ABOUT LUCIA
To Serve and Protect
Though running for the State Legislature was never something I aspired to before this year, I believe I am the right person for the job at this moment in time and I see it as my duty to serve.
I proudly served for 28 1/2 years as a police officer - a St Paul Police street cop - in a noble profession which at its very core is all about Serving and Protecting.
While policing in St Paul, I also volunteered to serve as a Planning Commissioner in my home town of Afton for four years - serving our citizens by protecting Afton's land use policies and ordinances.
In 2018 I was asked to run for an open City Council seat. Again out of a sense of duty I decided to Serve and Protect my Afton community and the quality of life, water, and the environment of the town I loved. I won re-election in 2020 unopposed.
This year I answered the call to service once again - running for House in 41A to Serve and Protect not only the residents of Afton, but all the residents in the cities and townships that make up our wonderful 41A community.
My Passion for
Democracy runs deep
While I come from a working-class family on St. Paul’s East Side, there’s so much more to my family history. My parents immigrated from war-ravaged eastern Poland after WW2. As young children my dad and his family were abducted by the Russians and survived the Gulag while my mom and her family were abducted by the Nazis and survived Dachau concentration camp. My grandmother died of dysentery in Iran (buried in Tehran) just before being reunited with her young child - my dad who was near starvation. Grandpa was training and fighting with the allies as a member of the 2nd Polish Corps - eventually fighting in the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy. Both of my parents spent years in Displaced Persons camps - my father in Tanganyika East Africa and my mother in Ingolstadt Germany before their families were approved to immigrate to the US.
My father worked long hours as a machinist while my mother did the full-time work of being parent, teacher, cook, cleaner, organizer. When my sister was school age mom began working as a teacher's and bus aide at the public elementary school in the neighborhood. This enabled them to purchase some property on Ruth Lake - and we lived the wonderful MN dream of spending summers at the cabin and developing a great love of the outdoors.
This history makes me passionately committed to the ideals of American democracy. And family is where I learned to be courageous, proud, strong, caring, compassionate, resilient and loving.
