Kathleen Finigan, hard-charging activist who landed in Santa Rosa late in life, dies at 80

Kathleen Finigan arrived in Sonoma County sometime in the past decade, having traveled the world and lived “nine lives” already, as one of her daughters put it.

But in her adopted Northern California home, the hard-driving Finigan would unspool a final act that left a lasting legacy.

Finigan died Sept. 3 at her Oakmont home from a long-standing illness, according to daughters Kate and Carrie Seros.

Her lifelong repulsion to injustice was reignited by the death of Andy Lopez in 2013, her daughters and people who worked with Finigan said, and the former world traveler threw herself into local activism in response.

“It really got to her,” Carrie Seros said.

Over the next nine years Finigan organized, protested and harangued elected officials, bureaucrats and journalists alike over police oversight. She also advocated for the county’s homeless, even as a hard-lived life caught up with her and her health deteriorated.

“She didn’t give up and she didn’t forget about issues, or people,” Carrie Seros said.

Finigan helped push for the creation of the Sonoma County Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach after Lopez’s death and later advocated for a ballot measure to increase its powers.

In October 2021, Supervisor Susan Gorin appointed her to the county’s Human Rights Commission.

Finigan was a longtime member of the group Homeless Action!. In 2019, she commissioned a photographer to shoot portraits of Sonoma County’s homeless residents that would portray them as individuals and not people to just be hurried by in the street.

She served as role model and mentor to younger female activists.

Finigan paired “respect (for families like the Lopezes) with this happy positive energy that stands in the face of injustice,” said Kimi Barbosa, leader of the North Bay Organizing Project’s Police Accountability Task Force.

Over the years, Finigan built political relationships and knowledge of how local government works. She knew where to apply pressure for maximum effect and she wanted to pass that knowledge on, Barbosa said.

“She knew the ins and outs, who the person was to talk to,” Barbosa said.

Gorin recalled an activist unafraid to give politicians a scathing review but whose years of advocacy, writing and public comment earned respect.

“Her passion came from a very authentic place in her,” Gorin said. “Often she was missing some filters that other people might have, and she didn’t apologize for that.”

Even among activists she grew close with, Finigan’s life before Sonoma County was something of a mystery. She seldom discussed her past.

Her daughters believe Finigan threw herself into advocacy in part as a response to a past that, while adventurous and full, had not always been rosy.

“It was a big part of healing herself, even if she was unable to discuss that or say it,” Kate Seros said.

Born in New Jersey in 1942, Finigan’s father died when she was about 10, her daughters said. At 13, she moved with her mother to the San Fernando Valley, where she lived a fun-centered Southern California life among early surf and skate cultural scenes.

Finigan’s mother died of breast cancer, leaving her parentless by age 20. Finigan would survive her own bout with the disease in her 60s.

She married Michael Seros, who attended her high school but whom she did not meet until after graduation, in 1963. Seros joined the U.S. Foreign Service, and the couple moved to Japan, where he worked at the embassy.

Daughter Carrie was born there.

The family moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb Washington, D.C. But soon they were bound for a new embassy job posting in Singapore.

There, Finigan gave birth to Kate Seros in the back seat of a car speeding to a hospital and was back on the tennis court days later, her daughters said. While her husband worked, Finigan dedicated herself to art and writing, socializing, and exploring southeast Asian cultures.

In 1978 the family moved to Korea. They experienced the unrest that included the 1979 assassination of president Park Chung-hee. Finigan adapted a book of Korean fairy and folk tales for English consumption, working with an illustrator to publish the book, “Sun & Moon: Fairy Tales from Korea,” in 1982.

Wherever they lived, Finigan had a habit of befriending boisterous, rough-around-the-edges philosophers and artists, her daughters said.

Eventually the marriage faltered, and Finigan and the girls moved back to Silver Spring in the early 1980s. There she immersed herself in the Washington, D.C., blues and jazz music scene, and developed a business managing bands and booking acts.

“This was like everything she did,” Kate Seros said, “she just built (the business) up from nothing on her own gumption.”

Her daughters remember meeting renowned musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie. They also remember falling asleep in bar booths while dragged along on endless late nights.

Finigan entered sobriety in 1989 through the 12-step program. She became a disciplined Buddhist and maintained the practice for the rest of her life. Her daughters said her past helped her empathize with homeless people in Sonoma County, where addictions often run rampant. Fellow activists say her Buddhist practice gave her the discipline for years of advocacy.

A former smoker, Finigan was diagnosed with COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, in the early 2000s. She would often bring an oxygen tank to protests and public meetings.

In 2005, at age 63, Finigan sold the Silver Spring home and took off again. She lived a year or more in Bali, then Puerto Escondido, Mexico, and then Santa Fe, New Mexico.

But California was home. Finigan chose Northern California, drawn to Santa Rosa by rent prices and air quality. Her daughters believe she moved to Sonoma County sometime in 2011 or 2012.

As the U.S. grappled with institutional racism following the 2011 execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, despite serious questions about his guilt, and the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012, Finigan’s consciousness and passion began to expand, her daughters said.

When Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Erick Gelhaus shot and killed 13-year-old Lopez, who was holding a plastic airsoft gun, on Oct. 22, 2013, Finigan sprang into action. She did not stop until her death.

Their mother was headstrong and stubborn, her daughters said. “It wasn’t always easy being her kid,” Carrie Seros said. But those same qualities would make her a dogged and effective activist in her final stage of life.

“She was physically very little but she was a stick of dynamite,” said Katrina Phillips, chair of the Human Rights Commission.

When seven former inmates sued the county over physical assaults and verbal abuse in jail by deputies wearing ski masks and black outfits in 2015, Finigan and others re-created the behavior in skits at the Santa Rosa Plaza mall to create public awareness. She later wore a black ski mask to supervisor meetings.

Finigan was always social, inviting fellow activists to restaurants or movie nights and admonishing them to take care of their mental and physical health.

“She was in it for the long haul, and she wanted the rest of us to be in it for the long haul,” said Adrienne Lauby, a co-founder of Homeless Action! and current president of Sonoma Applied Village Services.

Even from the bed of a skilled nursing facility in the weeks before her death, Finigan kept writing letters and organizing, her daughters and friends said.

She was honored this year at the ninth anniversary of Lopez’s death. Activists said they would continue to honor her memory through their work. The Human Rights Commission has established an award bearing her name for local champions of human rights.

“Her message is that we have real problems in Sonoma County,” Lauby said. “We’re a wealthy county, we’re a supposedly liberal county, and yet we don’t have good oversight of the police, we have discrimination against Black and brown people and we have homeless in our midst. This needs to change.”

UPDATE: This story was changed after publication to correctly describe Finigan’s role as a longtime member of the group Homeless Action!.

You can reach staff writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88