Toledo’s new mayor comes to the job with the perspective of having lived and worked in other parts of the country.

As City Council president, Paula Hicks-Hudson, 63, automatically ascended to the post of mayor upon the death Friday of Mayor D. Michael Collins.

Though she is known to Lucas County’s political insiders after nearly 30 years in local government, Ms. Hicks-Hudson’s exposure to voters is limited.

She ran citywide for municipal judge in 2005 as a Democrat, losing to Republican Timothy Kuhlman. In 2013, her council colleagues turned to her to succeed council President Joe McNamara when he stepped down to run for mayor.

Now, and for at least the next 10 months, the public will get to know her as Toledo’s mayor. After that, either she or someone else will be elected and certified to finish the two years that will remain in Mr. Collins’ term.

Ms. Hicks-Hudson said she and Mr. Collins agreed on “broad policy” for economic development, though they often differed on strategy.

“At this point, I am holding the course. The most important thing is the staff needs stability so the city can be stable,” she said Friday morning.

Earlier that day, she offered healing remarks to open a Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast at the Radisson Hotel on the campus of the University of Toledo Medical Center, formerly the Medical College of Ohio.

Urging others to pray for Mr. Collins and the community, she said a lesson of his unexpected collapse from cardiac arrest was, “when you leave your loved ones, leave them with sweet words, not harsh words.”

“We never, ever know how, in the twinkle of an eye, things can change,” she said.

Just yards away from the hotel, Mr. Collins lay unresponsive in a room at UTMC, with his family by his side.

Hours later, the decision was made to end artificial life-support and he passed away.

It was the end of an uncertain five days that had catapulted Ms. Hicks-Hudson to another platform in an active public life.

She was summoned to UTMC following the mayor’s collapse while he drove his city-owned sport utility vehicle on snowy Hill Avenue just before 2 p.m. on Feb. 1.

There she took the oath of office as acting mayor, signing a document that Councilman Theresa Gabriel and others later in the week had mounted and framed for her.

Positive reviews

A lawyer with an emphasis on juvenile law, Ms. Hicks-Hudson comes with positive recommendations from many who have worked with her.

Councilman Sandy Spang said, “I found her to be fair and reasonable as a member of council. Her door was always open. I thought she was the right person to be our president, the most unifying person who can be our president.”

As director and deputy director of the Lucas County Board of Elections from May, 2002, to January, 2005, she was administrator during “some very, very tough times,” said Paula Ross, a former chairman of the Lucas County Democratic Party and then a member of the elections board’s governing board.

“She understood and adapted to an environment that required a bipartisan approach. She was very good at bringing out the best in the staff, encouraging and supporting them. She certainly did the best anyone could do under the circumstances,” Ms. Ross said.

Joe Kidd, the Republican director early in Ms. Hicks-Hudson’s tenure, said, “she had a vision of what she wanted to achieve” in ensuring people had access to the ballot.

“She had ideas how to do that, how to use the board to do that, going out into the public more often, to make the board accessible to people who otherwise wouldn’t have had access,” said Mr. Kidd, who now works as a lawyer for Ford Motor Co.

Councilman Larry Sykes said Ms. Hicks-Hudson has legal and government experience but also is comfortable making decisions — a good quality in an executive officer.

Early life

Paula Hicks was born and raised in Hamilton in Butler County, Ohio, one of eight children from a combined family. Her father worked for the city of Hamilton in the streets department garage. He encouraged his children to pursue higher education.

She earned a bachelor’s degree from Spelman College in Georgia in 1973 and married Freeman Hudson the same year. She graduated with a master’s degree in communications development from Colorado State University in 1975.

Though the mountain scenery was beautiful, classwork and the obligations of being a wife and mother kept her from being able to hike the mountains too much, she said. The couple’s daughters, Patricia Hope Hudson and Leah Free Star Hudson, are grown.

Returning to Ohio, she went to work in the Upward Bound program at Central State University in Wilberforce, teaching readiness skills to underprepared students — an experience that opened her eyes to juvenile delinquents’ legal needs.

“We had kids who had challenges. I used to go to Juvenile Court to testify on how they did over the summer. I saw the need for vigorous representation for juveniles,” she said.

She received her law degree at Iowa State University in 1982.

The Glass City

Next stop, Toledo — a place she had last visited as a child. Her new job was with the Toledo Legal Aid Society.

“Each place, each life experience, if you pay attention, helps you learn lessons. I hope I’ve grown,” Ms. Hicks-Hudson said, quickly scuttling back to avoid sounding pompous. “I don’t want to say I’m all that and a bag of chips.”

She and Mr. Hudson, a maintenance worker for Toledo Building Services, and their two daughters lived in Springfield Township, in West Toledo off Richards Road, and on Underwood Avenue near the University of Toledo before buying their house on Robinwood Avenue in 1998.

“We had to do a migration into the city,” she said.

From Toledo Legal Aid, she became an assistant Lucas County prosecutor, an assistant public defender, and assistant state attorney general.

She was Toledo City Council’s legislative director from 1998 until 2002, director and deputy director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, and chief legal counsel to the Ohio Office of Budget and Management in Columbus under Gov. Ted Strickland.

“I had to go through that budget line by line,” Ms. Hicks-Hudson said, indicating with her hand an imaginary tall stack of paper.

“I would see Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati. I’m looking for Toledo.”

Since being in Toledo, she has served a variety of organizations, including Coalition for Quality Education, the NAACP, the YWCA, the Frederick Douglass Community Center, the African-American Law Enforcement Agents, and the state and national Federations of Business and Professional Women Inc.

She is a past president of the Thurgood Marshall Law Association and the Toledo Women’s Bar Association.

Council service

Ms. Hicks-Hudson was appointed to her District 4 council seat in January, 2011, to the term vacated by Michael Ashford when he was elected to the Ohio General Assembly.

She won the May special election and the November, 2011, general election to retain her seat for a full term representing the district spanning downtown and central Toledo, the Old West End, and the Lagrange and Vistula neighborhoods of North Toledo.

Ms. Hicks-Hudson is minister of music at Redeemer Lutheran Church on Upton Avenue.

“I grew up playing piano, oboe, clarinet. What keeps me sane is the music,” she said.

Local politicos have resisted openly discussing who might run for mayor in November out of respect for the late mayor and his family. That will change soon.

So far, Ms. Hicks-Hudson is glad to keep that conversation from happening.

Asked if she will run to retain the office in November, “It’s too soon to even consider that,” she said on Friday.

Contact Tom Troy: tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058 or on Twitter @TomFTroy.

First Published February 8, 2015, 5:00 a.m.