San Diego Rescue Mission
Buick Invitational
By Kate Rose

PGA TOUR Wives Association members spent the morning of Wednesday January 24, 2007, serving lunch at and learning about the San Diego Rescue Mission. There are nearly 10,000 homeless people in San Diego, and since 1955, the San Diego Rescue Mission has been offering warm meals and temporary shelter and clothing to those in need, as well as a full range of services that ultimately save San Diego taxpayers $30-50 million a year! The Mission is set up in an old hospital, which provides smaller more intimate rooms for people staying there, and has a range of programs available. The Women and Children's Center is a 12 month residential program where the mothers don't work for the first 10 months, instead receiving counseling, parenting
classes and learning more about healing from and avoiding abusive relationships. There are also sewing and computer classes available at times which provide practical help when the time comes to enter into the workplace. The Mission also has an emergency shelter for women and children, which has an open door policy - especially useful when hospitals regularly discharge patients during the night to free up beds, and prisons let people out at midnight.

PGA TOUR Wives served lunch for almost 100 lively men at the men's center, where a 12-month rehabilitation program is run. The Rescue Mission works with over 100 grocery stores, restaurants, caterers and major downtown hotels to collect food that would otherwise be thrown away. The delicious looking lunch that we served up included soup, seafood pasta salad, chicken, salad, fruit and cookies, and much of that was donated by the local convention center who had had a conference the day before.

Our guide, Mark, told us how he had been to the wedding the prior weekend of someone who had successfully passed through the San Diego Rescue Mission. It
was a touching personal story to add to the impressive 2006 statistics: 391 people served daily, 85 program graduates, 2414 meals served at holiday banquets, 411,271 meals served, 123,950 nights of lodging provided, 9 babies born to mothers here, 1,372,323 pounds of food collected.

The Mission is the only major shelter in San Diego that does not accept government funding money for their on-going programs, and relies solely on voluntary contributions from individuals, churches, businesses and foundations. For more information on this wonderful facility, please see their website, www.sdrescue.org.