Advisory Board

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Judy Fisk Lucas’s parents were missionaries in Hawaii and they raised her and her two sisters there. Judy recalls being surrounded by sugar cane and coffee farmers, many of whom were immigrants from Japan, the Philippines, China and elsewhere. Judy watched them toil in the red dirt in Kauai and in the black lava of Kona. Judy tried picking coffee beans and realized how back-breaking it was. 

Teaching migrant children in Chualar, California, was Judy’s first job and she fell in love with the farm-working families, children and culture. She saw how hard the parents worked just to survive, moving with the crops and seeing their children try to cope with different schools, year in and year out. 

In 2013, there was a devastating fire in Oxnard, leaving 27 farm-working families without a home. Judy and her husband Ted mobilized to provide food, water, clothes, shoes, furniture, toys, books, school supplies and, mostly, their love. In 2015, Judy and her husband led the efforts to incorporate Friends of Fieldworkers as a nonprofit organization. 

Dr. Ted Lucas was born in San Diego and grew up in El Cajon and Chula Vista, where almost all his school friends were children of immigrant parents or grandparents. During the summers, Ted lived with his grandparents at their farm in Lakeside, where he helped to harvest the crops they grew and gathered chicken eggs in the mornings. 

They had been itinerant pickers in the 1920s, and moved up and down the West Coast to find work, most often in Oregon, where they picked hops in the late summer with their children, including Ted’s mother. 

Ted joined his wife in the efforts to help farm workers who had lost their home at the 2013 Oxnard fire. Co-founding Friends of Fieldworkers with his wife and helping the farm-working families of Ventura County has been the most rewarding work of his career. 

Dr. Natalie Cherot descended from Okinawan farmworkers who migrated to Hawaii. Her father’s people were enslaved West Africans who successfully fought their masters and established the Free City of New Bern, North Carolina years before the Emancipation Proclamation. Serving the farmworker community honors her ancestors and the freedoms they gave her. She has worked as a university professor, investigative journalist, and made history in Ventura County as she helped to overturn a wrongful conviction. 

Connie Ochoa-Torres was born in Oxnard and raised in Ventura. Her mother was a farm worker and she grew up listening to her stories of working while pregnant, joining marches for fieldworker rights, and even the time she had met Cesar Chavez. Connie was always told that the hard work and sacrifices were so that she can have a better life. 

Connie has a bachelors degree in Psychology and Education. She is studying to become a teacher. She hopes that her role in the education system can be to uplift our youth who come from diverse backgrounds and encourage them to be the best they can be. She joined this organization as a volunteer for the arts and crafts center in Laundry Love, but stayed because of how much she loves the families. 

Fernanda Palacios Herrera, Esq. is a daughter of Mexican immigrants raised in Queretaro, Mexico, Fernanda developed her passion for helping communities in need at a young age. She has spent most of her adult life advocating for immigrant rights in various capacities, first as a community organizer, then as a Department of Justice Accredited Representative, and now as an immigration attorney. While in law school, she served indigent asylum seekers as an Equal Justice Works student fellow, a John J. Curtin, Jr. Justice Fund Legal Fellow and served the Massachusetts community as part of The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.

Fernanda is originally from Texas but has called Camarillo home since 2022. She has a strong connection with the farm working community because her grandfather worked the fields in Texas as a Bracero. Fernanda is a proud Tillman Scholar and continues to serve her community everywhere she goes. Through her experiences, she has learned that dedication, passion, and drive can spark change and empower others to work alongside each other for prosperity. 

Alyssa/LyssEats805 has lived in Ventura County for 15 years and has developed a passion for supporting and serving our local community.  Her appreciation for the field working community has grown immensely over her time spent in the county, as she recognizes just how vital they are to our corner of the earth.  She admires their hard work, resilience and dedication and hopes to apply the same principles in her life.

Alyssa has an associates degree in film/tv/media and hopes to utilize her skills to garner support from the community for such an incredible organization.

Ted Haber was born and raised in Brooklyn NY.  He was an elementary school teacher for 10 years - where he met his wife of 50 years.  He has since retired and has lived in Camarillo since 2021.  He is a proud father and grandfather as well.

Ted made a career switch to the computer field and gathered 35 years of experience.  He had been looking for a way to put those years of experience to use by helping people as opposed to profits.  For the past year, he has helped in upgrading and maintaining the Friends of Fieldworkers web site.

Lana Lundin moved back to her home state of California in 2001, having lived in Sweden over twenty years. Raised in a military family, moving was not new to her.

From 2004-2022, Lana volunteered and taught Swedish classes at the Scandinavian Center in Thousand Oaks. She was on the board of the Scandinavian American Cultural and Historical Foundation, having served as vice-president for 2 years. From 2007-2022 Lana served in various positions, including director, for the Scandinavian Festival which takes place on the campus of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

Lana has a Bachelor of Science, Administrative Science from Pepperdine University as well as a Montessori teaching credential from St. Nicholas Montessori Training Center, London, England. 

