Capitola Soroptimists Honor Three Local Women

The Capitola Soroptimists will honor three local women for their altruistic work in 2012 at an annual awards dinner on Tuesday, March 13 held at Seascape Resort. 

Soroptimist, a Latin word meaning "best for women," is a worldwide service organization for women who work to improve the lives of women and girls in local communities and throughout the world. 

See this year's recipients below:

Yuliana Vasquez, a UC Santa Cruz student will receive the Women’s Opportunity Award. Vasquez is a single mother and head of her household who is also working towards a master’s degree in social work and plans to help at-risk youth and others. 

Vasquez, who will put the $2,000 prize towards helping with child care and schooling expenses, grew up as a daughter of immigrant field workers in Monterey. She always had a difficult time in elementary school, and it wasn't until she was in community college at Cabrillo, that she realized she had an auditory processing learning disorder.  

“I had a really hard time with education. My brothers and sisters were A students. My family just never understood what was wrong with me. I kept thinking the whole time that I wasn’t smart. I had really negative teachers. I gave up and I didn’t finish high school," said Vasquez, who now gets As and Bs at the university, and wants to be an educational councelor like the one who helped her. 

"For me it's a motivation," she said. "I'm the first person in my family to be able to go to a community college, and then to go to the university. I never thought that I would be able to be an honors student in college. [Finding out I] have a learning disabiltiy it made my life so much easier. That’s why it's really important to keep track of your kids' learning."

Vasquez was touched to be selected for the Women's Opportunity Award.

“I don’t give myself credit for everything I do," she said. "I have really high expectations. And sometimes seeing the work that I’m doing is appreciated by someone and someone wanting to sponsor my education, that means a lot. It just gives me the motivation to continue."

Rose Leopold, a senior at Pacific Collegiate School, will receive the Violet Richardson Award for her community service work teaching nutrition classes to women and children in a small community in Oaxaca, Mexico last summer.

“It is such an incredible honor to be given the Soroptimists award. I feel it really validates the work I did down in Mexico, and it proves to me that it wasn’t just great and important work to me, but that somebody else has the same values that I do," said Leopold, who worked with kids in preschool and kindergarten as well as kids in first through sixth grades.

Part of Leopold's work included reintroducing Amaranth grain—a native and highly nutritious grain that was virtually wiped out because it was forbidden by the Spaniards. The grain, high in folic acid will hopefully help stave off the high rate of birth defects in the region.

"I couldn’t say thank you enough," said Leopold. “I love the work that I did, and I hope that I’m able to continue it in the future, and the fact that other people think that the work that I did is important really means a lot to me.” 

Leopold also helped set up 110 trash cans in the streets to work on making the environment cleaner.

The third and final winner is Jondi Gumz, a Santa Cruz Sentinel reporter who will receive the Ruby Award for helping women for her work on a variety of topics affecting women and the community at large. 

Gumz has covered business, housing and healthcare since 1992, and she's written award-winning articles, including an article about the impact of a voter initiative to change the way immigrant children are taught English, a three-part series on a gasoline additive contaminating local drinking water, and a series explaining why children struggle with writing.

What do you think of the winners and their contributions to our community? Who would you give awards to? Tell us in the comments!