former state Assemblyman Richard Katz, who represented the northeast Valley from 1980-96 and was the second Rivetti award recipient.

“She provides a vital and a vanishing link, a real tie between people and what is happening in their neighborhood. It’s a link that rarely exists these days.”

Barrios, Katz continued, “has given readers the opportunity to learn about people and issues they wouldn’t otherwise know about,” such as development in Wilson Canyon or city liquor ordinances.

When Mission College classes were held in a mishmash of San Fernando storefronts, the Sun detailed the trials and tribulations of efforts to establish a permanent facility.

Although Barrios was a supporter of the college, she said, the paper was careful to report only the news. “We don’t take a side,” she said.

That sense of fairness, admirers said, applies to every issue the Sun covers, even the news from service clubs and other community groups.

“Her ability to be responsive to an organization’s needs and in getting information out to people, plus a presence that makes people trust her are vitally important, especially in a small community,” said Joe Sandoval, president and chief executive of the Greater San Fernando Chamber of Commerce. “She’s not afraid to find out what’s going on and is a valuable resource.”

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Barrios moved to Los Angeles with her mother, brother and sister in the early 1940s, when “many people were on the move, looking for a better life,” she said. When her father lost his two furniture stores in Ohio, the family headed west.

Barrios landed two jobs--a day job in sales and modeling at Bullock’s Wilshire department store and a night job as cashier at a theater near USC.

At the theater, where you could see two movies and a newsreel for a dime, she met her future husband, Joe Barrios, a USC freshman who wanted to be a dentist.

But the Dec. 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor “turned everyone’s life around,” she said, and the following June they married. In November, Joe joined the Navy and Thelma went to work for Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank.

After the war, the Barrioses moved to a new housing tract in burgeoning San Fernando, where plentiful (and inexpensive) housing, jobs and opportunity drew returning soldiers.

In the days before freeways, San Fernando seemed like the end of the Earth. But you could buy a plot of land for $100, find a job and raise a family. San Fernando Road was a main artery north to Bakersfield and travelers often stopped at a local diner before heading over the Grapevine to the Central Valley.

Joe joined the San Fernando Police Department, where he worked for 32 years, and the Barrioses raised their sons, Richard and Michael. Her husband died five years ago.

Around 1960, Thelma Barrios noticed a tiny ad in the community paper, the San Fernando Valley Sun, seeking “a man to do collections.”

When Barrios inquired, the owner said he didn’t mind if that man was a woman, “as long as the money comes in.”

Shortly after Barrios was hired, the paper was bought by New Yorker Robert K. Straus of the Macy’s family. Barrios was soon promoted to phone operator, then into classified advertising and finally into editorial, where she covered society news, which included the PTA, women’s clubs and weddings. She also filled the “Chit Chat” column with neighborhood tidbits.

“Thelma always made these people look important,” said Bob Pool, a Times reporter and one of a long string of writers who trained with Barrios before moving on to larger newspapers or other careers.

“She put a real human face on a part of the Valley that was pretty anonymous,” Pool added. “She’d make a modest wedding read like royalty. The people she wrote about felt special and significant. It was a gift.”

Tooling around town in a mint-condition ’57 beige Thunderbird, Barrios cut quite a figure, he recalled.

“It was the cutest car I ever owned,” Barrios agreed with a sigh.

For a small newspaper, the Sun was quite a trendsetter. Besides printing the paper’s name in eye-catching red ink on the front page, Straus brought one of the first offset presses to California. Offset printing boosted print quality, especially of photos, but the process was so new that Straus had to import a New Jersey crew to run the machines.

The Sun was eventually sold to the Hearst Corp. and Barrios retired--for about two weeks. In 1985, she and her family started the short-lived Mission Independent in San Fernando, but when Hearst put the Sun up for sale the same year, the Barrios family snapped it up, along with the Record-Ledger, which serves the foothills area, and the Valley View, which serves Granada Hills, Mission Hills and Northridge.

The paper became a family-run affair, with Thelma Barrios as editor and publisher, aided by son Rick and daughter-in-law Marianne. Joe Barrios, fondly nicknamed “The Enforcer,” did collections.

Four years ago, the family sold to the current owner, the Century Group, which owns seven community papers in Southern California.

Although Barrios, an English major in college, has no journalism training, she is proud of the first- and second-place national journalism awards won in contests sponsored by the University of Missouri, plus several honors from the Valley Press Club. And supporters suggest that a lack of journalism schooling may be more a help than a hindrance.

“She may lack the refinement of the schooling, but she also isn’t reined in by do’s and don’ts,” Katz explained. “Thelma does what she feels is right.”

The Sun “is a vital communication tool” and has “earned a reputation for honest, reliable, accurate journalism,” added Police Chief Rivetti, whose first watch commander was Joe Barrios. “But communication doesn’t happen on its own. It happens through solid leadership and hard work. The paper has also been very community-minded under Thelma’s leadership.”

Barrios “has been a rock for the community,” agreed former daughter-in-law, Marianne Barrios, now executive director of the Burbank Chamber of Commerce.

“People know that she will listen, that she is there for them. People would come in with stories that larger newspapers would push aside, but Thelma would sit them down, get the story, try to help. She has the biggest heart.”

Barrios was once offered a job as a publicist for the Screen Actors Guild, but turned it down. She was too firmly rooted in San Fernando, she said.

“I’ve never regretted it,” said Barrios, who now lives in Sylmar. “Once that ink gets into your blood, it’s hard to do anything else.”

Distributed free at local businesses, the Sun also boasts a subscription list of “several hundred,” including many who have left San Fernando but want to stay connected. A mix of reports on community meetings and neighborhood happenings, the paper puts a heavy emphasis on local names.

“A community newspaper should be full of social news,” Barrios said. Whether it’s a man celebrating his 100th birthday, a 10-year-old boy named to an all-star team or someone’s daughter joining the Navy, printing names--including the parents’--is her secret weapon to hook readers.

“The best way to get readers is to put their names in the paper,” Barrios confided. “Then they will pick it up.”

She finds it hard to watch newspapers struggle to survive with declining advertising revenues sparked by consolidations of banks, grocery chains and department stores. Even classifieds and legal notices--the bread-and-butter of the community paper--are way down.

But Barrios isn’t discouraged. “A community newspaper is still very important to the community,” she said. “It serves an important purpose. People look for it. They refer to the Sun as ‘their’ newspaper. It becomes a part of your life.”