My all-time favorite photo of former county Supervisor Bill Steiner captures his enormous family on a trip to Cabo San Lucas — with Steiner hanging upside down from a ceiling rope like a giant trophy fish, surrounded by his grinning clan. He was in his 70s at the time.
The fun-loving child welfare activist, force behind Orangewood Children’s Home, mentor to foster youth, fish-out-of-water politician and genuinely nice guy, died Thursday, Dec. 15, on his way to New York to spend time with his grandson. He was 85.
“We’re obviously devastated by his death, but take solace that he lived his life in a manner towards which we should all aspire,” said his son, Superior Court Judge Scott Steiner.
“Charity, kindness, unconditional love, selflessness and a belief in public service. Though he often joked about his wayward entry into politics, his proudest achievement was always Orangewood, and the devotion he felt towards abused and neglected children. He was gentle, funny, fiercely intelligent, unhesitatingly loyal and devoted to his family and his community. We are all lucky he graced us with his life.”
Steiner has always struck me as almost elfin, with a mischievous grin and roguish twinkle in his eye. He suffered from respiratory issues in recent years, carting around a portable oxygen tank, but was excited about his trip east. He couldn’t wait to see his grandson, who finished grad school at Cornell, and eat at a great steak house and take a 9/11 tour. Shortly before he left, his granddaughter Sammie had a baby girl, making him a great grandfather.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he texted to friend and former staffer, James Campbell.
“I have so many stories about my sweet dad I don’t even know where to start,” said daughter Marcie Tripp by text.
“But as I’m grieving and trying to deal with this unbearable pain I’m feeling, I keep thinking about how often he told us how much he loved us, and how proud he was. Every time we talked he would compliment me — what a great job we’ve done raising our kids, tell me how strong and kind I am. He didn’t even realize the impact that had on me.
“I realized that I wanted to make people feel the way he made me feel. So I will follow his lead…when I’m thinking nice things about someone, I’ll say it. When my heart is full of love for someone, I’ll tell them. Every. Day.”
More years ago than I care to count, Steiner made me promise to write his obituary.
He didn’t want “Supervisor who oversaw Orange County bankruptcy” to be the lead.
Bad timing
Steiner had the unfortunate luck of being appointed to an open seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1993, just as interest rates were about to skyrocket and the county treasurer was betting they’d fall. His mother tried to discourage him from accepting, but alas.
Steiner, who had served on a city council and school board, was troubled as warning bells rang about County Treasurer-Tax Collector Bob Citron’s $8 billion investment pool. He wanted to do something. The newest member of the board, Steiner asked the county finance director to draft a letter to Citron in 1994 questioning his “allegedly risky, exotic investments.” That letter was drafted — and promptly leaked to Citron.
Soon Citron, Assistant Treasurer Matt Raabe and the county’s chief administrative officer were lobbying Steiner hard, arguing that the pool was perfectly safe and that sending the letter would spook the markets and hurt the county financially. Steiner never officially sent the letter, a move he always regretted.
He was deeply stung when a civil, not criminal, “willful misconduct in office” charge was levied against him and other county officials by then-District Attorney Mike Capizzi. Their failure to oversee what turned out to be secret, criminal acts by Citron — like keeping two sets of books and lying — constituted “willful misconduct,” the D.A. argued.
Some county officials resigned before Capizzi could file charges, avoiding the only possible penalty, which was removal from office. Steiner weighed doing the same, but decided to stay and fight.
“At worst, it would appear that the supervisors did not predict a problem in a very complex and financial arena that even the experts didn’t predict. That is simply not willful misconduct or corruption,” Steiner’s attorney argued at the time. “Bill Steiner was only in office 20 months prior to the bankruptcy. He stepped into something that was in operation for years and years,” a staunch supporter said in his defense.
In the end, he was vindicated. The appeals court dismissed the charges against Steiner and the other officials, saying the allegations “fall well short” of a purposeful failure to carry out duties. The county also healed: It issued $1 billion in bonds to repay the scores of (greedy) public agencies that sunk millions in the county investment pool because its returns were so much higher than everywhere else, and Steiner lived to see that debt paid off in 2017.
In later years, when friends wanted to rile him up, they’d tease him about his “indictment.” It never failed to redden his cheeks and send him into sputtering protest. Steiner wanted to be remembered as a “white hat.”
White hat
And he was.
Steiner was born in Iowa and came to California as a child when his father took a job with a steel company during World War II. He grew up in Bell (where his mother would later fight city corruption), earned a degree in criminology from UC Berkeley and a master’s in social work from USC.
He worked to find homes for children with the Los Angeles County Department of Adoptions. He was champion to mentally ill and troubled youth at Metropolitan State Hospital and other residential treatment programs for abused and neglected kids. He became director of the Good Samaritan Centers, a Lutheran children’s agency, then head of Orange County’s Albert Sitton Home for abused and neglected children in 1978.
