The accolades roll in for trailblazing Chicana politician Gloria Molina, who passed away

last Sunday

night Mother’s Day after a three-year battle with cancer. she was 74

The longtime LA County supervisor is rightly remembered many times over as a trailblazer: for women, for Latinos, for the Eastside. There will be more tributes to come in the coming weeks and months, I’m sure.

However, if we put her in the pantheon of LA political legends, I think she would be the first person to quote Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement:

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Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be fired so easily.

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Those who knew Molina best told me of her many political accomplishments. But they also shared anecdote after anecdote about the Gloria they loved: someone as sharp-tongued as she was magnanimous. A selfless taskmaster. A mother hen who pecked when necessary but more often took everyone under her wing.

That flesh-and-blood Gloria, they claimed, should be remembered as well as the political Gloria. That way, the public would forever know she was one of them.

Antonia Hernandez, an icon in her own right because of the 1989 voting rights lawsuit she filed as lead attorney for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund that helped Molina become a council member and supervisor, told me about the vacations they took together with old friends. Among them were circle lawyers, US ambassadors, businesswomen and other fellow powerhouses.

But one day we’re all going to Baja, Hernandez said. She got her quilting friends, they brought their sewing machines and quilted for three or four days. No pretense at all. You think of Gloria as this professional leader, but there’s a side of her that’s traditional and domestic that has completely informed her politically.

Another time, the two were at a market in Oaxaca

Mexico,

when Molina saw a woman sewing patterns onto a dress. She looked at me and said, This is fascinating, Hernandez said. Then she went to the

mother

and said, If I pay you, can I sit here and watch you so I can do it? We told her, Gloria, we have to go. But she wouldn’t leave. She was determined and she learned the pattern.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger knew Molina for nearly 30 years, going back to when she was chief of staff for former

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supervisor and frequent Molina opponent Mike Antonovich. We were always jealous of her team, Barger said. When we did Christmas lunches for our staff, we made reservations. When she did, she opened her home for days. Our team would tell me, why do we go to a Chinese restaurant when her staff go to her house for great food?

The tamales stuck with her because Barger casually mentioned it to Molina a year when she was still a supervisor. Suddenly she said: Come to my office. She made the stuffing from scratch, had the corn husks. And we start doing tamales on the spot.

Former LA councilman Joy Picus was a key early supporter of Molina’s first campaign in 1982, for an Eastside Assembly seat. When Molina announced in 1987 that she would run for city council, Picus immediately supported her and offered to call and knock in Boyle Heights.

Well, when I did, I realized that most of the people I had to talk to only spoke Spanish, Picus said. So I was not helpful at all.

Until she was.

One morning before a meeting, Gloria spoke to a journalist and asked me: Joy, what is the Spanish word for bridge? Picus said. And I thought, are you asking me? I closed my eyes and said

point

? And we both laughed out loud!

Few took more of Molina’s barbs than former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was best man at her wedding and described himself as Gloria’s little brother.

Once I became a speaker and once I became mayor, I almost became the big brother, Villaraigosa said. But I was still not the big brother. Instead of trying to talk to me about it [things], she raised her voice and talked condescendingly to me. Then I would call Alma [Martinez, Molinas longtime chief of staff] and say, man, she’s a piece of work. I want to help her. I’m going to help her. But she won’t let me talk.

Six months before he left office, Molina told Villaraigosa she wanted to honor him at LA Plaza de Cultura y Arte

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first gala It seemed so incongruous after the way she always treated me, he said. But when he showed up, every table had a booklet about his life and a mini shoebox to commemorate one of his first jobs.

It was very emotional, it was a big surprise. It was typical Gloria.

Martinez’s Molina memory dates back to 1976, when she and some of her classmates at Sacred Heart of Mary High School in Montebello volunteered for Jimmy Carter’s presidential run, for which Molina led the Latino outreach. At an event in Hollywood, she commissioned Henry Lozano, a legendary Eastside consigliere of politicians, to arrange a dinner for Martinez and other volunteers.

He should have brought good food, but he brought something ridiculous, Martinez said. Gloria was like, what, didn’t you bring anything warm and nice? Go get something better for these girls. She wouldn’t accept that there wouldn’t be well-fed volunteers.”

Molina wasn’t that picky about her own life. In 2009 Molina

she

and about a dozen of her relatives traveled to Washington, DC

,

for the inauguration of Barack Obama. We have one of those big passenger vans from Rent-a-Wreck, and the windows were taped over with duct tape, said Bertha Molina Mejia, Gloria’s sister. She drove when you’re in the car with her, she’s always the driver.

They went to one of the presidential balls and Molina’s family begged her not to park their van with the valet. Ignoring their pleas, she stopped by the servant just in time for the window to fall out.

We tell her, Gloria, this is embarrassing, Bertha continued. We all jump out of the van, right in front of all those people in line, beautifully dressed. Gloria walks out with her head held high and says, “Let’s get in line.” I pretended we belonged. She never acted.

One of Molina’s greatest political allies and rivals was Zev Yaroslavsky, who was on the run with her

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City

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Board and Supervisory Board for 24 years. Although both Democrats, their clashes generated great political theater. It was like a brother and sister relationship, he said. If she trusted your competence and your word was right, you had a good relationship with her. If you crossed her once, they were curtains.

When the two were fired in 2014, they exchanged gifts at their last supervisor meeting. He gave Molina a painting of her; she gifted him a quilt in the shape of a crossword puzzle, complete with clues about his career. Yaroslavsky and his family use it to this day.

When I saw her for the last time he joked, I said to Gloria, even though I try to get you out of my mind, I sleep with you every day. There’s a reason we were all talking about her. It’s not just because she was the first Latina. It’s because she was Gloria Molina.