Latino Jedi Works Quietly, Like ‘the Force’

Irvine attorney Ruben Smith is behind the wheel of his Ford Explorer, on his way to Los Angeles in rush-hour traffic. On this night, he’s being honored for promoting education in the Latino community. But most people have never heard of him.

Smith is one of the most influential Latino leaders in Orange County, but you wouldn’t know it by his guy-next-door demeanor. He’s not big on publicity because, he says, he gets more done behind the scenes. Besides, business clients don’t want their lawyers making a lot of noise in the news.

In the past decade, Smith has focused his energies on nuts-and-bolts strategies that have helped build Latino political muscle--drawing new minority voting districts, registering more voters and nurturing political connections.

This year, as legal counsel to the Santa Ana Unified School District, he’s been spearheading the fight for land to build desperately needed new schools, including a contentious drive for a piece of the old Tustin Marine base. In April, he also became president of the Orange County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

But his big success has been as co-founder of HEEF, the Hispanic Education Endowment Fund, which has raised more than $1.5 million for Latino students. Friends call him Jedi, a Star Wars nickname earned for his role as “the silent force behind the organization.” The chamber even gave him a Jedi sword at this year’s installation banquet.

Now, for his efforts with HEEF, Ruben has been chosen as one of five Southern California leaders profiled in 30-second spots to run during Hispanic Heritage Month on KCET, Los Angeles’ public television station. He is the only Orange County resident selected for this year’s Local Hero of the Year campaign, funded by Union Bank of California, which kicks off today, Mexican Independence Day.

On the road to KCET studios in Hollywood, Ruben’s driving reflects his character--pleasant and unflappable even when the going gets rough. His CD case reveals his laid-back musical tastes--Celine Dion, James Taylor, the Bee Gees and a Latino novelty number, “Nonstop Macarena.”

But his favorite tune--”Shame on You” by Indigo Girls, the folk-rock duet--has an edge to it. “There are some great lines in here,” says Ruben, inserting the disc.

My friends they wash the windows and they shine in the sun/They tell me wake up early in the morning sometime/ See what a beautiful job we done.

From the back seat, I can see that trademark Smith smile, beaming and boyish, in the rearview mirror. But his passenger riding shotgun, Santa Ana school board President John Palacio, isn’t impressed by the song.

“Oh, come on! You like that, man?” asks John, a longtime friend, political ally and now client. “What is this? Cowboy music?”

The ribbing gets no rise from Ruben, who spent his early childhood in Texas before his father brought the family west, bouncing from job to job and town to town until they settled in Huntington Beach. There’s something in his poor, rambling roots that resonates with these lyrics.

I said come on down to Chicano city park/Wash your blues away/ . . . The white folks like to pretend it’s not, but their music’s in the air.

Laughing About Roots

John still acts like he doesn’t dig it. He and Ruben go way back, to 1991 when he was running a leadership program for mid-career professionals and Smith was a participant. Now they’re leading the county’s largest and most crowded school system together, and bantering like battlefield buddies.

John does all the kidding. In a parody of complaints about special privileges for minorities, he jokes about his friend’s Anglo surname.

“Do you think the Smith name got you into law school at the expense of real Latinos?” he says, poking fun at the Yale graduate. “Yes or no.”

Ruben just smiles. He turns down the music and proceeds to speak proudly of his stepfather, Douglas Wayne Smith, the man who taught him what it took to stick up for the underdog.

Ruben Antonio was born in Guadalajara on Aug. 29, 1957. As a child, he didn’t know his biological father, whose surname is Salcedo de Leon. When he was 3, his mother, Consuelo Ramos, met and married Smith, an El Paso cop who knew her family. Officer Smith had gone to Mexico to see what that country was like; he returned to Texas with a new wife and son.

Ruben was raised to think Smith was his biological father. In those days, however, inter-ethnic marriages were controversial. Smith would get into barroom brawls defending Mexicans, and his own relatives disowned him.

“It was very tough,” Ruben’s mother would tell me later. “That’s why we moved to California. Everybody hated you and my husband would get in trouble because he was very protective. We didn’t want Ruben growing up in that environment.”

The family moved four times during Ruben’s first five years of grade school. His stepfather picked olives in Porterville, mined for talc in Death Valley, got fired for trying to organize a union, then wound up working at the Mercury nuclear test site in Nevada.

That job didn’t last long but set a deadly clock ticking. Smith and his brother and cousins, who also worked at the contaminated test site, all contracted cancer, according to Ruben’s mother. In the summer of 1984, a month after Ruben graduated from Yale Law School, his stepfather passed away at 49. His uncle died at the same age.

Ruben says his father drilled him in the importance of getting an education. As an Orange County teenager, Ruben worked in local oil fields where his father was a so-called roughneck, doing dirty jobs like chopping weeds and fixing pipes.

“You can do this all your life like me, or you can go to school,” his stepfather warned.

A Short Hoops Player

Ruben graduated in the top of his class from Huntington Beach High School, where he played football and basketball despite his short stature and small frame. Even his mother thought he looked funny in the team photos, dwarfed by other players taller than 6 feet, like his stepfather. Ruben says he now stands 5 feet 7.

“Ruben, you’re not 5-7,” John interjects, ever the kidder. “I’m 5-7 and I’m way taller than you.”

Ruben, who just turned 43 and still likes to play basketball, defends himself with a smile: “I’m 5-7, but I play like 6-4.”

As a kid, Ruben first wanted to be a policeman, then a cowboy, a dentist and a pharmacist, his mother recalls. He started in pre-med at the University of Southern California but got the bug for public service while doing neighborhood surveys as a part-time job in East Los Angeles.

“It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life, to hear people talk about their aspirations for their kids and for their families, and what we need to do as a society to help them,” says Ruben, the father of two girls, 11 and 13.

Ruben switched majors, earning a bachelor’s in public affairs from USC in 1979, and was named most outstanding graduating senior. He went on to get his master’s in intergovernmental management. After working as an intern in the White House Office for Hispanic Affairs under President Carter, he realized that lawyers pull all the strings in shaping public policy. He’s now a partner in Alvarado, Smith and Sanchez, one of the few Latino firms specializing in real estate and other business law.

After arriving at the Hollywood reception, Ruben is joined by his mother, an aunt, a cousin and a great-uncle wearing a guayabera. Nativo Lopez, another school board member and community activist, also joins the party, along with his wife.

The lights dim, the video rolls, and Ruben is heard on the KCET promotional spots echoing his stepfather’s advice: “If more kids are educated, then this county and this culture will be much better off.”

His mother, who looks so young at 61 that she’s often mistaken for his wife, cups her hand lovingly behind her son’s neck and gives him a look full of pride and affection. He was always a good and obedient boy, Consuelo tells me. She got only one complaint while he was growing up. A neighbor kid, obviously jealous of her son’s popularity in junior high, came to her door one day and pleaded: “Mrs. Smith, can you tell Ruben to quit smiling?”

On the ride home, Ruben reflects on his work.

“Bringing people together on a common project, people from different points of view, that’s what I enjoy,” he says. “I think the real challenge for the Latino community in this county is to go beyond working just among ourselves on issues of our own. There can be a powerful coalition by bringing Latinos and non-Latinos together to fight for common issues.”

You can find the same message in the final verse of his favorite song.

There’ll be blue lights flashing down the long dirt road when they ask me to step out/ They say, “We be looking for illegal immigrants. Can we check your car?”/ I say, “You know, it’s funny. I think we were on the same boat back in 1694.”

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.