Q&A: Retiring St. Margaret’s Center director on her 40-year run
Sept. 30 will mark 40 years since Mary Agnes Erlandson walked in the door of a Catholic Charities office in Culver City for her first day of work as a bilingual secretary.
The year was 1985, and she was fresh off an extended trip to Mexico and Ecuador, where she’d touched the reality of Third-World poverty, and saw the humble faith that welcomed St. Pope John Paul II on his 1985 visit to Ecuador.
That job didn’t last long. Less than two years later, Erlandson was asked to open and lead a new Catholic Charities location in Lennox, an unincorporated corner of Los Angeles just east of LAX Airport. Under her leadership, the St. Margaret’s Center has grown into a hub for the area’s neediest residents, offering a long list of services for everyone from expectant mothers to lonely seniors to frightened immigrants.