Age: 45 Hometown: The Bronx Current resident: Rochester Occupation: Executive director, Father Tracy Advocacy Center Shortly after 10:30 on a weekday morning, people are already gathered outside the Father Tracy Advocacy Center at 821 N. Clinton Ave. By the end of a typical day, abo ut 200 people will have passed through the building. A woman waiting near the entrance points a first-time visitor toward the correct door. To many people passing along North Clinton Avenue, the gathering outside might look like loitering. Beatriz LeBron interprets something different. “I see community every day,” she said. Long before she became a self-described “gap filler,” LeBron knew what it meant to need help. Born in the Bronx, LeBron grew up during the crack and heroin epidemics in a family deeply affected by addiction. After a suicide attempt as a teenager, her older sister brought her to Rochester.  “I credit my life to my sister intervening,” LeBron said. She arrived in Rochester as a young mother with a 2-year-old daughter, uncertain of what came next. After a briefly return to the Bronx, she came back to Rochester carrying two garbage bags and determined to build a life. She had never imagined college was within reach until a professor encouraged her to apply to Monroe Community College and helped her complete the application. There, involvement in student organizations helped her build both community and confidence before launching a nonprofit career that has now spanned more than two decades. LeBron spent years raising two children, putting herself through college and often working two jobs at once. Those experiences continue to shape how she leads the Father Tracy Advocacy Center, where she has served as executive director for the past three-and-a-half years. “If I can’t fully change some of these larger complex systems, what can I do to fill that gap until people can be connected?” she said. That philosophy is visible throughout the Center. Inside on that weekday morning, staffers move from person to person, often greeting individuals by name. Some people are filling out paperwork. Others are seeking medical care, grabbing a cup of coffee or catching up with staff about the neighborhood. English and Spanish intermingle throughout the lobby. Near the entrance sits a repurposed payphone.  The repurposed payphone in the lobby, installed through the Good Phone Project, now serves as a digital voicemail system for people without reliable phone service. Coffee is free, as is lunch. Outside, a solar-powered bench offers Wi-Fi and a place to charge a phone. Behind the building, tomatoes, collard greens, cilantro and garlic grow in a community garden. Together, these things provide the kind of ordinary that becomes extraordinary when they’re no longer readily available. To LeBron, they are ways of building relationships. When she arrived at the Center, one of the first things she did was remove the Plexiglas barrier that separated staff from visitors. “We’re not a government entity, and we put people first here,” she said. “I will always put people above anything else.” LeBron credits much of that philosophy to the Center’s namesake, Father Laurence Tracy, the “Barrio Priest” who studied Spanish in Puerto Rico and spent nearly five decades advocating for Rochester’s Latino community. A founder of Ibero-American Action League and the Rochester City School District’s bilingual council, Tracy made love, dignity and respect central to his ministry. Those values continue to guide the Center today. “It starts with respecting that individual where they’re at,” LeBron said. “We just focus on building the relationship and building community with them.” For Hector Rosario, a community health worker at the Center, those principles changed the course of his own life. Long before he began greeting visitors at the Center, Rosario was one of the familiar faces in the neighborhood himself. “(Beatriz) offered me a job,” he said, adding that act of trust meant LeBron had seen something in him. Three years later, Rosario helps offer others the welcome and respect he found at the Center. “When (Beatriz) says she’s going to help you, she’s going to help you, and she ain’t going to stop helping you until it gets done,” he said. LeBron knows the Center cannot solve every problem that arrives at its doors. The work depends on a network of medical providers, treatment programs and community organizations that can respond to challenges beyond the Center’s reach. Even so, much remains unresolved.  Still, LeBron points to the people who continue to return. “I see hope in the fact that people do show up every day,” she said. “They may not get it right today, but they’re still going to show up and keep trying.” fathertracycenter.org —AUSTIN ALBANESE The post Rochester Ten | Beatriz LeBron appeared first on CITY Magazine. Arts. Music. Culture.. ...read more read less