Mrs. Maria Helen Alvarez Smith

1921 - 2010

Maria Helen Alvarez Smith was doing odd jobs and secretarial work at a Tulsa, Okla., radio station in the 1940s when an opportunity arose.

The newscaster didn’t show up, and she volunteered to read the news. She eventually took on more responsibilities at the station and started reading about the emerging television industry. By 1949, she was president and part owner of Tulsa’s first TV station.

She later moved to San Diego, and in the 1970s was in the news as the wife of C. Arnholt Smith, the businessman who was convicted of grand theft and tax evasion in connection with the collapse of his U.S. National Bank. But decades before meeting Smith, she had made a name for herself in business, broadcasting, real estate and horse-racing circles.

She was a partner in the business that bought San Diego’s KFMB-TV and radio stations in 1953, and financed and built the Disneyland Hotel in 1955.

Mrs. Smith died Friday of natural causes at her Rancho Santa Fe home. She was 88.

Magazine and news articles described her as a tiny, lissome brunette who measured just over 5 feet. “She was drop-dead gorgeous, and she attracted attention,” said her daughter-in-law, Lisa Alvarez.

“She was terribly ambitious — some would say to a fault. She was a definite go-getter. She was a real visionary and a millionaire by the age of 30.”

She was Helen Alvarez, preferring to use her middle name and her first husband’s last name, when she moved to San Diego in the 1950s. She had come to know the city while doing research on television stations before starting Tulsa’s KOTV, Channel 6.

While working for a Tulsa radio station, she read all the books she could find concerning television and visited 42 of the 89 TV stations that were then on the air throughout the United States. She took correspondence courses in electronic engineering and filed all the necessary applications for permits and a Federal Communications Commission license to build a television station. When radio executives opted to play it safe and wait a while, Mrs. Smith teamed with oilman George Cameron Jr. and salesman John Hill to proceed with plans to build the Tulsa station. She married Hill in the 1960s, and the couple divorced in 1968.

By the 1950s, she was splitting her time between Tulsa and San Diego and had interests in oil, broadcasting, hotel and other real estate ventures in Southern California and other Western states. She also enjoyed horse racing and was a partner of stable owner Rex Ellsworth.

Mrs. Smith was passionate about politics and was a delegate to the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco. She met C. Arnholt Smith through their mutual interest in Republican politics. They married in 1968. She divorced him in 1985, about the time he was released from prison.

Before she was in the news over Smith’s financial dealings, Mrs. Smith had made headlines when she sued her business partners for $10 million in a 1957 civil suit. At the time, the case was believed to have been the largest lawsuit filed in San Diego’s federal court. She accused her partners of conspiring to defraud her. An out-of-court settlement was reached in 1958.

Longtime family friend Pamela Blatz-Murff of Kentucky said Mrs. Smith was a warm, loving friend who had a reputation for getting things done. “She was a shrewd businesswoman who accomplished things in her time that had not been (traditionally) done by women,” Blatz-Murff said. “She was very active and always working on one project or another.”

Mrs. Smith was born July 4, 1921, in Tulsa, Okla., to Orlin and Edna Mae Harman. She was married briefly to Joseph Alvarez in the 1940s.

She lived in La Jolla for more than 40 years before moving to Rancho Santa Fe about 11 years ago. She was active with the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association and the Scripps Foundation board. She was also a member of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, the Republican State Central Committee of California, and Charter 100, a professional women’s club. In the 1980s, she acquired Imperial Airlines, a small commuter airline in San Diego.

She is survived by her son, Joseph Thomas Alvarez III of Rancho Santa Fe; and two granddaughters.

A memorial Mass will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Church of the Nativity in Rancho Santa Fe.