Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Friday, December 13, 2024 76° Today's Paper


Top News

Influential San Francisco activist Rose Pak dies at 68

ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this Dec. 12, 2003, file photo, Rose Pak poses at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco. Pak, an influential community activist who turned San Francisco’s Asian-American population into a political power in the city has died. A friend of Pak said she died of natural causes in her home Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016.

SAN FRANCISCO » An influential community activist who turned San Francisco’s Asian-American population into a political power in the city has died.

A friend of Rose Pak said she died of natural causes in her home Sunday morning. She was 68.

A former reporter who covered Chinatown for The San Francisco Chronicle, Pak eventually became an advocate as she became immersed in issues concerning the neighborhood.

As the longtime consultant to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, she helped raise money for her preferred politicians, backed projects that benefit Chinatown’s residents and helped make the neighborhood a strong player in the city’s political world. In 2011, she started a campaign that led to Ed Lee becoming the city’s first Chinese-American mayor.

Lee called her death “a great loss to the city.”

One response to “Influential San Francisco activist Rose Pak dies at 68”

  1. cojef says:

    Never heard of her. Bring an Asian activist in itself is an achievement as their ethnicity is typically patience as the power in play will come their senses and realize the folly of their actions toward them. Park certainly deserve accolades for her activist role for immediate changes. Perhaps she has shown her contemporaries that patience should not condoned when needed reforms are implemented.

Leave a Reply