30-Year School Principal Hears New Bell : Sister Dolores Aguilar: Health Clinic Administrator

This is a season of change for Sister Dolores Aguilar, who has given her life to education and community service.

After 30 years as a principal in three Catholic schools in inner city areas and years of community activism, she is trading in her school bell for new duties as an administrator at the Lestonac Clinic in Orange.

Aguilar, whose quick smile shows her deep dimples, said she needed a change after decades of school work. That and ill health have forced her to take a less stressful job.

While she will miss the atmosphere of school and of helping to organize communities to improve their neighborhoods, she said her new job at one of the county’s few free health clinics for the poor will be just as gratifying. This month, she begins handling all administrative duties at the clinic as its facilities operation director.

“After 30 years I said, ‘I think I need a break,’ ” she said recently. She said she told her superiors, ‘I’ll go where there’s a need.’ ”

The nonprofit clinic was begun in 1975 by Sister Marie Therese Solomon, a nun from Trinidad working to help the poor. Part of Aguilar’s job will be to help raise funds, and it will be a familiar challenge.

For the last 11 years she served as principal of St. Anne’s Catholic School in Santa Ana, which, like many small Catholic schools, was in a precarious financial situation.

“I thought the school would close down if we didn’t find a way to keep it open,” she said.

So she started a more aggressive fund-raising and savings program, and by the time she left the school was not only self-sufficient but was also supporting its parent church.

Before that, Aguilar was principal at a Catholic school in East Los Angeles, close to her childhood home. She was also principal of another Catholic school in Albuquerque.

“I have always chosen to work in the inner city,” she said. “Because I’m Hispanic, I feel I can give more to Hispanic people there. It’s close to my heart.

“In the higher-income areas, the schools and the parishes can afford to hire lay people. In the inner city, that is not true. Catholic education cannot be just for those who can pay for it.”

Her other love during her time at St. Anne’s was community involvement through the Orange County Congregation-Community Organization, a church-based grass-roots group. The non-denominational group, with chapters throughout the county, works to organize residents so they can improve their communities and rid their areas of gangs, drugs and other crime, or demand better services from elected officials.

Aguilar said the most valuable lesson she learned from the group was that “every member of the community can become a leader.”

“It’s a wonderful thing,” she said. “People learn that they . . . have a right to stand up and ask for things.”

The soft-spoken Aguilar said the group also helped her.

“The other sisters told me I became more assertive, stronger,” she said. “I changed in a positive way.”