Linda Garcia

College Friend

“The foundation I got at SMC was my ‘eye-opener.’ It gave me direction, and the instructors really inspired me.”

“Gee whiz. When was it I went to SMC?” muses Linda Garcia. “Wait a minute!” And after browsing through the files she comes back. “Gosh. It was June of 1975 that I got my AA in child development. I guess I go way back there,” she says with a laugh.

But if time has passed, it hasn’t dimmed the youthful enthusiasm that Linda brings to her work with children who are ill. For her, children are a precious resource. “I always knew that child development was a career where I could make a difference for children,” she says of her studies at SMC. “The program was very challenging, but also done in a way that never felt threatening. And after that, I just went into child care 100 percent!”

Linda will soon finish work on her master’s degree while continuing to work in UCLA’s vast medical center, a place she has helped to make more “user-friendly” in her years on the job. “Over time, I began to see the need that the Center had for someone bilingual to work directly with children,” she says. “The percentage of Spanish-speaking patients is fairly high.” So while she developed her therapeutic play programs for chronically ill children, she also focused on the unique needs of the many Latinos that enter the hospital. “I recently started a support group for Latino parents,” she says, “because they really need a place to get emotional support. And sometimes, in a big hospital, they can get lost in the system.”

Linda feels that her bilingual programs have begun to make a difference in the approach the medical staff takes towards the needs and cultural differences of Latino families. “It’s raised a lot of consciousness,” she says. And in May, Linda will be raising consciousness nationally when she presents her program to a major children’s health conference in Minneapolis.

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