Loretta Smith believes she is just living a dream. She grew up in Michigan and then came back to Oregon when she went to college at Oregon State University. She had a huge family here and had always visited Oregon a lot throughout her childhood. After she graduated from OSU she started her career of working in public service by working for Congressman Ron Wyden. Smith is now currently one of the county commissioners and loves being able to work on improving Portland and issues that affect kids and senior citizens.
Many of her hobbies include reading, white water rafting, running, and last but not least eating burnt hotdogs. She also describes herself as a “news junkie” because of her love for the news and current events. Smith also loves history; her most recent favorite piece of history was the movie Lincoln. She has a son who runs track and field at the University of Washington. Her greatest accomplishment is being a mother.
Her mom has had a huge influence on her throughout her life. She always instilled in her being a hard worker and the importance of a strong work ethic, and even though her mom never went to college she still saw the importance and prepared her daughters for a higher education. Smith admired her because she couldn’t talk from experience, but she still had a vision for her and her sisters to move forward and create opportunities to better themselves. Her grandfather also influenced her; Smith knows that he would be very proud of her and her accomplishments because he always told her she was going to make something of herself.
Smith values being true to your own person. She always tells kids that you have to work hard, growing up she says her sisters were more gifted academically then she was, but what separated her from them was she had the discipline. She knew that she would have to work harder since things didn’t come naturally to her like it did to her sisters. As city commissioner she prides herself in being accessible and approachable. As well as taking comments from everyone, to double check with every piece of legislation that she talks to all stakeholders to make sure she is on track and delivering the right policy for the people it affects. When young people ask her what you need to learn to be a city commissioner she replies with a “you have to be able to count to three”, that being because you need three votes to get your resolution passed. Since all of her fellow commissioners and her share similar values, she says it isn’t too difficult.
Overall Smith loves her work and believes that public service is what she was born to do, because that’s who she is. Growing up she was always involved in her community and church, so being able to be a county commissioner and work on issues and implement programs to help the people is what she was built to do. One of the things Smith loves most about her job is the Summer Youth Connect program she started a few years ago. Summer Youth Connect is a program that gives internship opportunities to youth with Multnomah County. She is all about “her” kids who are the ones from the program and is proud to have gone from 25 to 50, and hopes for 75 this summer.
If Smith is up for reelection next year she wants to be remembered for playing fair, being accessible, supporting infrastructure for youth and helping protect the programs for seniors. She wants to be known for protecting and standing up for keeping senior citizens in their homes and being parts of the neighborhoods.