HUNTINGTON PARK : Marin Honored for Helping Disabled

When Ana Rosa and Ignacio Alcaraz discovered eight years ago they were going to have a child with a developmental disorder, they didn’t know where to turn for help.

“We didn’t accept our daughter, Gaby,” said Ana Rosa, 36, a key-shop owner in Huntington Park. “We felt embarrassed to take her out, so my mother would care for her.”

Then Rosario Marin, 37, changed their lives, the couple said. “Thanks to her we learned to accept [Gaby],” Ana Rosa said. “We’ve learned how to grow together.”

Marin, a city councilwoman, has helped hundreds of families like the Alcarazes through a volunteer-operated organization she founded shortly after her 10-year-old son, Eric, was born with Down’s syndrome.

Last week, in a ceremony at the United Nations in New York, the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation honored her with the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Award.

Marin is the first Latina to win the award from the 49-year-old nonprofit international foundation. The organization was founded by the late Rose Kennedy and her husband to improve the way society deals with the mentally disabled. Marin said the honor was especially meaningful because of Kennedy’s death in January at the age of 104.

At a ceremony Thursday at the Elks Lodge, Marin will donate the $5,000 award money she received to Families United in Response to Down’s Syndrome and Other Alterations, the agency she founded. The money will enable the group to move out of “the kitchens and garages of 10 people” and into permanent office space.

Marin is only the second recipient of the international award, which was presented to her by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, executive vice president of the foundation and founder of Special Olympics.

The award, last given in 1962, is intended to honor an outstanding woman for her leadership in public policy, support and awareness in the field of mental retardation.

Marin, who serves on the boards of 17 public and private organizations, earned the award based on 10 years of accomplishments in the field of mental retardation that began with the birth of her first son.

When Eric was born in 1985, Marin gave up a career in banking to take care of him. In looking for support groups for parents, Marin said she found few organizations that offered services to ethnic families in general and Latino families in particular.

Latinos “have unique needs because of our culture and because of language barriers,” said Marin, who has been called the “Latino voice within the disabled community and the disabled [person’s] voice within the Latino community” by her peers.

“She is very important because as a parent, families with disabled children can relate to her,” said Dennis Amundson, director of the state Department of Developmental Services. “She is a consummate advocate for people [who] can’t advocate for themselves.”

Three years ago, Gov. Pete Wilson appointed Marin as chief of legislative affairs, where she worked under Amundson.

There, working with a $1.3-billion budget, she oversaw the delivery system of services to the 130,000 individuals with developmental disabilities in the state. She also lobbied for legislation and recommended positions on proposed bills.

Currently, she is chairwoman of the governor-appointed State Council on Developmental Disabilities, a federally funded agency with a $6.3-million budget that is helping to develop and implement a statewide plan to serve people with developmental disabilities and their families.

A child with a developmental disability is a daily challenge, Marin said in a recent interview.

“My greatest fear is what will happen to Eric when I’m gone,” she said. “That is why I have worked so hard to leave this world a more willing place to take care of people like my son. It has to be systematic, a community, a statewide and a national commitment to provide the best we can.”