2 brothers buy food, get lost, start charity
Published: August 16, 2005
In 1987, Gil Gillenwater and his brother, Troy, decided to forgo the usual Thanksgiving tradition of stuffing themselves, drinking too much and sitting around watching football on TV all day.
The day before, the Valley real estate investors drove to Price Club, which is now Costco, bought $2,000 in groceries and started driving south. Their goal was to take the food across the border to Nogales and give it to people who needed it more than they did.
They got lost and ended up in southeastern Arizona, where they then crossed the border into Agua Prieta, Mexico. They drove through the bumpy, dirt roads to the “barrio” part of town. One of the first things they saw was a woman cooking tamales over a burning tire for eight kids playing in the dirt.
The Gillenwaters stopped their truck and found out the 22-year-old woman cooking had taken the children in. She had found them living in old cars and eating garbage. She lived in a cardboard shack with no running water or electricity.
The Gillenwaters handed out the food that day, but within just a few weeks they returned with more food and supplies to build the woman a bathroom.
That was the start of Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation. The Gillenwaters kept going back armed with donations and their own money. They built a dorm for young girls either abandoned by families crossing the border or from homes too poor to feed and clothe them. They built a rest home for the elderly, a soup kitchen and an exchange dormitory, a hostel for Americans who travel down to volunteer for a week. The foundation’s affordable housing project, Vecinos, drew more than 1,000 applicants for 42 homes.
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