Salinas >> Elliott Robinson says he is more at ease climbing a sheer, 200-foot cliff than he was behind a desk leading the giant Monterey County Department of Social Services.
The retiring social services director and veteran rock climber, who capped off a 30-year public service career on Friday, said the challenges of leading a department with a $267 million annual budget and more than 860 employees that is responsible for the welfare of thousands of vulnerable men, women and children carries with it much more serious ramifications than scaling the heights of his beloved El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.
“A 200-foot cliff isn’t that scary unless I don’t have a rope,” Robinson said. “The question is more one of weariness, though, the heavy responsibility that comes over my desk is much more difficult, heavy and meaningful with heavier consequences for getting things wrong than any climb. That’s why I had to do it and do my best to make the world a better place.”
During his 17 years at the head of the county department, Robinson has dealt with everything from high-profile child abuse cases such as the Tara children murders and homeless shelter and support service programs to deciding which essential social services to fund with limited budgets in what he called a “complex county” that features both incredible wealth and grinding poverty.
Through it all, the 54-year-old Prunedale resident said he relied on rock and mountain climbing, and wilderness hiking, to keep him balanced, an avocation he plans to spend more time engaging in after making what he calls a “bittersweet” departure from the department where he took the reins in 2001 at the relatively tender age of 37.
“It’s healthy for the next generation to take over,” he said during an interview with The Herald on Wednesday while sitting in an office whose walls were already being stripped of dozens of climbing photos. “It’s time.”
It was a teenage affinity for climbing that brought Robinson from his hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, to California. As a teen, he met a friend who was a climber and fell in love with the sport. Facing a choice between Harvard and Stanford, Robinson said he talked his parents into the latter because of its proximity to Yosemite’s dizzying heights.
While at Stanford, Robinson not only spent time at Yosemite as a “dirtbag” climber — so dubbed for their bare-bones personal means, but also scaled the university’s buildings, finally drawing a rebuke from a university official as the leader of the climbing group during his senior year.
Robinson graduated from Stanford with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1986 and went on to UC Berkeley where he earned his masters in social work in 1988. While at Cal, Robinson began an internship with Alameda County’s Department of Social Services, and eventually began working there full time, eventually ascending from administrative assistant to finance director.
It was during that time that Robinson’s affinity for climbing peaked. He spent a lot of time climbing at Yosemite, occasionally without a rope, preferrably in bad weather — a pursuit called “adventure climbing, and often on routes never to be repeated, (“probably for good reason,” he said).
“I love the experience of feeling the world in its raw form,” Robinson said.
Robinson’s friendship with legendary climber Anatoli Boukreev, who visited Cal with a group of climbers from Kazakhstan in the late 1980s, led him to higher-elevation mountain climbing. After taking Boukreev to Yosemite, the two maintained a friendship that prompted a visit during his 1991 honeymoon with wife Carol Meisel to climb in Kazakhstan, and later in Kyrgyzstan. It was when Boukreev died while mountain climbing that Robinson, who had a young family at home, took an extended break from climbing, resuming it on a more limited basis in recent years.
Meanwhile, Robinson’s public service career was also taking a turn.
Attracted to Monterey County by the reputation of then-County Administrative Officer Sally Reed, Robinson applied for the social services director position in 2001 and said he was surprised to be chosen. Looking back, he said he would have been pleased to last a year in the job, for which he says he was too young, then five years and then 10, and said 17 years is plenty long enough.
Robinson said he’s proudest of the “truly mission-oriented” department’s progress on implementation of the Affordable Care Act, including establishing outreach programs to link Medi-Cal eligibility with Cal Fresh and Cal Works programs; strengthening the In-Home Support Services program; improving homeless services including progress toward a year-round homeless shelter program; and bolstering family and children’s services including child abuse prevention efforts, both before and after the murders of Shaun and Delilah Tara that drew national media attention and a state investigation.
According to Robinson, the Tara children murders still haunt him, as do many other tragic incidents involving children over the years such as a foster child taken to another county and murdered, an adopted child who was gang-raped and a more recent case involving an abusive mother who was switching children to throw off social workers.
“Those major tragedies, I own them,” he said. “Our mission is to prevent them. The sad reality is tragedies occur. It’s difficult, I remember each tragedy. That (Tara case) was one of the big failures, not that we could have ensured a different outcome.”
At the same time, Robinson said it was also his responsibility to ensure the department “survived” and didn’t overreact, which he said he’s proud to say came to pass, and noted the Tara children murders ultimately served as a kind of catalyst for many departmental improvements. He pointed out that the department’s response to a state investigation, which was not required but which he requested, was later cited as a model.
Meanwhile, Robinson also earned a reputation for leadership on a regional, state and national level, serving in executive positions on dozens of associations including president of the County Welfare Directors Association of California, chair of the National Council of Local Human Services Administrators and chair of the state’s Interim Statewide Automated Welfare System Consortium, among many others.
Robinson said he plans to spend his retirement gardening and illustrating his own poetry, a hobby he said helped while away long hours in departmental meetings, as well as spending time with his grandchildren and adopted children Michael, Ashley and Adam. He said he’d also like to help out occasionally with the social services department on a strictly volunteer basis.
And the call of the wild is also still strong, and Robinson said he’ll spend plenty of time climbing and hiking.
A few years back, Robinson left home one spring Saturday morning to go on what was supposed to be a 27-hour hike through the remote and rugged Ventana Wilderness of Big Sur. By Saturday evening he realized he had lost the trail and spent a chilly, rainy night navigating his way through the terrain on a series of dead trails with just a head lamp and a broken GPS device.
By Sunday morning, the Sheriff’s Office got through to him on his cellphone and offered a search and rescue team, which he declined, and County Administrative Officer Lew Bauman also called to check on him. He finally arrived at his Prius parked off Highway 1 at Andrew Molera State Park late Sunday morning, and began driving home before realizing he was so tired and wet that he should probably take a nap. He ended up running down the car’s battery and had to wait for a jump, and didn’t make it back home until Monday morning more than 48 hours after he had left. He rationalized that he had completed many 48-hour hikes before, so his odyssey wasn’t that unusual. And he still insists he didn’t need to be rescued.
“I was not lost,” Robinson said. “If you’re not so concerned about where you are, you’re never lost.”
Jim Johnson can be reached at 831-726-4348.
