San Diego Metropolitan - 40 Under 40

Charles Lloyd Lewis III was 16 when he became interested in politics. Now at 34, as chief of staff for Deputy Mayor George Stevens, he still loves politics, though his focus has changed.

“When I was in high school,” Lewis recalls, “I worked at a car wash to pay for things like the prom.” When the car wash closed, he went into business for himself as a car detailer. One day, he got a call to detail a car at 202 C St., Downtown, which he learned was City Hall.

“It was a Jaguar,” he says, “and it belonged to a black man who was not an athlete or an entertainer.” The car belonged to Sylvester Murray, the first African American San Diego city manager.

“I asked him, ‘How do you get a job like that?’ He told me to go to college and study public administration,” says Lewis, who decided then he wanted to be a city manager. But now, after attending Southwestern College and graduating with a public administration degree from San Diego State University, Lewis has changed his mind.

He thinks now he might like to teach in a community college. But for now, he works hard in the city’s Fourth District to help people to learn to help themselves.

Ten years ago, when he began working in District 4, “people only got organized when there was a problem. We said, ‘stop being reactive and be proactive.’” He helped organize more than 23 neighborhood councils in the district to be more than Neighborhood Watch groups. The community councils continue to meet regularly to bring about positive change in their neighborhoods.

That’s a tiny portion of what his job entails. Working in the district where he has lived most of his life, he has been a key mover in establishing the Malcolm X Library, Chollas Lake Housing Project, the Fourth District Youth Commission, the districtwide Tree Planting Project, holiday bridge lighting program and the installation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. freeway signs.

Lewis doesn’t stop doing community work when his day job is finished. He serves on the boards of the American Diabetes Association, the Encanto Boys & Girls Club and SDSU Alumni African American Chapter.