‘It was my dream job’
Lodi House director Suzanne Mangum retiring after 16 years
Suzanne Mangum, who has headed the Lodi House since its founding 16 years ago, will be heading soon into retirement. It was time, she said.
Mangum’s last day working at the shelter for women and their children will be June 30.
“It was a great and wonderful experience,” she said.
Prior to being the executive director at Lodi House, Mangum had been a homemaker for 25 years until she went back to college to study psychology in the hopes of running her own shelter in San Jose.
“It was my dream job. It was what I always wanted to do,” she said.
In 1996, Mangum took a job as assistant director of the Pregnancy Resource Center of Lodi, where she stayed until 2000. When the position opened to run the newly created Lodi House in 2000, she know she had to jump on it.
Lodi House was founded by Annette Murdaca, owner of
Pietros, who saw a need for shelters for women in the community, Mangum said.
The house provides a place for women in need to have a place to stay while they work to save money for an independent life. Therapists work with the women and children to help them recover from bad experiences and learn coping skills. A typical contract is for a two-month stay — with a four-month maximum — and with only five families staying at the shelter at a time, there is a waiting list.
Lodi House also helps connect many women who have successfully gotten a job, but may not have the resources yet to afford paying for a place to live, with transitional housing that the shelter owns. They offer a computer lab for women to search for jobs and connect these families with additional resources, such as childcare and health care through the Pregnancy Resource Center.
Those who have graduated from the program have access to free items that they may need from the Lodi House Thrift Store for a year.
Otherwise the store serves as another way to generate funds to keep the program going. Its newest location is at 221 W. Lodi Ave.
More than 70 percent of the women who come through the Lodi House graduate from the program, Mangum said. Mangum and the staff at Lodi House stay in contact with many of the families even after they’ve left and sometimes offer extra services, such as Christmas presents in December.
Taking the lead as the next executive director will be Shelby Young, a former administrator at the LOEL Center, who had a part in helping put the shelter together.
“The new director will likely maintain what we have for a while,” Mangum said, noting that no major changes are expected with the change of leadership.
After she begins her retirement, Mangum has plans to move to Dayton, Nev. and spend a bit of time traveling the United States. Florida, Texas, her home state of New York, and Idaho, where she plans to go huckleberry picking, are all on the list of destinations.
The work these past 16 years, while at times difficult, has been very rewarding to Mangum.
“It’s nice watching (the women) succeed when they graduate,” Mangum said. “We had a few buy their own homes. They make big changes here in their lives.”