She Speaks Comerican: Introducing New Bank and its Palestinian Boss

Therese Ghanayem Warah, a Palestinian immigrant in 1968, speaks Arabic in dialects that can be understood in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon—as well as in El Cajon’s large Chaldean-American community.

But of greater interest to La Mesans—she speaks banking.

Warah is manager of the Comerica Bank branch that debuted Wednesday on the site of an old gas station at Jackson and Parkway drives.

On opening day, cake was served—as well as English scones, tortillas and dip, and other snacks. Balloons decorated the lobby and the bank entrance.

Inside, next to the chips, was a stack of Arabic Yellow Pages. But Warah said the 15th Comerica bank branch in San Diego County would throw a wide net for customers.

“We attract professionals,” she said near 5 p.m. closing time Wednesday. “We attract community businesses. We look for doctors, attorneys, CPAs, engineers, business owners, nonprofit organizations, education [professionals].”

Services of the branch will be wide-ranging as well—retail accounts, business banking and “wealth management,” she noted. 

Comerica will do the usual business loans, commercial loans, mortgage and home equity lines of credit, she said.

Warah, 55, came to America at age 11 and San Diego in 1977. She held two other Comerica jobs—managing branches in Mira Mesa and Pacific Beach. Earlier, she worked for Washington Mutual in San Diego.

But unlike WaMu, seized by the federal government in the 2008 mortgage collapse, Comerica has played a conservative hand and didn’t suffer as much in that crash, she said.

“We did not get affected by it because Comerica is a very conservative company,” she said from her plainly decorated office. “We have the best of the best of leadership. They managed to stay above water. And they were conservative in their lending.”

The La Mesa-Grossmont Banking Center,  as Comerica calls the branch, was supposed to have been completed by the end of 2011. But rains and permit issues delayed the 3,000-square-foot project on a former weed-strewn lot next to Rigoberto’s Taco Shop.

Warah—who became a U.S. citizen at age 21—works with four other branch employees and promises that the bank will be involved with the community.