Ofelia Valdez-Yeager, the fierce Latino arts fundraiser and “connector of people” who helped establish the Riverside Art Museum’s Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture, and who made history by becoming the first Latina to serve on the local school board, died Sunday in the presence of her husband and their four children. She was 76.
Valdez-Yeager had been battling a rare form of anemia that did not respond to various interventions, her family said in a statement. She had been hospitalized since Christmas Day and experienced complications.
“This is a great loss to all of us. It was not expected to happen like this because she’s been a fighter and a warrior, and I don’t know her to ever be sick in her life,” said her husband, Ley Yeager.
Valdez-Yeager — who was born in Tayoltita in the Mexican state of Durango — is remembered as a civic-minded trailblazer who filled leadership roles in a variety of spaces, from arts and culture institutions to the school board and city administration.
The first in her family to earn a college degree, she started at UC Riverside in 1965 with the first group of Equal Opportunity Program (EOP) students. She was one of five in the program. Valdez-Yeager received her bachelor’s degree in Spanish in 1969 and two years later earned her elementary teaching credential.
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Yeager said they met at UC Riverside, while they worked as Upward Bound tutor counselors. Their first date? A “Little Willie G and Thee Midniters” show at what was formerly known as the Kaiser Dome Orange Show Fairgrounds in San Bernardino.
“We knew right away after we met that we were going to get married,” Yeager said, but they waited until graduation because Valdez-Yeager, whose parents had a third- and sixth-grade education, “wanted to make sure she would get to finish college.”
As Yeager recalls it, they married on a Saturday at the San Gabriel Mission, graduated on Sunday from UC Riverside, and took off on a honeymoon drive on Monday to Stanford University, where Yeager went for graduate school.
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By 1972, they bought a Mission Revival style home, where the couple raised their family, and which Yeager continues to call home. “I’m surrounded by loving children, two of whom live on the same street,” he said.
Early in her career, Valdez-Yeager worked as a high school counseling assistant and an elementary school teacher. She served in volunteer leadership positions in Little League and the PTA.
Valdez-Yeager was elected to the Riverside Unified School District Board of Trustees in 1992. She worked as an administrative assistant to former Riverside Mayor Ronald Loveridge and held the role of chief administrative liaison to Riverside County Superintendent of Schools Dave Long.
A founder of the Riverside Latino Network, she spearheaded efforts to install the Cesar E. Chavez Memorial in the downtown pedestrian mall.
She went on to run the initial capital campaign for The Cheech, as the Riverside facility has been nicknamed, leading to a $90,000 pledge announced in 2017 from the Riverside Latino Network, the Greater Riverside Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the Spanish Town Heritage Foundation. Each organization pledged $30,000 over three years. The collective, known as Unidos, raised more than $250,000 over that period.
Bank of America, Altura Credit Union and other companies followed with financial contributions.
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In all, more than $14 million was raised through corporate and private gifts to help renovate the 61,000-square-foot former library building in downtown where the museum is housed, said Drew Oberjuerge, Riverside Art Museum’s executive director.
It’s now a permanent home to Marin’s more than 700 works from his collection, which includes paintings, sculpture and photography by Chicano artists from throughout the U.S.
Her legacy, Yeager said, “is that whatever she did, she did it all the way.”
To actor and comedian Cheech Marin, Valdez-Yeager “became my protector.”
When Marin teamed up with the city of Riverside and the Riverside Art Museum to create the Chicano art center, he found himself “being pulled in a lot of directions” at a time when he didn’t have many contacts in the region.
Valdez-Yeager introduced him to people and organizations, not just in Riverside but the entirety of the Inland Empire, Marin said, making sure “I was headed in the right direction.”
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Marin said they connected with a range of stakeholders because, at the beginning, it was a question of “getting the community to believe that this museum was possible, and that would be a big thing because it was going to cost money.”
“She was a leading money raiser for us,” Marin said.
“Besides all that, personally, she would take me to her house and feed me,” Marin said. “She reminded me of a member of my family.”
Her legacy, Marin said, “is one of respect and purpose.”
Oberjuerge recalls working with Valdez-Yeager to raise funds and awareness for The Cheech as “an incredible time of valued work ethic.”
“She just had such high standards,” said Oberjuerge, who called Valdez-Yeager her mentor.
“She asked you to coffee [and] you left with a commitment to The Cheech,” she said. “One of the really special things about Ofelia is she always centered the community, the Latino community, in the fundraising effort.”
“She always said it’s about relationships, and about maintaining really strong relationships with everyone,” Oberjuerge said.
Remembrances have been flowing in honor of Valdez-Yeager.
Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside) called her a “trailblazer for the Latino community in the Inland Empire” and a “champion for all students.”
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UC Riverside professor Jennifer Najera remembered Valdez-Yeager as someone who ensured “that Mexican Americans here would be visible and fully part of the community.”
“She was a political and civic trailblazer, and I always thought of her as a Chicana role model, really striking a balance between her work and family,” Najera said.
Riverside school board President Dale Kinnear, in a statement, praised Valdez-Yeager’s “tireless dedication to education and community service.”
“She leaves behind a profound impact that resonates through our schools and the hearts of those she touched,” he said.
Retired state legislator Jose Medina, a former teacher, was one of those whom she inspired.
“[She] created opportunity for others that came after her,” said Medina, 70, who graduated from UC Riverside a few years after Valdez-Yeager.
Medina, who was a MEChA advisor, bonded with Valdez-Yeager over their concern for the Latino community — especially during the time of Proposition 187, a ballot initiative approved by California voters that, if not stayed by federal courts, would have denied state services to undocumented immigrants.
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Valdez-Yeager “was always kind of there.” He recalled her supporting his election campaigns, sitting at his kitchen table “putting labels on mail to voters.” While in the Legislature, Medina helped secure $9.7 million for The Cheech from the state budget.
“What I think I would say most about Ofelia is that she took a personal interest in people,” he said.
Valdez-Yeager is survived by her husband, Ley; daughters, Marisa, Ana and Tessa; son, Luis; and seven grandchildren.
Services in honor of Valdez-Yeager will be Friday, Jan. 26, and will include a 10 a.m. Mass at St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church in Riverside and a 12 p.m. gathering at the UCR Student Recreation Center.
