Low profile, high performer, Hermosa Beach community activist Yvonne Amarillas passed away on Monday, April 21 due to complications from cancer, at age 77.
Amarillas was born in Scheveningen, a popular seaside resort in the Netherlands.
She moved to Hermosa Beach in the 1970s, where she met her future husband Paul Amarillas. The couple married in 1976, and over the next, nearly five decades immersed themselves in community service.
“After a few years of partying it up at the beach we decided to get involved,” Paul recalled. “I joined the Hermosa Kiwanis and she joined the Hermosa Woman’s Club. After a while she noticed there weren’t a lot of young women in the Woman’s Club, so she decided to start an evening division. When the Kiwanis finally started admitting women she joined us and had been a member in good standing ever since.”
Her community work earned her Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce Woman of the Year honors in 2000.
Amarillas was a Realtor with Shorewood Realtors and Strand Hill for many years, and before that sold advertising for Easy Reader.
“Yvonne was an old school, old soul person who was always calm, always smiling and always with a kind word for everybody she met. She was also hard working,” recalled Easy Reader publisher Kevin Cody. ER
She was a diamond – we really miss her – RIP Lovely Yvonne – xo