Activist's bumpy road takes her to city government

Theresa Sparks took on the discrimination she felt as a transgendered woman by becoming a regular at San Francisco's City Hall. Now she leads the police commission.

By Cecilia M. Vega, San Francisco Chronicle

Last update: May 19, 2007 – 4:37 PM
If ever there was a real-life, rags-to-riches fairy tale, Theresa Sparks' story is it.

Except Cinderella used to be a man and went from riches (traveling in a corporate jet) to rags (driving a taxi and sleeping on friends' couches) to prominence again by becoming a pioneering transgender activist and the chief executive officer of a multimillion-dollar sex-toy company.

It's not the way Sparks, 58, ever thought her life would turn out.

But Sparks is starting what could be one of the most important chapters in her life -- this month she was voted president of the San Francisco Police Commission. Her election shook up City Hall -- she beat out Mayor Gavin Newsom's pick for the job and prompted a prominent member of the board to resign abruptly.

After her election as president of one of the city's most powerful commissions, which oversees department operating rules and sets crucial policies, Newsom's administration is promising to work well with her, the transgender community is hailing her ascent as groundbreaking, and Sparks is enjoying the ride.

It's a far cry from the life she led a decade ago when, shortly after she transitioned from being a man to a woman, Sparks suffered countless rejections of job applications and was a near-homeless cabdriver.

"I went on 30 interviews, sent out 150 résumés," she said. "I couldn't find a job."

Once an 'alpha dad'

They were barriers Sparks never had to encounter as a man.

She spent decades running several waste management and recycling firms in Kansas, California and overseas. She patented two recycling techniques she developed and shuttled back and forth between jobs on a corporate jet.

A Vietnam veteran who was divorced twice and has three grown children, Sparks called herself "an alpha dad."

Born and raised in Kansas City, Sparks enjoyed dressing up in women's clothes from a very early age, but fought those urges as a young man and underwent intense therapy, including electric shock treatment, hoping to suppress his desire to live as a woman.

Eventually, Sparks realized it was the only way for him to be happy. By 1997 Sparks was living full time as a woman, and three years later she traveled to Thailand for sexual reassignment surgery.

"It's an unusual condition, but it's not unnatural," she said. "You discover that the only way to live with it is to transition physically so your physical appearance matches how you feel about yourself."

Tested by life

She moved to San Francisco to blend in easier and formed a support network and a close circle of friends in the transgender community.

"Really, we get tested by life experiences constantly throughout our transition," said Cecilia Chung, deputy director of the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco and one of Sparks' best friends. "We're discriminated against, judged by everyone, and we have to overcome just being ourselves."

But the welcome Sparks found in San Francisco was the opposite of the reception she received from some of her own children.

While she remains very close to her daughter, who lives in Kansas City, her two sons don't speak to her. One son has done three tours of duty in Iraq and while overseas e-mailed Sparks occasionally, but the communication is limited.

"It's not an unusual story for transgendered people," she said. "They feel betrayed, probably. They feel embarrassed. They don't understand, even though I've sent them books."

Taking the heat

In her search for a job, Sparks took temporary work at the sex-toy retailer Good Vibrations, packing vibrators in the shipping department over the Christmas holiday in 2001.

A few weeks later, she applied for a job as the company's chief financial officer and got it. Two years ago, she became the chief executive officer.

But it was the rampant discrimination she experienced when she became a woman that pushed Sparks into her activism. She became a regular face at City Hall meetings and the Police Department.

Former Mayor Willie Brown appointed Sparks to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission in 2001. The Board of Supervisors appointed her to the Police Commission in 2004.

"There are a lot of things we have to change," she said of society's views on transgender people. "Somebody has to do it. I'm old. There's not a lot people can do to me, so it's kind of like I figure I'll stand up and take the heat."

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