Updated: 5:15 p.m. on June 12, 2026
Maximina “Maxi” Rodriguez has spent the last 43 years working at the 27th Street Bakery on Central Avenue.
She’s officially retiring at the end of this month, leaving behind a legacy of hard work, loyalty and dedication, bakery co-owner Denise Cravin-Paschal said.
Rodriguez, 61, came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1980 and settled in historic South Central LA, she said.
“I met her when I was in middle school,” Cravin-Paschal said.
Rodriguez said she became a regular customer and then applied to work at the bakery where her sister, Maria Guadalupe, worked. She was hired and worked her way up to become the retail and packaging manager, starting her shift at 4 a.m.
“I liked the work,” Rodriguez told The LA Local. “Then I had two kids and working here helped me put them through college.”
Her children now work as an engineer and a nurse. She also has three grandchildren, whom she said she plans to spend more time with in retirement.
Cravin-Paschal also had a sentimental message for her long time employee she described as irreplaceable.
“We love you, you’ve been here for a long time and we’ll miss you,” Cravin-Paschal said. “You’re like family to us.”
The bakery has also been a safe place for Rodriguez’s sister, Maria Guadulupe, who’s been working at 27th Street Bakery for 48 years.
“I may retire in another year but I may keep working because my children and grandchildren are grown,” Guadalupe told The LA Local through an interpreter. She also noted that she used to work with Harry Patterson, Cravin-Paschal’s grandfather and founder of the bakery.
As for Rodriguez, although she’s officially retiring, she’s agreed to come back to work part-time at the bakery during the upcoming holiday season and the busiest time of the year, Cravin-Paschal confirmed.
Rodriguez’s retirement comes as 27th Street Bakery celebrates its 70th anniversary and continues to be recognized as a staple in South Central, providing jobs and security for people living in the neighborhood.
The bakery, best known for its sweet potato pies, is Black-owned and in its third generation as a business with sisters Denise Cravin-Paschal and Jeanette Bolden-Pickens, an Olympic gold-medalist, serving as co-owners along with Bolden-Pickens’ husband Al Pickens.
“My grandfather employed a lot of people around here as he was growing his business and so have we,” Cravin-Paschal told The LA Local in February, as the company highlighted its 70th year in business. “They feel that this is a safe place to come.”
