WORCESTER—Christmas is an emotional time for District 4 City Councilor Sarai Rivera.
Her son, Zacarias Ortiz Hernandez, was struck by a vehicle while crossing the street in a rural area of Oklahoma and died at age 25 on Christmas Day in 2020.
The holiday already contained a degree of sadness since the passing more than 30 years ago of Rivera’s mother, who was born on Christmas Eve. Rivera said celebrating Christmas is difficult.
“I think we’re trying to figure that out and I can’t say I have an answer to that,” she said.
While grieving her son’s death, Rivera felt ill and lost a lot of weight so she went to see a doctor. An hour before a council meeting, Rivera learned that tests found a cancerous tumor the size of a grapefruit in her stomach, but she attended the meeting anyway. She hid her diagnosis from her children for as long as she could because she remembered how devastated she was when her mother died of cancer.
Fortunately, her spindle cell sarcoma hadn’t spread, the tumor was removed and now she’s cancer free. Rivera, 55, credits her son with saving her life because her grief prompted her to see a doctor sooner than she would have.
Rivera has heard that some people believe poor health was the reason she decided not to run for reelection this month after serving six two-year terms as District 4 city councilor.
“Please dispel the rumor,” she said during an interview in the City Council Chambers Monday. “I’m actually in really good health. Physically, I’m well. Emotionally, I take it moment by moment.”
The death of her son prompted Rivera to step away from the council to spend more time with her children and grandchildren. She and her husband, Rev. Jose Encarnacion, have 10 children aged 25-33, eight of whom were adopted.
“I call it two that were birth from my womb and eight that were birth from my heart,” she said.
Zac was one of four adopted from Guatemala, three were adopted from Myanmar and one was adopted in Worcester.
For their first Christmas without Zac, Rivera and her family visited Guatemala.
“We made it somewhat bearable,” she said.
They stayed in Worcester last Christmas.
“It was emotionally very, very challenging,” she said.
Rivera and her husband realized then that they hadn’t had enough time to grieve, so she decided not to run for reelection. She plans to spend more time with her family and her congregation.
Rivera was ordained in 2000 and she and her husband founded the Christian Community Church on Beacon Street and serve as co-senior pastors. Both of their fathers and grandfathers were also ministers.
Rivera, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was born in the Bronx, New York, and moved to Worcester when she was 4. She graduated from Worcester State College, the University of Connecticut School of Social Work and Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.
Rivera said she’s most proud of serving as a role model to help the City Council and School Committee become much more diverse during her 12 years in office.
When she defeated incumbent Barbara Haller in November of 2011, she became the first Afro-Latina member of the City Council and the only person of color representing Worcester that year on the City Council or School Committee or in state government or Congress.
“The challenge was I was held to a different standard,” Rivera said. “I was definitely held to a higher standard. I could say one thing and it was misinterpreted as being aggressive or angry or passionate or emotional.”
Rivera said, on the other hand, comments by her peers that were clearly aggressive were overlooked.
Rivera said she wasn’t part of a political clique and had to build respect among her constituents and fellow City Councilors.
Asked how she coped, she pointed to her shirt, which read, “But God” on the front of it.
“Faith over fear,” she said. “I’m a woman of faith. I don’t impose my faith on anyone else. I’m not asking you to believe in what I believe, but I am very firm about who I am.”
Rivera has worked in Worcester in human services and mental health since 1988, specializing in crisis intervention, therapy and pastoral counseling.
“I didn’t need to go into politics,” she said. “To me, this was a calling.”
She said it was difficult at first being a woman of color and she considered quitting at times, but she stuck with it.
“I won’t lie,” she said. “It was really challenging and it was very lonely at times because I knew that no one could understand what I was going through on this council.”
She once braided her hair on a humanitarian trip to Haiti and she said bloggers referred to her as a gangster when she kept it in a braid during a City Council meeting.
Rivera was happy to see that Luis Ojeda, who is also Puerto Rican, was elected to replace her in District 4, and that her former intern, Vanessa Alvarez, was elected last month to the School Committee in District B after she encouraged her to run.
One of her biological children, Caleb Encarnacion-Rivera, is Director of Cultivation and Recruitment for the Worcester Public Schools.
Rivera worked to make the city take a public health approach to human trafficking to ensure that sex workers received help for substance abuse and sexual trauma and that people paying for sex were arrested. Women from the streets were invited to testify at City Council meetings and a diversion, rehabilitation program was created for them.
Rivera also helped revive South Worcester Industrial Park, which is now home to five thriving businesses, including Table Talk Pies and Absolute Machinery.
As chair of the council committee on public health, she fought to have the department fully funded and helped position the city to cope with the pandemic.
Rivera and her husband purchased an old Colonial in Main South that they call, “Zac’s House,” in memory of their late son. They’re refurbishing it and as early as February they plan to rent rooms at fair market rate to at least five young men who were at one time undocumented or seeking asylum. They and their children plan to teach them financial literacy, cooking and other life skills.
Rivera also plans to travel to Kenya and Uganda for Project Love to promote women’s health and fight poverty.
Rivera said she’ll miss the power to demand that the marginalized have a voice at city council meetings.
Rivera’s last city council meeting is scheduled for Dec. 19 and she plans to travel to Colombia, Puerto Rico or Guatemala soon afterward.
The late Dr. Ogretta McNeil, who had served a decade on the School Committee before Rivera took office, was a mentor to her. On Monday, Rivera was on hand when a street sign was unveiled in downtown Worcester in McNeil’s memory, “Ogretta V. McNeil Way.” Rivera and City Councilor at-Large Khrystian King co-sponsored the street sign petition to honor her.
Rivera said she was asked to run for state representative and state senator over the years, but she decided against it.
She said she doesn’t plan to run for political office again.
“I’m leaving on a political high with political leverage,” she said. “I wasn’t ousted. I’m leaving on my terms. I’m leaving feeling my assignment has been completed. But I have learned to say, ‘Never say never.’”
Bill Doyle has been a professional journalist for 47 years, most of them as a sports writer for the Telegram & Gazette. He covered the Boston Celtics for 25 years and has written extensively about golf, boxing and local high school and college sports. He also worked for the campus newspaper when he attended UMass-Amherst. He can be reached at billdoyle1515@gmail.com.
