Caroline Chang grew up on Hudson Street in Chinatown, living with her family in a second-floor tenement apartment. As the oldest child of parents who had emigrated from what is now Guangdong Province in China, she soon fell into a translator role, particularly after her father died when she was 15.

At that time, she would later recall, Chinatown felt like a “little village,’’ a close-knit community for which she became one of the key links to the English-speaking city all around.

“In those days, so few people spoke English, I ended up being the interpreter for quite a few people,’’ she told the Globe in 1987. “If someone had to go to the doctor, I went along.’’

As an adult, Mrs. Chang assumed more prominent leadership positions to help everyone in the community. In 1967, she cofounded the Chinese American Civic Association, which is now the Asian American Civic Association. Mayor Kevin White appointed her to be the manager of Chinatown’s Little City Hall, a role she filed from 1970 to 1974, and she went on to either found or lead a host of other organizations in the Asian-American community.

Mrs. Chang, who also spent more than 20 years with the US Department of Health and Human Services, and was regional manager for the office for civil rights, died in Las Vegas on April 21 of complications from a fall. She was 77 and had moved to Las Vegas with her husband, Gene, about a decade ago.

“In our busy lives, we never take time to look around and see who else is in the same boat,’’ she said in the 1987 interview about her tireless efforts to help others in Chinatown. “If we don’t know the people, if we haven’t interacted as human beings, it makes the questions harder to ask.’’

Among her honors was the 1989 Amelia Earhart Award, presented by the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston for her contributions to expanding women’s opportunities.

“Women’s issues are important to me, just as minority issues are important to me. We have to continue to battle with stereotypes,’’ Mrs. Chang, who also had been a board member for the National Institute for Women of Color, told the Christian Science Monitor at the time.

In 2007, she received the Founders Award from the Asian American Lawyers Association of Massachusetts, which she helped start. The Chinese Historical Society of New England — another organization she helped found and lead — honored her last year with a Sojourner Award. Mrs. Chang also helped found and lead the Asian Community Development Corporation.

People in Boston’s Asian community “can relate to her,’’ Suzanne Lee, who chaired the Chinese Progressive Association, told the Globe in 1987. Mrs. Chang, Lee added, “is highly regarded as the initiator of a lot of projects and ideas, and for bringing people together.’’

For Mrs. Chang, that meant solving problems and also initiating joyous gatherings. At the beginning of the 1970s, as secretary of the Chinatown Celebration Committee, she helped organize a parade to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China.

“The people of Chinatown feel good about their Independence Day celebration,’’ she told the Globe then.

Community involvement ran strong in her family. Her younger brother Reggie Wong, who died in 2011, helped found the Boston Knights Chinese Athletic Club and had been a board member and past president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of New England.

“In Chinatown, the two of them were icons,’’ said their nephew Russell Eng of Medfield. “When you were around them, it was like being with royalty. Everybody knew them.’’

The oldest of four children, Caroline Jane Wong was born in Boston. When she was young, her father took the then-unusual step of opening a Chinese restaurant in the suburbs, starting his business in North Reading.

Even before he died when she was a teen, she was helping to care for her sister and two brothers while their mother worked in the garment industry as a seamstress.

Mrs. Chang graduated in 1958 from Girls’ Latin School,and she would later recall having read nearly the “entire circulation of the Chinatown branch of the Boston Public Library.’’

In 1962, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, where she participated in the Chinese Students Association. In 1997, she received BU’s distinguished alumni award.

For the first eight years after graduating, she worked in the flight test department at Avco Corp. as an associate scientist, using radar data and computer programs to conduct trajectory analyses of missiles.

In 1967, she married Gene Chang, who formerly was a master electrician with IBEW Local 103 in Boston.

After White appointed Mrs. Chang to manage Chinatown’s Little City Hall, she found the job invigorating and at times exhausting, especially near the end when she began taking classes at Suffolk Law School at night. She graduated in 1977 with a law degree, and began working for the US Department of Health and Human Services in 1982. Mrs. Chang retired in 2004.

Over the years in Chinatown, she helped found a community health center and a center to assist older residents who primarily spoke Chinese. Mrs. Chang also was a founding trustee of the Harry H. Dow Memorial Legal Assistance Fund in Boston, affiliated with the Asian American Lawyers Association of Massachusetts.

She served on many boards, including that of the American Repertory Theater. Mrs. Chang also worked with and was interviewed for the Chinese American Women Oral History Project, which is part of the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library at Harvard University.

Even in retirement she worked with others, serving as a policy adviser to Boston City Councilor Sam Yoon and volunteering through United Way of Southern Nevada to prepare taxes for low-income residents.

While Mrs. Chang and her husband had no children of their own, she was a parental figure for many, and especially for her nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews.

“To spend time with her was really amazing, because she always cared about other people,’’ Eng said. “She always made sure we treated people with respect.’’

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Chang leaves a sister, Christine Eng of New York City, and brother, Ronald Wong of Randolph.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. July 14 in the Josiah Quincy School in Boston.

Mrs. Chang’s role as an interpreter and translator while she was growing up helped inform her work in the federal civil rights office as an adult.

“I firmly believe that communication and networking are very important for effective action,’’ she told the Globe in 1987. “Minorities have the least access. It makes sense that we should talk to each other for the collective good.’’

She added that while she was “realistic and practical enough to know that doesn’t take care of the whole situation . . . the fact you’ve had a dialogue helps you to know each other as human beings, and you can agree to differ.’’

Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard @globe.com.