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| Sarah Gomez Erlach |
 Sarah
Gomez Erlach has had a distinguished career in nursing and public health,
especially in developing and implementing public health services for migrant
farm workers in California. She was born and raised in San Bernardino, the
fourth child in a Mexican- American family of nine children. Sarah Gomez
graduated from San Bernardino High School and earned her R.N. and Associates
at Valley College (1945). She joined the Army in 1945 and served in military
nursing in the regular army or army reserves for 34 years in one or another
capacities ranging from "cadet nurse" to chief nurse and from private to
colonel until retiring from the California Army Reserves in 1982. After
her initial tour of duty, she was accepted into UC Berkeley's School of
Nursing with a double major in education and public health. She was the
School of Nursing's first hispanic student. She received her bachelors of
science at UCB in 1949 and went to work at the Alameda County Health Department.
After her husband, Gregory Erlach, was killed in the Korean War, she eventually
returned to the Alameda County Health Department and threw herself into
the defining aspect of her public career, improving health care delivery
to the rural poor. Erlach drafted the proposal that helped set up 75 federal
rural health clinics and which led to the creation of additional state clinics.
Along the way, she graduated with a Masters of Public Health at the University
of Minnesota (1962). Sarah Gomez Erlach retired from the California Department
of Health Services in 1988, as chief of the Department's Primary Health
Services Unit. She has received many honors including UC San Francisco's
highest honor, the UCSF Medal, the School of Nursing's equivalence to an
honorary doctorate, on April 20, 1995. Erlach was inducted into the Valley
College Hall of Fame in the 1995 fall semester. |
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