Lana and her husband live in Camarillo, spending their summers with their daughter in Sweden. Her son and Swedish daughter-in-law live in Ventura. Lana has had a strong interest in the fieldworkers in Ventura County since moving here. In 2022 she “left Scandinavia behind” and has devoted more time to Friends of Fieldworkers. Though Lana is bilingual, her second language is Swedish. Becoming fluent in Spanish is now a goal. She is a firm believer that the actions of each of us CAN make a difference. 

Beatrice “Bea” Lutterbeck is a California native who has lived in Ventura County for over 50 years. When her MA in French from UCLA provided few job opportunities, she returned to school and graduated from Ventura Community College School of Nursing in 1981. She knew RNs would always be needed.

For most of her nursing career, Bea worked in both medical and radiation oncology clinics. She found oncology nursing incredibly rewarding, fulfilling, and inspiring. What she loved most were the close relationships she developed with patients and their families during the difficult weeks and months of cancer treatment and follow-up. Before retiring, Bea worked as a nurse case manager and patient advocate. She supported, guided, and coordinated care for patients, families, and caregivers as they navigated the complicated healthcare system. She was especially passionate about helping those uninsured, unhoused, financially challenged, underserved, and marginalized. With the goal of improving quality of life, Bea helped many obtain greater access to local medical and social services. 

Since retiring in 2016, Bea has volunteered for local and national organizations whose missions align with her personal commitment to make a positive difference in the world. In her spare time, she enjoys watching French movies and TV, listening to audiobooks, knitting and crocheting, and spending time with friends and family. Bea speaks fluent French and is learning Spanish. 

I was born into a migrant farmworker family of 15 in central California. We worked the fields, the campos everywhere. I was a champion cotton picker. 

I was a high school dropout, pushout, in Fresno, but received my GED at 20 from Tustin High School while in the Marines, Vietnam Era. Then I lived in East LA, attended college there, then at USC, graduated, but also served with MEChA.

Post graduation I drove buses, worked in car businesses, and later earned a teacher's Credential/License from Cal Lutheran U in Thousand Oaks in Ventura County.  

My 42-year teaching career includes 22 years of day and adult school in central LA at Belmont High School, the most crowded high school in the USA (1990--2000). Here I organized MEL (Movimiento Estudiantil Latino), and other events, including 1,000 student, motivational/ educational/cultural assemblies. I also taught adult ESL(ELL) and USA citizenship at LA City College. I now teach part time in LA, and live in Ojai, Ventura County, 805.

Currently I'm organizing 50 years of prose, theater(plays) and performance art/poetry. Since 2022 I've been a regular performer at the Ojai Library Poetry Series, where I've also been the featured poet. In addition, I've presented work with Oxnard's Teatro de Las Americas during Day of the Dead events, 2022 and 2023. I've read at the Elite Theatre, Ventura and Santa Paula Libraries and in other venues, such as the Camarillo Arts Center and the Veterans for Peace Annual Conventions. In LA I've presented work in various places.

A current project is grassroots writing workshops with Friends of Field Workers (Companeros Campesinos) of Ventura County, 805.  My work fuses trilingual, USA American English, Mexican -Spanish and calo, Mexican American slang, which has its own dictionary.  I am a Freirean educator with a firm conviction of writing that engages and is a force for democracy.

Melissa Bumstead became an accidental activist after her daughter was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of leukemia. She spearheads the group Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab. She advocates for a complete cleanup of the site in order to protect water, wildlife, and her community from the site's toxic and radioactive contamination.  

Gabriela Rangel was born in Michoacan, Mexico, the daughter of former fieldworkers.  When she was three years old, her parents decided California would be a better place to raise a family, and emigrated with her older brother and younger sister, eventually growing into a family of seven as two more sisters were born. 

Growing up, Gabriela vividly recalls the struggles the family endured with the lack of knowledge on how to navigate the U.S. political, social, and economic systems. The communication barrier was also a struggle, as Gabriela and her older brother on many occasions had to translate for their parents.

These firsthand memories and life experiences created an immediate desire for Gabriela to become involved with the Friends of Fieldworkers foundation once she learned about them. Grateful that she can be there for families who are experiencing their own struggles of navigation, Gabriela is excited to be a part of Friends of Fieldworkers and is ready to roll up her sleeves to help, both with her life experience and her over 25 years of employment experience as a lead project manager and now assistant business manager at a national fundraising and consulting firm in Ventura.

Gabriela’s pride and joy are her five daughters (Amanda, Natalie, Twins – Karla and Kaitlyn, and Sophia) and her two beautiful grandbabies (James and Emily)