Updated at 2:35 p.m. Jan. 18, 2017
Former San Diego city councilwoman, assemblywoman and state senator Lucy Killea has died at the age of 94, the nonprofit Women in California Politics reported Wednesday.
Circumstances of her death were not immediately available.
“The news of Lucy Killea’s passing is hard to believe and hard to accept,” said Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego.
“She was a titan of public service in San Diego — at the top of the list of our most respected elected officials,” Atkins said. “She was strong, honest, funny, whip-smart, full of integrity and fearless. A role model for young women — including me — she was proud to have put a few cracks in the glass ceiling.”
Atkins took the same path as Killea from City Council to Assembly to state Senate.
Killea served on the City Council from 1978-82, the Assembly from 1982- 89 and the state Senate from 1989-96.
As a member of the Assembly, she helped form the bipartisan Women’s Caucus and was a pro-abortion rights advocate, which prompted then-San Diego Roman Catholic Bishop Leo T. Maher to bar her from communion because of her stance.
She also found controversy when she left the Democratic Party to run as an independent for her 1992 Senate reelection campaign
Long before her political career, she was an Army intelligence officer during World War II, served on the staff of the U.S. delegation to the first United Nations General Assembly in 1946 and later worked for the CIA.
Todd Gloria, a Democrat who recently left the San Diego City Council and won election to Atkins’ former Assembly seat, called Killea “one of our greatest public servants.”
“Lucy was an icon of courage and compassion in San Diego politics and served as a role model for both myself and so many others,” Gloria said.
“She exhibited the strongest commitment to service in the public interest and representing the best in people,” he said. “She will be sorely missed, but her legacy of independence and integrity in public service will always live on.”
Last year, the San Diego Rotary Club 33 named Killea Mrs. San Diego 2016. She was inducted into the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame in 2002.
— City News Service