Angel L. Medina, Latino leader, social worker, and mentor to many, has died at 70

Angel L. Medina, 70, the retired executive director and founder of Philadelphia Prevention Partnership, a nonprofit that provides drug and alcohol prevention programs and other community and educational services, died April 11 at his East Oak Lane home. The cause was lung cancer, his family said.

Mr. Medina was known for his tough-love approach to helping members of Philadelphia’s Latino and Black communities thrive.

“He held back no punches; he was raw and real,” said Nilsa Pagan, the current executive director of Philadelphia Prevention Partnership (PPP).

“A great leader does not always think their way of doing things is always right,” she said. “He was a great leader, but he could be corrected, too.”

Pagan knew Mr. Medina’s leadership style well.

She began working with him in 1999 as his administrative assistant at PPP.

“He was my mentor for over 25 years,” Pagan said. “He took me under his wing. He saw something in me before I even saw it in myself.“

“He always gave the best advice.”

When it came time for Mr. Medina to retire in 2016, he recommended Pagan to replace him.

When Mr. Medina founded PPP, he had already been working with a Philadelphia city agency as a social worker and addiction therapist.

He worked with the Coordinating Office of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Programs (CODAAP), and in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was executive director of Woodrock Inc., an organization founded to ease racial tensions in North Philadelphia and Kensington.

Before Woodrock, he was cofounder and clinical director of Central Payan at Concilio. It was the first bilingual and bicultural outpatient treatment center in Pennsylvania and one of the first in the nation, Pagan said.

In 2006, Mr. Medina organized 20 school buses to travel from Philadelphia to Hazleton, Luzerne County, to protest the ban on hiring undocumented Latino immigrants that had been imposed by Hazleton’s then-mayor and now U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta.

He also protested the Navy’s use of Vieques, one of Puerto Rico’s smaller islands, as a testing site for military bombings.

At one protest at Broad and Race treets, Pagan said Mr. Medina told her, “‘Call Merve, [his wife, Minerva] and tell her I’m going to get locked up.’“

Community activist Gilberto Gonzalez also said Mr. Medina was a mentor to him and most of the other Latino activists he knows.

“He taught us our history, he taught us how to organize, and how to try to fight back,” Gonzalez said.

At one protest against the closing down of La Milagrosa chapel on Spring Garden Street, Gonzalez said that as he and others were picketing outside the small church, Mr. Medina rode up on his motorcycle to show support.

Riding motorcycles was probably the only hobby he had here in Philadelphia, other than traveling to Puerto Rico, which he called “home,” said Mr. Medina’s wife, Minerva Medina.

“He and I loved riding motorcycles,” she said. “We would go out into the country and take all these beautiful country roads into the mountains.”

He had a Victory bike and had been driving motorcycles since he was in his 20s, she said. They had been riding together since they got married in 1985, the second marriage for both.

“We went to the Poconos. We went to Rome [Bradford County], and would also ride down to the Shore. We had a good time when we got on that cycle.”

Pagan wasn’t the only person whom Mr. Medina turned into a leader.

Pagan helped Medina launch and implement two leadership training programs under the umbrella of the PPP: the Latino Partnership Institute (LPI) and the Institute of African American Mobilization (IAAM).

Medina thought it was important to grow new leaders from within the communities his agencies served.

There is a Spanish saying he liked to say: “El pueblo salva el pueblo,” she said. That means, “the people will save the people.”

“El pueblo salva el pueblo.”

At times, the city might send over people who were qualified to do the work in the Latino and Black neighborhoods his agency served, “but they were clueless in how the community operated. They didn’t understand the culture,” Pagan said.

So with the Latino Partnership Institute and the Institute for African American Mobilization, the PPP started Saturday leadership training programs where people from the community would get training in leadership, conflict resolution, and board development.

Pagan said among the graduates of PPP’s leadership programs are State Rep. Jason Dawkins, Lighthouse executive director Edwin Desamour, and restaurant owner Hector Serrano.

Angel Luis Medina was born July 13, 1952, in Caguas, Puerto Rico. He was the older of two children born to Angel and Maria Medina.

Mr. Medina was just 3 years old when he and his parents moved to Philadelphia, where his father owned and operated a grocery store.

After high school, he graduated from Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Minerva Medina said she met Mr. Medina while working at his agency.

“I thought he was such a smart man. He was kindhearted and always trying to help people.”

She said she later found out “that it was not just his job, he really wanted to help people.”

That became evident because once they were married, she brought her two children from a previous marriage into their home, and he brought three of his children.

Even with five children to take care of, Mr. Medina would often bring home other people who needed a place to stay. Sometimes they were friends or relatives, Minerva said. But one time, it was a total stranger.

“I was petrified. I didn’t know who this guy was. Thank goodness, he was a decent guy, and we had him for six months.”

“He would pick a fight, but the fight was for a cause.”

Every year, the couple would travel to Puerto Rico and often take one or two of their grandchildren with him.

“That was his home,” Minerva said about the island. “He would say, ‘I’m going home. My home’s down there.’”

They bought a small two-bedroom house on a hill with palm trees, coconut, mango, lemon, and lime trees.

Sandee Collazo, Mr. Medina’s stepdaughter, said she was 11 when her parents married, and Mr. Medina never treated her like a stepdaughter, but like his own daughter.

“He was involved in every aspect of my life,” she said. “He always gave the best advice. He did everything he could to help anybody, not just his family.”

In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Medina is survived by five other children, 13 grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and his sister.

On Tuesday night, Pagan, now also a minister at Bridge of Hope Ministries, read a eulogy for Mr. Medina at the Geitner-Givnish Funeral Home on North Fifth Street.

“I’m forever grateful to him because he gave me a love for my people and my island that I never knew I had,” Pagan said.

“Now every time I look at the injustices and the inequities, it flares something in me. He would pick a fight, but the fight was for a cause.”