Local Hero: Sophie Cuevas, the Community Service Link
Nominee Name: Sophie Cuevas
Title: Community leader and care coordinator
Organization/Business: 211 LA
Website: 211la.org
"Sophie is an incredibly kind, gracious and compassionate person who handles calls from people reporting incidents of hate. She and I have worked together on a few cases: a 72 year-old unhoused Muslim gentleman who was being harassed by other residents in a shelter, and a Persian Muslim woman in West L.A. who has been targeted and harassed by her neighbors for years. Sophie not only takes their information but listens with compassion and goes above and beyond in finding resources and organizations that can provide help and support to victims of increasing hate speech in Los Angeles. She is a wonderful human being."
— Lori Margaret, nominator
About Sophie Cuevas
For more than eight years, Sophie Cuevas has been dedicated to assisting Los Angeles County residents with their most essential needs as part of the 211 LA team, a nonprofit that links people to community services.
Cuevas began her tenure at 211 LA as a community resource advisor, providing referrals to individuals for social, health and human-related services. Cuevas also collaborated with the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court for three years providing direct services for families with open Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services cases by assisting them by locating classes and programs to help them reunite with their children.
She has also administered two disaster centers during her tenure — the Local Assistance Center for a South L.A. explosion in June 2021 and another for floods in the Antelope Valley in October 2021.
Her current role is care coordinator for the LA vs. Hate anti hate program, a community-centered program designed to support L.A. County residents in addressing the normalization of hate and inspiring people to stand up to it, build understanding about what constitutes a hate act and how to report it and supporting individuals and communities as they heal from the trauma of hate. As care coordinator, Cuevas assists and supports victims of hate crimes and/or incidents as she connects to supportive services such as counseling, legal services, mediation, advocacy and more.