Helen Hester was elected to the Indio City Council on February 1, 1941, a time when the city was dealing with the effects of gambling and prostitution because of the men who descended on the town from General George Patton's Camp Young near Desert Center. Helen was the daughter of Judge LeRoy Pawley, the city's first mayor, who introduced her to city politics around the kitchen table. Hester was known as someone who did her homework and had to have the facts and figures. During her six years in office, she helped make decisions, including the purchase of land for the Indio Municipal Golf Course, the water system from a private enterprise, and the property for the police department.
In 1950 and 1954, Helen Hester was a candidate in the hotly contested elections for Riverside County Supervisor of the 4th District. In both elections, she lost by a very small margin to railroad engineer Homer Varner, also of Indio.
Helen became the secretary of the League of California Cities, president of the local historical society, and an active member of the Red Cross, PTA, St. John's Episcopal Church, and the original board of Valley Memorial Hospital. After her husband Judge Kirby Hester died, Helen married an old family friend, Roderick Leap of Fairbanks, Alaska.
