Santa Clara County honors retirees and 10 monthly employee award recipients
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Summary
The board recognized multiple long-serving retirees — including Maria Lewis (25+ years), Lisa Pate (30 years) and Dr. Elizabeth Mayotte (55 years) — and presented monthly employee excellence awards to staff across departments, highlighting program contributions and public-service milestones.
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors used part of its Monday meeting to honor retiring staff and to present monthly employee excellence awards to public servants across county departments.
Maria Lewis, who retired in December after more than 25 years with the Department of Child Support Services, was recognized for advancing from office clerk to office specialist and for helping deploy the department’s virtual interview feature. "It's been an honor to work for the county," Lewis said.
Lisa Pate was recognized for 30 years of service in social services and workforce programs, including work expanding job fairs and launching an ARRA-subsidized employment program that reportedly placed 1,500 people into paid positions over 15 months. Pate read prepared remarks thanking colleagues, supervisors and family: "I'm deeply grateful and truly honored."
The board also recognized Dr. Elizabeth Mayotte for more than five decades of service to Santa Clara Valley Health Care and Valley Medical Center, citing leadership as a pathologist, chair of the department of pathology and laboratory medicine, and a long-running internship training program. Dr. Mayotte said the work was a team effort and praised current staff.
Following retiree recognitions, the board presented monthly awards to employees from multiple departments. Recipients included Francisco Martinez (facilities and fleet) for leadership in custodial operations; Nicholas Steinmeier (employee and labor relations) for work on staff transitions and union negotiations; Clarita Legaspi (finance agency) for supervising tax roll control work that supports $32,000,000,000 in assessed value changes; Susan Chang (Aging and Adult Services) for continuous quality improvement; Kevin Stockham (sheriff’s office) for investigative work that the board credited with recovering $1,300,000 in stolen property; Aaron Echeverria (probation) for cross-unit collaboration; Linda Wynne (clinical laboratory scientist, VMC) for standardizing lab procedures and reducing turnaround time; Rachel Talamantes (behavioral health) for program leadership including a downtown youth wellness center; and Michael Bloom (planning and development) for front-counter customer service and technical support.
Board members posed for group photos with the retirees and awardees. The meeting adjourned with a reminder that the board’s advisers meeting will convene Tuesday at 09:30.
All quotations and recognitions above are drawn from the board meeting transcript; where transcript text included inconsistent spellings or county names, article text follows verified local usage: Santa Clara County and Valley Medical Center.
