She helps Latinos build lives here

She grew up in Brazil and milked cows on an Israeli kibbutz, but Ilana Dubester says she never felt at home until she helped a Mexican woman with a sick baby in a Chatham County drugstore.

Now, as the interim director for The Hispanic Liaison, based in Siler City, she is helping Latino immigrants find their sense of belonging in Chatham County.

In 1995, the county's United Way started an organization called El V'nculo Hispano, or The Hispanic Liaison.

Dubester, its first director, knocked on doors and connected people to social service organizations. She translated for them and, in some cases, went to court with them.

"Women would call for domestic violence, but they were scared because they were not working and did not have papers," she says. "I just got caught up by the incredible emotion that they were going through and that I could be of help."

Claudia Mona, who runs the Liaison's education program, says that Dubester gave her an opportunity to help her people.

"Every day she's helping people, trying to teach people they have rights," Moná says. "She'll help anybody, black, white, Hispanic."

Victor Ramirez, 19, moved to Siler City from Mexico in 2000. He is one of hundreds Dubester has helped. She tutored him in English, wrote him letters of recommendation and mentored him.

"She told me not to drink or smoke," Ramirez said. "And she told me to find the right path."

Along with offering help to individuals, Dubester advocates for all Latinos. Her political side sometimes provokes strong reactions.

Dubester's husband, Gary Phillips, a real estate agent and former Chatham County commissioner, said of his wife, "She calls herself a sabra, which is a native-born Israeli but also a cactus, which is prickly on the outside but soft on the inside. She is strong as a person but soft as a friend."

Last year, Dubester organized a march for immigrants' rights in Siler City. More than 3,000 people paraded through town, and about 7,000 rallied at Town Hall, she said.

Two months later, after 11 years of funding, the Chatham County United Way denied Dubester's agency's request for $23,000.

Chatham County United Way executive director Dina Reynolds said members of her board and many donors were concerned about the Hispanic Liaison's political activism.

Dubester appealed and eventually won the funding. But her experience since the rally has complicated her relations with local officials. This year, she moved her group's biggest event, the Fiesta Latina, to rural Chatham after negotiations with Siler City became too difficult.

From Brazil to Israel

Dubester, 42, was born in Porto Alegre, the largest city in southern Brazil, and raised by her seamstress mother.

In 1991, after living and studying in Israel, she moved to Chatham County to pursue organic farming. She and her first husband bought 10 acres, planted a garden and sold vegetables at local farmers markets.

One day, Dubester saw a Mexican woman with a sick baby in a drugstore.

"The pharmacist was trying to talk to her, but they couldn't understand each other," she said.

Dubester offered to translate. She also taught the woman how to read a Fahrenheit thermometer. Latin America uses the Celsius scale.

A short time later, Dubester saw an ad for a Spanish speaker with the county's agricultural extension agency. She got the job but quickly learned Latinos didn't need help farming. They needed jobs and safe, affordable housing.

Hispanics, lured in the mid to late 1990s by jobs in Chatham's poultry processing plants and textile factories, made up 11.3 percent, or about 6,500, of Chatham's 58,500 residents, according to 2005 census figures.