A LOOK AHEAD * As plans for the Democratic Party’s big summer event encounter glitches . . .

Like all big parties, the Democratic National Convention carries the possibility of confetti-flying glory or humiliating embarrassment for its hosts.

No one knows better than Lydia Camarillo, the woman in charge of making sure this summer’s convention is remembered in Los Angeles history as the biggest event since the 1984 Olympics--rather than, say, the 1992 riots.

With mounting criticism for falling behind schedule, as well as security worries and the sudden resignation of an experienced convention hand, observers suggest that Camarillo may be in over her head. Hosting the president, vice president, 5,000 delegates, 15,000 members of the media, a national TV audience and an unknown number of demonstrators and potential troublemakers is not one but many jobs.

Camarillo, chief executive officer of the Democratic National Convention Committee, has learned the hard way that among her most important jobs is communication, especially conveying this message: Everything’s going to be OK.

Her assurances have not been well received over the past few months, as anxiety over convention preparations has grown. For example, it is still undecided where President Bill Clinton and other top leaders will stay, making it difficult to complete security plans. Camarillo believes concerns over logistics for the $48-million convention are misguided.

“I’m sure if you looked back at the city just before the 1984 Olympics, people were just as worried,” she said. “Look at how wonderful that turned out.”

At the state Democratic convention in San Jose earlier this month, Camarillo appeared confident before a crowd of delegates when she boasted that her team was “on budget, on schedule and on track” for the four-day national convention at Staples Center that begins Aug. 14. She is in charge of security, food, hotels, transportation, labor agreements and convention staging.

In private, Camarillo says that she has overcome bigger challenges--starting with her escape from childhood poverty. The 41-year-old native Texan left behind a comfortable position as head of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in San Antonio, parachuting into Los Angeles to answer the call of national party leaders who were seeking a Latina to coordinate the national convention.

During her first day on the job last October, Camarillo said she looked out the window of her 42nd-floor office in downtown Los Angeles and thought of how far she had come. Grieving over a younger sister she had lost days earlier in a car wreck, she vowed to put on a flawless convention, the city’s first since 1960, when the Democratic Party nominated John F. Kennedy.

At times, others seemed unconvinced she can keep that promise.

Mayor Richard Riordan showed dissatisfaction with progress on security and transportation, which are being handled jointly by the city and Camarillo’s team.

He devoted more of his staff’s time to helping Camarillo’s team settle on a security plan with the Los Angeles police and U.S. Secret Service agents to keep peace on downtown streets surrounding Staples Center. He and others fear demonstrations similar to the ones that disrupted the World Trade Conference in Seattle.

When convention veteran Don Foley abruptly resigned from the project last month for what he said were personal reasons, members of Riordan’s staff learned the news from a reporter, instead of from Camarillo.

Earlier this month, Riordan appointed his former deputy mayor, Noelia Rodriguez, as the head of a local host committee in charge of fund-raising and working with Camarillo’s team on tourism. Her role has put Rodriguez in a position to improve communication between the mayor’s office and convention planners. “From now on we are working collaboratively,” Rodriguez said.

Camarillo says that too much was made of Foley’s departure. The convention, she said, is well under control.

Still new to the world of presidential politics, Camarillo is determined to prove herself.

“Lydia Camarillo is a potential new star,” said U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who nominated her for the position.

With her sharp intellect and charm, Richardson said, Camarillo was just the type of person sought by party leaders. “We need to bring more Latinos into policymaking positions,” he said.

For Camarillo, it has been a long journey. Her passion for politics is rooted in a childhood laced with hard, hungry days and few opportunities.

She was the oldest of eight children born to Mexican immigrants in El Paso. Her family lived for years in a basement apartment that flooded when it rained, the water leaking through broken windows that also let in rats and hungry neighborhood cats.

Camarillo’s mother, Maria Landeros, eventually forced her way to the front of a housing project’s waiting list by plopping a drowned rat on an administrator’s table. “Tell me why I can’t save my kids from this,” she demanded in Spanish.

