Olga Méndez, Longtime State Senator, Dies At 84

Olga A. Méndez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to a state legislature in the continental United States, who represented East Harlem and parts of the Bronx in the New York State Senate for 26 years, died on Wednesday at her East Harlem home. She was 84.

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Ruby Washington/The New York Times
Olga A. Méndez in 2004.
The cause was cancer, said her nephew, Erick Vazquez.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/nyregion/30mendez.html