Rape Crisis Center Leader Ann McCarty Leaves Legacy as ‘Difference Maker’

When Ann McCarty showed up to her first day at the North County Rape Crisis and Child Protection Center in 1994, she carried with her a quietly audacious goal: to work herself out of a job. She was the new hotline coordinator, fielding calls from survivors in distress across Lompoc, Santa Maria, and the surrounding North County communities. In her mind, if she pushed hard enough — educated enough classrooms, connected enough survivors with services, changed enough minds — sexual assault and child abuse would wither away and her position would become unnecessary.

"That's how naive I was 32 years ago," she told Noozhawk this week, with the kind of hard-won candor that has defined her career.

She didn't work herself out of a job. Instead, she built one of the most respected survivor-advocacy careers in California's Central Coast — and at the end of June, after three decades of advocacy and a decade leading the organization as executive director, Ann McCarty retired. In the weeks since, the tributes have been pouring in from every corner of Santa Barbara County, a testament to the reach of both the woman and the mission.

A Career Born From Personal Truth

McCarty's connection to this work was never purely professional. As the Santa Maria Times reported, she has spoken openly about surviving abuse herself as a child — and about the absence of any resource like the center during that time. "I want to make sure there's no other little Anns that have to live a life without being able to tell anyone," she said.

That personal north star shaped everything: the emphasis on school-based education, the insistence on keeping the word "rape" in the organization's name even when it made people uncomfortable, the relentless push to go into classrooms and community spaces and name things plainly. She joined the center's staff as hotline coordinator in 1994 and, over the years, took on greater responsibilities before being named executive director in 2015.

She told the Santa Maria Times she found her footing early: "I realized that I had found my niche and I was good at it, and I liked it. I haven't always loved it … but I've always liked it."

Fifty-Two Years of Service Across North County

The organization McCarty helped lead traces its own long roots in the region. The center got its start in 1974 in Lompoc as a community response to those in crisis — and over the decades expanded to serve all of northern Santa Barbara County, adding a second office in Santa Maria. Today the center operates a 24-hour crisis hotline, deploys advocates to accompany survivors through law enforcement interviews and medical exams, offers bilingual counseling and support groups, and runs an extensive suite of prevention and education programs in North County schools.

Those school programs are at the heart of what many consider McCarty's deepest legacy. The center's ChildSAFE program brings personal-safety education to students from kindergarten through ninth grade across North County schools, and it is in those classrooms that disclosures of abuse — often the first a child has ever made — regularly surface. "The ChildSAFE presenters make themselves available to the students during recess and lunch," notes the center's own organizational materials, "and invariably children come forward."

Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann, speaking at a June Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting that honored McCarty alongside Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, put the stakes plainly: "You have an uncommon ability to lead people gently but firmly to a truth that we might rather not face, that sexual violence is not a rare or distant tragedy, but a reality that's actually woven into the fabric of our own communities, our own schools and our own families," Noozhawk reported her saying. The center's classroom work, Hartmann added, has given a generation of students "the language, the awareness and the courage to recognize abuse, reject it and refuse to stay silent."

A Community-Wide Send-Off

The wave of recognition McCarty received as her retirement arrived was remarkable in its geographic sweep. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors honored her in June. The city councils of Solvang, Santa Maria, Lompoc, and Buellton all passed resolutions or presented certificates in her honor — a rare cascade of official recognition that underscored how thoroughly McCarty had embedded herself in every community the center serves.

At the Buellton City Council meeting this week, Mayor David Silva presented her with a framed gift that McCarty then read aloud to the assembled room: "'Difference Maker: A remarkable person who turns small actions into lasting impact through kindness, integrity and dedication. They inspire others to grow, achieve and dream bigger. Also known as Ann.'" At the Lompoc council, Councilman Jeremy Ball offered his own tribute, saying he couldn't imagine "the stories she's had to endure, the trauma she's had to witness, the hardest times for a lot of people, a lot of young people, a lot of women that she's had to lift up."

Supervisor Hartmann, summarizing what many in the room felt, told McCarty: "You spent your career, 32 years, asking Santa Barbara County to be braver and more clear-eyed than we might naturally choose to be, and because of you we are."

Recognized Beyond the 805

The tributes didn't stop at county lines. Earlier this year, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center named McCarty one of its 2026 Visionary Voice Award recipients, a national honor given each April during Sexual Assault Awareness Month to individuals doing outstanding work to end sexual violence. McCarty was nominated by ValorUS, the California statewide coalition, and cited specifically as a recognized expert on sexual violence in the military. According to the NSVRC, she was "instrumental in solidifying the relationship between Vandenberg Air Force Base and Santa Barbara County's Sexual Assault Response Team," providing military-specific training to investigators, victim advocates, and sexual assault response coordinators on the base.

McCarty was also named one of Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón's 2026 Women of the Year — and previously earned the Lompoc Valley Woman of the Year Award in 2018, recognizing volunteer work she has pursued alongside her professional role across Lompoc Valley communities.

Her center's relationship with Pedal the Pacific — the nonprofit whose cyclists ride 1,700 miles along the West Coast each summer to raise awareness about sex trafficking — is another thread in this broader tapestry. The organization previously recognized the North County Rape Crisis Center with a community grant, designating it the only California agency to receive funding through that particular program cycle, according to reporting by the Santa Ynez Valley News and Lompoc Record. Pedal the Pacific's 2026 ride is expected to pass through Santa Barbara County in the coming days, bringing additional recognition for the center's ongoing anti-trafficking work.

What Comes Next

McCarty plans to relocate to the East Coast with her husband, leaving the helm in the hands of Dr. Nidia Delgadillo, her successor as executive director. She is stepping away from day-to-day work in the region she has served for more than three decades, but she has been characteristically clear-eyed about the continuity of the mission.

"I have not done any of this work alone," she told Noozhawk, crediting advocates, board members, law enforcement partners, medical professionals, and her family. And she is under no illusion that the problem has been solved: the center's 24-hour crisis line remains active, its school programs continue in classrooms across northern Santa Barbara County, and the need — as it was in 1994 — is as real as ever.

What she does leave behind, as Supervisor Hartmann framed it, is a community that has been changed by her presence in it: "Your enduring belief that facing hard truths is the first step toward a safer and more just community — and that's the legacy that will carry on."

For those wishing to support the center's work, more information is available at sbcountyrapecrisis.org or by calling the Lompoc office at (805) 736-8535 and the Santa Maria office at (805) 922-2994. The 24-hour crisis line can be reached at (805) 736-7273.