There, Steiner almost went to jail for refusing a judge’s order to return a child to a home that he felt was unsafe (he managed to convince the judge of that at a subsequent hearing). But conditions at the facility appalled him. Sometimes there was no hot water. Sometimes there weren’t enough beds and kids had to sleep on the floor.
County officials said they didn’t have the money to fix things, so Steiner got creative.
He leveraged his considerable charm and a righteous cause into a powerhouse private-public partnership, raising some $8 million to build the Orangewood Children’s Home shelter, a spacious, Spanish-style complex of a dozen buildings that opened in 1985. The shelter housed some 150 kids a day, and Steiner was famous for knowing most of their names. He helped kids get tattoos removed, proper dental care, learn how to eat right. He and wife Nancy fostered kids and raised five of their own, though they later divorced. In 1986, he left to become executive director of the Orangewood Foundation, which would go on to raise millions more to support Orange County youth.
Steiner’s work made him a local darling. He served on the board of the Orange Unified School District, then on the Orange City Council. He also had the ear of state officials, which led his fateful appointment to the Board of Supervisors. He won the Child Advocate of the Year Award and Crystal Vision Philanthropy Award and Lifetime Achievement Awards. Orangewood’s “William ‘Bill’ Steiner Heart of Service Award” is named after him.
After he retired from the county, he was national program director for Childhelp USA and project director for the Merv Griffin Village of Arizona. He taught political science at UC Irvine, public policy at USC, child abuse and awareness at Chapman University. He was a partner in the public affairs and governmental relations firm Hebrock Steiner, Inc.
He leaves behind five children, 16 grandchildren, one great-grandchild and many, many grieving friends. Steiner changed lives.
Inspiration
Mike McKenzie landed at Orangewood when he was 14 and stayed for several months. “I had an immediate connection with him,” McKenzie said of Steiner. “It wasn’t just work for him. He genuinely cared for people. And I felt that. He went above and beyond.”
Steiner was determined to find a good foster family for the boy, and started making phone calls. One was to Pete McKenzie, who at the time was in his mid-50s and not eager to have more children. But Steiner worked his magic, the two hit hit off, and Pete McKenzie eventually became Mike McKenzie’s dad.
“Bill Steiner was instrumental in helping me find a family,” said McKenzie, now 50. “That was a life changing connection for me. He made a huge impact on my life. If it was just me, it would be amazing enough. But he made such a profound impact on the lives of so many other kids as well. His impact on the community is just extraordinary.”
Steiner inspired McKenzie to a 20-year career working with underserved kids, and they kept in close touch. They had lunch just a month ago. “He has been a good friend and mentor, like a second dad to me, all the way until his final day,” McKenzie said.
“Frankly, I’m heartbroken. It’s a tough loss. But as heartbroken as I am, the thing that helps is knowing that he passed with a very full heart, a heart full of love and happiness.”
That makes James Campbell feel better, too.
Campbell went to work in Steiner’s office during the chaos of the county bankruptcy and they, too, stayed close over the years. They last spoke on Wednesday, Dec. 14, the day before Steiner died. He remembers how Steiner once feared he wouldn’t make it past age 60, since his dad and brother both died of massive heart attacks before then. But he made it to 85, embarking on a grand trip to New York that he was so excited about.
“That’s our boy,” Campbell said. “He went out doing it his way.”
Steiner drove a zippy sports car and loved to dine at Zov’s. He had a dog named Lucy. He was part of the crew of movers-and-shakers that congregated at Old Towne Orange’s Watson’s soda fountain.
“Every Saturday at noon we’d meet to solve the world’s problems — and feed the pigeons,” said Mike Spurgeon, who served as Steiner’s chief of staff during the bankruptcy and was one of Steiner’s closest pals.
“He never met a stranger. He was one of my best friends and mentors; the big brother I never had. I don’t know anybody who was more of a guardian of children than that man, nationally or locally. He loved kids. He was a friend to all of us, to anybody. But he was a pit bull when it came to the defense and welfare of kids. Everyone thinks he was kind and gentle. And he was. But don’t abuse a kid; he’ll come after you.
“Anytime I had a crisis in my life in the last 40 some years, he’s the first guy I’d call,” Spurgeon added. “He was the first guy a lot of people called.”
One thing a lot of folks don’t know about Steiner is that he was, in his heart, a journalist.
He followed the news ravenously, and was one of our greatest sources during the trauma of the bankruptcy. He didn’t break confidentiality rules, but he did let We The People know what the powers-that-be were cooking up so we could weigh in. He wrote op-eds for this and other newspapers and tipped us off to great stories. He often told me that he may have missed his calling.
Bill Steiner clearly did not miss his calling.
