Richard Amador, founded CHARO nonprofit

LOS ANGELES -- Richard S. Amador Sr., a California-born son of migrant farmworkers who became a nationally recognized expert in community economic development and helped create thousands of jobs for East Los Angeles residents, has died. He was 75.

Amador died of esophageal cancer Sept. 19 at his home in the Monterey Park neighborhood of L.A., said his daughter, Cynthia Amador-Diaz.

In 1967, Amador founded what became known as CHARO Community Development Corp., a nonprofit community and economic development organization that was headquartered in East L.A. for more than four decades.

By the time he retired as president and chief executive in early 2003, CHARO had been listed by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of the top 12 Latino nonprofits in the United States and reportedly was the leading job-placement agency in Los Angeles.

At the time, CHARO had facilitated the funding of more than $26 million in small business and commercial loans to hundreds of small businesses, and its career center had placed more than 16,000 primarily East L.A. residents in jobs.

"Richard Amador Sr. was a wonderful pioneer and mentor for many leaders in Los Angeles and throughout the region," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the Los Angeles Times.

Describing Amador as "a wonderful friend and guiding figure" who led by example, Villaraigosa said: "Los Angeles was so fortunate to have a leader like Richard." CHARO also offered affordable housing and in the 1990s operated two 24-unit apartment complexes in East L.A. Other services over the years included a sheltered workshop for developmentally disabled adults and a child-care center that served 180 children.

"This is what I was supposed to do," Amador said of his work in a 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Wave.

He was a member of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Office of Economic Opportunity when he arrived in L.A. in the mid-60s after being assigned to the president's Commission on Manpower.

"I learned that only 9 cents of every dollar of the War on Poverty was going to Latino organizations and all the rest were going to other minority organizations," he said in the 2002 interview.

"I kept raising the issue, and I was told that Mexican Americans -- we weren't (grouped as) Latinos at the time -- were a regional issue." He took a six-month leave of absence to establish an economic development organization in L.A.

"At the end of six months, we weren't finished so I asked for another six-month leave," he recalled. "At the end of that six months, we were far from finished, so I resigned." That, he said, caused a lot of his friends in the administration to wonder what he was doing.

"They said, 'We got you a civil service appointment. Your job in the government is secure. You have security.' But it was nothing I hungered for, so I resigned and took a dive, and that was how we started CHARO." The organization, which operated mostly on publicly funded state and federal contracts, closed in March, a victim of the recession.

"When all that money dried up, it couldn't sustain itself," said Amador-Diaz. She had taken over as president and chief executive of CHARO when her father retired.

Born Dec. 21, 1935, in Stockton, Amador was the youngest of eight children. He joined his parents and siblings in the fields when he was 5 and attended 15 schools as his family picked crops throughout the San Joaquin Valley before buying a house in Stockton.