California Families in Focus is proud to announce the launch of the Detective Kimberly Maddox Youth Scholarship Program and congratulate our first recipient, Ms. Michelle Flores, who is attending CSULB, which is the University that Detective Maddox attended.
We are proud and honored to bestow this historic award to Ms. Flores for her involvement in the community and wish her continued success reaching her educational goals.
Detective Kimberly Maddox was born in Jacksonville Florida on November 13, 1958 and moved to Los Angeles California in her teenage years. She attended Los Angeles High School and due to her extraordinary athletic abilities in basketball, she received a full scholarship to attend CSULB.
Kim still ranks among the top four performers in all of the key career categories: points (1775), assist (461), field goals (779) and steals (219). She played for the Women’s U.S. National Team during its 1978 tour of the Orient. She was a member of the 1980 Women’s Olympic team, but that team ultimately did not participate in the Olympic Games because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. But Kim also participated in the 1984 Olympic trials.
Kim was an amazing basketball player who possessed phenomenal skills and in 1989 she was inducted into Long Beach State’s Hall of Fame for playing on their female basketball team, the 49ers.
Kim served as Co-President of Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride, Inc. and as Board Chair of California Families in Focus, she held many jobs in Los Angeles and Long Beach; but her favourite position was being a detective for the Long Beach Police Department.
Kim, a true leader with an always-positive outlook, retired from the police force on October 9, 2014 after more than 25 years of service as both a patrol officer and detective. After her retirement, Kim sought to assist her wife, Angel Macias, in taking care of her murdered brother’s two children. Angel Macias is the CEO and Founder of the local non-profit California Families in Focus and is very active with the City of Long Beach and the GLBTQ community focussing on the youth.
Not long after retiring and moving to Sacramento to be with her wife, Kim was diagnosed with Stage IIIC ovarian cancer on December 5, 2014. She fought hard with dignity and grace, and on September 12, 2016, Kim lost her battle to Cancer and passed away in Mexico while undergoing alternative cancer treatment.
Kim lived life to the fullest and no one can argue that she had one of the biggest hearts and would never hesitate to help those in need. That was her daily mission. Kim’s passion and compassion earned her great accolades and awards throughout the community; but her greatest love was spending quality time with her wife and family. She was the mother of 6 beautiful children and 5 grandchildren – all whom she adored and who adored her.
Kim loved to travel and had a knack for making friends everywhere she went. Kim’s legacy will live on through her wife and children, the Kimberly Maddox Youth Scholarship Program and her footprint will forever be engraved in the City of Long Beach.
We will be having an annual banquet where we will award 3-4 deserving students a $1000-$3000 scholarship.
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CFF IRS REINSTATEMENT: California Families in Focus is celebrating and would like to thank Ms. Stephanie Jones Taylor at the IRS department for helping us get retroactive reinstatement going back to May 15, 2016!
Our record of providing necessary services to youth and families in the Long Beach community speaks for itself. California Families in Focus has volunteered thousands of community service hours and provided services for thousands of Long Beach residents in every City Council District through the VIP (Visionaries Inspiring Peach) tutoring and mentoring program, an annual Spirit of Christmas program, Teen Pride, Family Fun Zone, School Supply Drive, Educational Conferences, Retreats, and Work Shops and Trainings.
Although we have only been incorporated since 2002, we have been working with and for our community for over 25 years. At all such times, we have always abided by the rules and have never committed any violations to cause our non-profit status to be jeopardized except for inadvertently not filing the 990 at a time when Angel Macias, the non-profit’s CEO and Founder, experienced a series of life-shattering events from 2012-2016 where she almost lost one of her daughters due to depression, and then her sister-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and passed away August 28, 2013. If that were not enough, her brother was murdered on September 28, 2013, and left behind four minor children, 2 of which were automatically orphaned because their mother died in a tragic car accident in 2010.
In September 2013, Angel left everything behind in Long Beach along with the nonprofit to adopt her brother’s 2 minor children and to be available to attend the year-long murder trials to bring justice to her brother and his children.
In October of 2014, Angel’s wife, Detective Kimberly Maddox, retired from the Long Beach Police Department and, in December 2014, she was diagnosed with stage IIIC ovarian cancer. Angel was a devoted wife and took care of Kimberly until the day she died on September 12, 2016.
So, with Angel’s life turned upside down, the only things on her mind were being strong for her family and keeping everyone sane and together. For three years she did not file the 990N e-postcard. Had she been notified of the problem, she would have immediately rectified it. Unfortunately, despite having all of the non-profit mail forwarded to a different address when Angel moved to Sacramento, the IRS notices were still being forwarded to the non-profit’s old office space at
1017 Obispo Avenue, Long Beach, CA. For whatever reason, the existing tenant at that location never passed any of California Families in Focus’s mail on to Angel whenever she would inquire about mail, nor did they send it back to the IRS. Thus, the 990N e-postcard filing issue was not addressed in time.
We are letting everyone know that Angel Macias is back. She is just as committed and devoted to her community as ever. Her deceased wife made her promise to come back and do what she loves to do.
California Families in Focus is strong and has a kind and hard working board of directors. We have a great office space, an amazing associate committee, and lots of community support from all over the State of California. We are blessed and honored to work with amazing people and organizations with the same ethics, morals and values as our own. We will accept nothing less than the best for our community so that we can help build strong, ethical leaders.
We also look forward to collaborating and working together with organizations and businesses to keep making Long Beach a great place to live, work and play because we will continue to work for and with our community for many years to come.
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