This Community Legal Services paralegal taught Ed Rendell how to salsa

If you want a man to eat for a lifetime, teach him to fish. If you want the mayor to hear you out, teach him to salsa.

For the past 30 years, Esther Alavarez has been a paralegal with Community Legal Services, a nonprofit that offers free legal services to low-income Philadelphians in civil matters. Those three decades are teeming with highs and lows.

Lows like the time she tried to calm down an impoverished elderly woman who, blood pressure skyrocketing, genuinely thought she was going to jail when the city fined her and her neighbor for putting out the trash too early.

And highs like the time she took an opportunity to voice her concerns with the city to then-mayor Ed Rendell during a salsa lesson.

Alvarez was at a work function when Rendell approached her and asked what she does.

“So I told him about all the cases that come in through our doors and how it would be great if the city could work with us,” she said. “He said he wanted to learn how to dance salsa.”

So, Alvarez taught him how to salsa, right then and there. But she also saw her opportunity for a trade-off.

“He listened, the whole time we danced,” she said. “We talked about issues that were going on with the city. We had such a long conversation.”

Years later, when CLS opened up their new offices in North Philly on Broad and Erie, Rendell paid the staff a visit, only to see a photo of himself learning how to salsa.