Ofelia Valdez-Yeager, trailblazing Riverside leader and volunteer, dies at 76 – Press Enterprise

By David Downey | Contributing Writer

Ofelia Valdez-Yeager, the trailblazing activist, first Latina elected to Riverside’s school board and leader of efforts to create a Cesar Chavez memorial and museum showcasing Cheech Marin’s Chicano art collection, has died. She was 76.

Former Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge, for whom she worked as an assistant, said Valdez-Yeager “was without rival the No. 1 Hispanic leader over many decades in Riverside.”

Sen. Richard D. Roth, D-Riverside, called her “a true force of nature in our region.”

Loveridge said Valdez-Yeager was “always focused on change.”

“She brought commitment and purpose and unique skills to making life better and more inclusive for all of us in Riverside,” he said.

Those skills were constantly put to use.

Drew Oberjuerge, executive director of the Riverside Art Museum, said Valdez-Yeager led a campaign that raised $14 million in private and public dollars to provide a home for Marin’s collection. Named after one-half of the Cheech and Chong comedy duo, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum opened in June 2022 in a renovated building that once housed Riverside’s main library.

“It wouldn’t have happened without her,” former state Assemblymember Jose Medina, D-Riverside, said of the museum.

Marin, in an emailed statement, said he lost a “dear friend.”

“A much loved and highly respected community leader in the Inland Empire, Ofelia was instrumental in paving the way, raising the funds, making the friends, and opening the doors we needed to create The Cheech,” Marin said. “She did this all with pura pasión y amor.”

Art Alcaraz, a UC Riverside professor and past president of the Riverside Latino Network, said Valdez-Yeager also played a key role in a campaign that culminated with the June 2013 unveiling of the Cesar E. Chavez Memorial Monument in downtown Riverside.

Alcaraz called her “the heart and soul” of a committee that developed the idea, found a place for the statue on Riverside’s pedestrian mall and raised money to make the memorial a reality.

On April 5, Latino Network plans to celebrate the late farmworker advocate at its 25th annual Cesar Chavez breakfast.

“It’s going to be awkward because Ofelia’s been at every one of them,” Alcaraz said. “But she will be with us in spirit for sure.”

Valdez-Yeager was a founding member of the Latino Network, an advocacy group, in 1993, Alcaraz said.

Robert Nava, vice president of university advancement at Cal State San Bernardino, was another founding member. He was serving on the Riverside Unified School District board, after having become the first Latino to be elected as a Riverside trustee, when Valdez-Yeager won a seat in 1992.

Together, Nava said, they sought ways for parents of Spanish-speaking students who were learning English to get involved in their children’s education. The district soon hired a language translator.

“She was very much about empowering parents and students who didn’t always have a voice at the public policy level,” Nava said.

He cited Valdez-Yeager as a “driving force” behind naming a Riverside elementary school after Tomas Rivera, UC Riverside’s chancellor from 1979 until his death in 1984 — and the first Mexican American to hold such a post in the UC system.

Medina, the former lawmaker and a longtime high school teacher, recalled the way Valdez-Yeager interacted with people.

“The thing that I remember most about Ofelia was how much she cared individually for every person she came into contact with,” he said.

Numerous honors followed her.

Valdez-Yeager won the 2019 Frank Miller Civic Achievement Award, which recognizes civic leadership and service in the tradition of the Mission Inn’s founder. In 1993, she was honored with a Riverside YWCA Women of Achievement award. She was named one of the Riverside County Fair Housing Council’s Champions for Justice in 2014. In 2022, she won the Athena of Riverside Award from the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce.

After her historic 1992 election to the Riverside school board, she served four years before resigning to become executive assistant to the Riverside Unified School District superintendent. In 1999, she become the assistant to new Riverside County Superintendent David Long. She also was an administrative assistant to Loveridge.

The list of Valdez-Yeager’s community involvement is a long one.

She was a board member of the Mission Inn Foundation, Altura Credit Union, Riverside Community College Foundation, Greater Riverside Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Riverside YWCA, to name several. She was a longtime member and facilitator of the Riverside Latino Network. She also was active with the California School Boards Association, the Riverside Kiwanis Club and the Riverside International Relations Council.

Community service defined her life and, because of her example, the lives of her family members as well.

“We didn’t know any other way,” said Ley Yeager, her husband of 54 years who affectionately called her “Ofie.” “It was what gave us pleasure.”

Tessa Yeager, one of her four children, said it shaped weekends as much as weekdays.

Growing up, she said, “I didn’t know that people slept in on Saturday mornings. In our family, there were things to be done, whether it was attending community events, going to soccer games or walking to farmers markets.”

Marisa Yeager, the oldest of Valdez-Yeager’s children, said her mother encouraged them to be involved, saying, “you bring something to the table regardless of your background.”

And she didn’t avoid conflict.

“My mom taught us not to be quiet in moments of tension and strife,” Tessa Yeager said.

Tessa Yeager offered an example of speaking up instead of being quiet. In the 1990s, during an economic downturn, she said, her mom spoke out against a plan to have student athletes pay for bus transportation to games.

Ley Yeager said his wife advocated for closing a section of Seventh Street that ran through Riverside’s Longfellow Elementary School, separating classrooms from the playground. All of her children attended that school. The 215-foot section of street was closed in the mid-1990s, despite a lawsuit seeking to keep it open.

As for Ley Yeager and his bride, they married June 14, 1969, on the Saturday of finals week — “right after school was out” — at UC Riverside. On Sunday, they both graduated; she with a degree in Spanish and he with a degree in political science.

On Monday, they set off on a honeymoon. It would take them up the coast to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he started graduate school at Stanford University a week later to pursue a master’s in education.

Ley Yeager said they returned many times to one of their favorite places along the way: Morro Bay.

Valdez-Yeager returned to Riverside in 1970, family members said, and earned an elementary teaching credential from UCR in 1971. Valdez-Yeager started work as a teacher for the Cucamonga School District in a bilingual, bicultural program focused on kindergarten through third grade.

She was born in 1947 in Tayoltita in the Mexican state of Durango, where her father worked in a silver mine. She moved to Tijuana in 1948. Five years later, family members said, Valdez-Yeager moved to Montebello.