Hope in Our Community

It was Thursday around noon when my wife started crying. She told me the news: a friend and one of the earliest supporters of Higher Ground, Pastor Jim Toole, had just announced on Facebook that he was diagnosed with stage four gallbladder cancer. Pastor Toole's wife also had cancer and was diagnosed just last year, and now to hear him undergoing the same thing was unbearable. Earlier that Thursday morning, we got a call at three in the morning from my son, serving in the Marine Corps stationed in Japan, telling us how this pandemic has further upended our lives. My daughter-in-law is pregnant, and my son is about to have his first child, our first grandson. And yet, he is still unsure if he can come home for the birth in a few weeks. So when my wife heard this news on Facebook, it crushed our already feeble hearts. Even still, by the end of Pastor Toole's announcement on Facebook Live, we felt hopeful. Despite the circumstances in which Pastor Toole found himself, he communicated immense hope. Just imagine having to battle cancer together with your spouse, both of you having less than hopeful prognoses, and yet being able to declare peace.

Pastor Toole of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church was one of the earliest supporters of Higher Ground over nine years ago, when we were just a reasonably small after-school program. During that time, my wife and I had given up our full-time jobs to become full-time volunteers at the organization we were called to lead. For three years, we had no income, believing in faith that all our needs would be provided. Call us crazy; but for those three years, we relied on God to provide for us, as we begin our early work with the community. We had a few supporters, such as the late Bill Holmes and Amanda Brockman of United Way, who realized the intentionality and outcomes we were pursuing. At this time, we were working with the late Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias to see how we could expand our services. Working with Pastor Larry Munguia and advised by Jon Fenton, who erected the Brandi Fenton Memorial Park, we were trudging on to build something comprehensive for our community. However, three years of no income and raising a young family had taken a toll on us. Four years of Higher Ground while navigating a marriage between a recently ostracized, divorced woman and an angry, extremely abused immigrant man had taken a toll on us.

Almost at the end of these three years of having no income, we didn't know how to continue on, and I was getting ready to figure out a way to get a full-time job while also doing Higher Ground. At this time, that would mean 8 hours of working at a job, and another close to 8 hours of working Higher Ground. This was 2011, our sons were three years old and 14 years old, both at pivotal ages. We thought it was time to quit. Higher Ground was a full-time organization now, but we did not have the personal finances to keep going and our young family needed attention.

Then came Pastor Toole and St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. They heard about what we were doing and the sacrifices we had made. They invited us to their services, allowed us to speak to their families and youth, and within a month, we had raised enough funding to give me a salary for the first time through Higher Ground. We had been doing Higher Ground for four years at this point and never thought we would get a salary through it. However, thanks to the generosity of the congregation that Pastor Toole led, what seemed hopeless was the catalyst that launched us into the transformation of Higher Ground becoming more than just an after-school program. The community of St. Andrew's became the answered prayer and fruition of hope to our faith we rested on.

Simultaneously, through Randy Reynolds, we met Ken Heeter and Gerry Oguss of Stone Canyon Community Foundation. Despite being barely established as a non-profit organization with barely any budget and a founder/CEO getting paid minimum wage for the first time in four years, they took a risk and became our first official grant.

That same year, another community invested in us, led by then Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) Assistant Superintendent James Fish. We had outgrown our location, and the schools we were working with saw our potential past after-school programming. We began to get calls from teachers during the school day, asking us to assist them with their students. We were getting calls from parents beyond the after-school hours asking us to resolve issues that they had given up on. Principals, teachers, and parents began to label us as the last hope group - able to work with them when they exhausted their options. James Fish called us at the recommendation of principals and asked us what we needed to serve more. Long story short, TUSD moved us to co-locate at Valencia Middle School, doubling the number of students we served.

In about two years, Mr. Fish introduced us to Dr. John Pedicone, TUSD Superintendent, who became instrumental in moving us to our current location, Wakefield Middle School. I'll never forget Dr. Pedicone's rallying cry to me, "I think your plan is crazy, and I think you're a bit insane. But, I like that about you. Let me know what you need from me." It took the efforts of Dr. Dani Tarry, Dr. Maria Figueroa, and Monica Brinkerhoff to design a full family resource center as a collaborative effort between Higher Ground, TUSD, and other partners located at Wakefield Middle School. Through the support of people like Pima County Supervisor Ramon Valadez, Adelita Grijalva, Monseratt Caballero, Kristel Foster, David Flores, and Howard Stewart of AGM, the Wakefield community advocated for our organization to move into the Wakefield Middle School building. We were the most unlikely folks to move into the recently closed school, but once again, a community came through and invested in us.

And now, amidst this pandemic, Higher Ground is championing the Community Schools strategy as an answer to ameliorating the consequences. Simultaneously, we are building a technology that we hope will empower our youth to navigate their social and emotional needs. None of this would be possible without the support of several community members such as Dr. Dan Ranieri of La Frontera, Arizona Serve, former Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, Kristel Foster, Social Venture Partners, and Dr. Trujillo of TUSD. As a small organization that just recently suffered through a financial crisis brought about by the changes in Arizona's behavioral health system, we should have been a casualty of this pandemic. Yet, here we are, powered by our faith and the investment of many community members.

It was always in times of great distress, when all seemed lost, that the community would become the answer to our prayers. We named some of the early supporters, but this list is nowhere near complete. Some of these names are unrecognizable, and some are influential members of our community. Regardless of who they are, it was essential for us to name and honor them.

We are a testament to the hope that the community brings. It is our faith and the support of the Tucson community that has allowed us to go this far - from our living room to being part of national conversations. Listening to Pastor Toole's Facebook Live video again, I discovered the secret behind that hope - it was faith and community. He talked about his surrender to the will of God and how wonderful the community has been for him and his wife. It's not a hope born out of denial of the severity of the circumstances. Instead, it is a hope that his family can effectively fight back, knowing that they have their faith and community to rely on. This kind of hope and belief in our community is what we need to be reminded of during the dark times that we find ourselves in as a nation. It's easy to be lost amidst the elections, the 200,000 deaths, the tyranny of the virus over our daily lives, and the collapse of many systems in our society. During these times, remembering the beautiful people in our community and supporting each other is one of the only ways we can thrive and rise.