Maria Gomez, two decades ago, watched scores of refugees pour into the District, fleeing a bloody civil war in El Salvador. A nurse with the city’s Department of Health, Gomez knew D.C. wasn’t equipped to handle the influx, many of whom were women seeking to earn money to send to their families back home.
“Around that time, the city was suffering from a very severe infant mortality rate,” she said. “There also was a very high rate of teen pregnancy. And it was the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. You took the three major public health problems, and you added immigrant women without health insurance, without being able to communicate, and with very, very severe post-traumatic stress — that was just a lot for the city to take on.”
It was a tipping point for Gomez, who in 1988 founded Mary’s Center — then just a temporary measure — to meet the emerging need for services, especially prenatal care. Gomez herself emigrated from Colombia at age 13 with her mother.
Gomez, 51, is the winner of The Examiner’s Amazing Change contest for her work at Mary’s Center. As part of the contest, The Examiner invited readers to nominate individuals who had made an “amazing change” in their community.
Gomez said the center on Ontario Road has since expanded to serve some 10,000 clients and offers family health, social services, adult literacy and other advocacy programs. They maintain a staff of about 150, almost all of them paid, with about 10 physicians and nurses.
Their client base has grown to include immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.
“We’re seeing people from all over the world,” she said. “Where there is an unstable country in the world, we have people coming to our center.”