After the family moved to a government-subsidized apartment, Landeros again grew frustrated with their living conditions, this time because the smell of leaking gas went ignored for months. Landeros led a City Hall protest that pushed El Paso officials to evacuate the building and correct the problem. The family eventually moved to Oxnard.

“I was really proud of my mother,” said Camarillo, who was 15 at the time. “She proved that if you are just one person, you don’t have a voice. But if you’re more than one, you do.”

Camarillo’s first major battle was with her father, Salvador Camarillo, a barrel-chested plumber who held traditional Mexican views, among them the notion that single daughters must live with their families. It was 1976, and Camarillo had been accepted at UC Santa Cruz.

“He was going to slap me,” Camarillo said.

Camarillo stood her ground, insisting that she wanted a better education to help the family. Her father towered over her with his hand ready to strike, then clenched his fist and walked away. Eventually the two reconciled.

Her sister Beatriz Camarillo, an elementary school vice principal in Riverside, said: “Lydia opened the door for the rest of us to go to college. She has always inspired us to do better.”

At UC Santa Cruz, Camarillo campaigned alongside other students for an ethnic studies program and affirmative action, and performed neighborhood volunteer work before eventually earning a degree in sociology.

In the early 1980s, Camarillo headed several organizations in Northern California, including a chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Salinas and a local Girl Scouts council. In 1989, she became national director of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund’s leadership development program. In 1994, she was hired by Southwest Voter, helping to raise that organization’s political clout.

Trips to Washington took Camarillo to the Clinton White House, where she sometimes brought her family. During one White House visit, Beatriz Camarillo remembers, her sister “knew everybody in there. I was like: ‘Wow, Lydia!’ ”

Antonio Gonzalez, president of Southwest Voter and the William C. Velasquez Institute, said: “Lydia’s true calling is to be an elected official,” although she now has no plans to run for office. She has a passion when she speaks that touches people, he said.

Last fall, several other Latina professionals declined to be nominated for the job of heading the convention’s logistics team. Camarillo saw the high-profile position as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and admits to worrying about her dual responsibilities as professional and role model.

She asserts an ethnic presence by sprinkling Spanish phrases into her everyday speech.

During a January afternoon tour of Staples Center by a visiting group of party delegates and politicians, Camarillo greeted them in Spanish: buenos tardes. Not satisfied with their response, she repeated it louder: “BUENOS TARDES!”

When the crowd returned the greeting, Camarillo said, much like a schoolteacher, “This is Los Angeles. That’s correct.”

She’s kept up appearances through the birth of her second child, Antonio, on Jan. 17. While playing hostess to reporters, politicians and delegates during a Staples tour at the end of her pregnancy, Camarillo didn’t mention the painful contractions that had started the night before. Inside, though, “I was like: ‘Whoa!’ ” she said.

Within days, Camarillo delivered her son. Less than a week later, she was back in the office, attending meetings and poring over production blueprints.

Taking time off for the baby was out of the question, Camarillo said. There are only a few months left to complete the job.

So Camarillo leaves work between meetings to nurse her baby at home in San Marino. When she’s not home, her mother and her husband, clothing retailer Michael Cohen, help with their two sons. The eldest, Miguel, is 8.

Camarillo said she is conscious of the questions raised about her ability to do the job.

“Can I handle transportation, security and production? Yes” she said. “Ask me any question.

“Am I an architect? No. Can I understand what architects say or do? Absolutely. I can read a blueprint as well as the next person.”

At nearly every turn, she projects herself as firmly in command of what her staff and party leaders call “the show.”

At an evening reception in her honor days after she gave birth, Camarillo appeared exhausted. Party leaders praised Camarillo, calling her a superwoman.

“Lydia, I’m going to ask you to remain seated,” Henry G. Cisneros, Univision chief executive and the former housing and urban development secretary, bellowed into a hand-held microphone while turning the crowd over to her. “I don’t want to be responsible for any mishaps.”

Camarillo smiled and took the microphone, then rose to her feet.