'We've got to work': Genie Zavaleta, advocate for migrant workers and DREAM Act, dies at 92

Genie Zavaleta wasn't finished. She had spent her life fighting for migrant workers and undocumented immigrants, and the work was nowhere near complete. Even old age and a hospital bed couldn't keep her down.

"When are these kids going to be able to relax?" she asked her husband, Hector, during a recent hospital stay. "We've got to work. We've got to do something."

"Dear, we've kind of come to the end of our rope," Hector kept telling her. Her health was failing. He reminded her of the generations of activists she'd influenced. "They're going to do it."

But Genie wanted to work.

"We've got to do it," she said.

Zavaleta had quietly became one of Arizona's most influential immigration activists. She pushed her local Democratic Party to elect pro-reform candidates. She built a working relationship with a sitting U.S. senator. And in her later years, she set her sights on passing the DREAM Act, a hotly debated proposal to allow young people brought into the country as children to stay.

"What we are trying to do now is called comprehensive immigration reform," she said in a 2010 interview published by Carla Arias, a student at Chandler-Gilbert Community College.

She never lived to see it. Zavaleta died late Saturday night in Tempe, a few hours after she left the hospital and checked into a rehab facility near her home. She was 92 years old. 

"She was just very, very tired. She had so many projects she was working on," said Tempe Vice Mayor Lauren Kuby, a friend of Zavaleta's. "She fought so hard for the DREAM Act. I think she wanted so badly to be alive to see it passed."

Getting her start in advocacy

Zavaleta's death came without the usual fanfare that follows legendary community activists. Other than the phone calls and emails that have flooded the family, there has been no public outpouring of support, no order from the governor to fly the flags at half-mast. A Twitter search for her name brings up nothing recent. It's as if she just faded into memory. 

That's just how she would've wanted it. 

"She was very humble," Hector said. "She was a very caring person. And she never thought that would be for her." 

She was born Eugenia Hopper, a child of The Depression in West Texas. "It was a difficult time for everyone," she wrote in a life history she compiled before her death. 

In that history, under "Life concerns," she wrote: Her family, education, health care, family planning, the environment, poverty and injustice, the Presbyterian Church and the Democratic Party.

By high school, everybody called her Genie. She studied hard and became a fixture at her Presbyterian church, building a faith that would guide her entire life.

She earned a degree from Texas Tech and moved on to seminary school in Austin, where she reconnected with an old friend from Oklahoma — a tall man from Mexico City named Hector Zavaleta. They married in May 1958 and immediately left for an assignment with Migrant Ministry, traveling the country to support migrant farm workers, including Mexican laborers known as braceros. It was supposed to be a one-year stint.

"One year turned into 10," Hector said. 

They had two sons, Dan and David. They moved to Arizona in 1965 — first Phoenix, then the house in Tempe — because the state's workforce was rapidly changing. Migrant workers, once the source of cheap farm labor, were forced to adjust to machines and industrialization. "It was very important to help the migrants change and adjust to a new way of life," she wrote. 

At the same time, she became the first director of education at Planned Parenthood of Phoenix and started teaching classes on poverty across the county. Then she took a job with the Maricopa County Health Department, where she worked until her retirement 1989.

Full-time advocate

It was in retirement that Zavaleta's advocacy became a full-time occupation. 

Around election season, she volunteered to knock on entire blocks of doors, trying to get out the Democratic vote. Her efforts helped turn Tempe into a blue stronghold.

When a group of undocumented Arizona students known as the Wilson Four were detained by an immigration official, Zavaleta jumped to their defense, working with a group of lawyers to help them avoid deportation. Then, sometime in the last decade, she aimed for more lasting change. 

"The DREAM Act wouldn't have even been written if not for Genie," said Genevieve Vega, a friend and ally in Tempe politics. "That was the cause of her life." 

She was a nocturnal worker, almost fanatic in her dedication to stay up until midnight, every night. She'd spend hours on the phone to help a single student, then shrug when somebody tried to give her credit. 

But awards and plaques still covered one wall of the Zavaletas' home. 

On Tuesday afternoon, three days after she died, Hector sat in a cloth-covered recliner in the living room. The plaques hung behind his head. Dan sat on the edge of the sofa. David crossed his legs and sunk into another recliner. 

The house feels empty now, Hector said. It's too big for him. Too much room for his mind to wander and play tricks on him. Sometimes, when he isn't paying attention, he swears he hears Genie's voice calling him from the bedroom. 

"I think I'm just used to it," he said. 

A few minutes later, he looked out the living room's wide picture window, over the yard he thought needed a touch-up. During election season, the Zavaletas' lawn was covered in election signs. People used to drive by and scan the signs, relying on Hector and Genie to recommend the right candidates. They were trusted. 

But the time for work had passed. Now the lawn was empty, except for one sign, a stars-and-stripes jumble of words and slogans. 

In our America, it said at the top, all people are equal. 

Reach reporter Alden Woods at awoods@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8829. Follow him on Twitter @ac_woods. 

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