Stepping Up for What’s Right

While she may not be royalty, Kathy King lives up to her name.

Thanks to her work at Sonoma Overnight Support (SOS) and her involvement in a variety of community initiatives, Kathy does indeed have a regal reputation. But it wasn’t always that way.

Kathy came to Sonoma full-time in 2011 where she started out as a consultant for SOS. Soon after, she became the executive director and under her leadership, what started as a small overnight shelter has expanded and diversified to address the valley’s growing homelessness problem.

Just this year, SOS has served more than 200 unique individuals, providing over 7000 meals, 700 showers, and 200 bus passes along with thousands of meetings with case managers for those who need them. 

To Kathy, these numbers represent more than just “clients.” She knows most of our houseless neighbors by name and often goes far out of her way to ensure they can get the resources they need. Compassion, in her view, is key.

Given her career in serving others, it’s hardly surprising that Kathy grew up across the street from her local Catholic church in San Francisco.

“Our whole family was involved with the church. My brothers were altar boys, my mother was a substitute teacher — [my parents] were the head of the parents club. They were deeply involved with giving back to the community.”

Beyond the traditional roles, the family exuded the spirit of generosity to which most congregants aspire.

“There was always someone extra for dinner — my mother had an open house policy.”

The same is true of The Haven, SOS’s flagship services center in Sonoma. “All are welcome. Todos son bienvenidos.” says one of their flyers.

Before Sonoma, Kathy led a life out of an adventure book. Though she originally aspired to become a teacher, she never imagined she would be teaching community organizing from Oakland to Montana to Delaware.

“I went to Kansas City and taught them how to do walkathons, then I went to New Orleans. I went to places like Burley, Idaho and Two Dot, Montana.”

For a while, the itinerant lifestyle embodied the spirit of adventure. Kathy met people from all different backgrounds, traveled all over the country, and affected a lot of change. Ultimately, it wasn’t a glamorous life.

“It wasn’t like you got a hotel room — If you were lucky, you got a couch — and then you got up in the morning to train all day.”

Getting arrested on Easter Sunday was, perhaps, the divine signal it was time to come home.

It was the 80s and the US was deeply embroiled in the Cold War. Should things get hot, the government wanted to be prepared. They cooperated with several ranchers in Montana and Wyoming to place hidden missile silos underground as a countermeasure against Soviet air attacks. What the ranchers were not told was that their secret silos, and the ranches hiding them, would be primary targets for any aggression. 

Kathy didn’t think that was right.

At a protest on the Great Falls Air Force Base, she peacefully disobeyed the soldiers’ orders, stepping across the established protest line against the infamous MX Missile.

“I carried a cross with a rose on it that said, ‘Peace Now.’ They had submachine guns and they put us against the wall and I thought… this is it. But my conscious told me I had to do it.”

She remembers Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail which implores everyone to take a stand when it really counts. Kathy’s efforts in partnership with an organization called Western Solidarity helped cancel the MX Missile program and to remove many of the ranchers from potential harms way.

After staying 5 days in jail, it was time to come home where the real change would happen.

Kathy wanted to start a family.

“As a single woman there were not many options. I think I knew one other person that had done an adoption. So I went to classes and I filled out all the paperwork.”

Eventually, an opportunity arose in Honduras where a little girl was looking for a home. But the process wasn’t easy.

“I went three times to get her out of the country. The orphanage was so far out, the taxi wouldn’t drive me there. I’d go to the main road and walk.”

Like many things in life, it all worked out. Kathy named her infant daughter Rosa Linda or beautiful rose, after a flower she saw in the waiting room and their relationship blossomed.

“It’s the most fulfilling thing I ever did, it’s the most rewarding thing I ever did, it’s the best thing I ever did,” says Kathy about parenthood.

“You do a lot of things you never thought you’d do, but you do it because you love your child. I had to unlearn all the parenting I had grown up with. My parents were all about rules and I only had one rule: If we’re going with Grandma and Grandpa you have to wear the appropriate thing, other than that you can wear whatever you want.”

Now, Rosa is married living in San Francisco and comes to visit often.

From Kathy’s first job at a grocery store to a traveling adventure to the beautiful stories of parenthood, I couldn’t help but exclaim “What a life!”

“I just feel lucky,” she replies, “because every day I get to meet interesting people. I love this community. I think they’re really generous and they’re really kind.”

And the community loves her back.

Perhaps it is because she lives by a touching John Wesley quote: “Do all you can by all the means you can and in all the ways you can.”

Our conversation took place over Zoom, an unfortunate side-effect of our stay-at-home status. Having lived through and acted in so many challenging situations, I ask her what she thinks about our future.

“We will get through it. I have a lot of hope, I really do. I mean, I get down, and then I just have a huge amount of positivity.”

“People say you can’t do stuff, like they said I couldn’t adopt. I’m like ‘well why can’t I do that?’ I just don’t believe it. I can figure stuff out and I can do it.”

If she can do it, she says, so can we. 

Wrapping up, I ask her how she would like us to remember her legacy. She laughs, chuckling as she pushes up her glasses.

“Maybe I can get a bench with my name on it!”

For Kathy King, it’ll be a throne.

From City to Ranch Country

Gene Kilgore grew up about as far away from ranch country as you can get. Born in New York City, he spent his early childhood on the busy streets of San Francisco before his first taste of the wild west. 

“I remember getting my first rope and seeing the Wranglers – I wanted to ride one of the calves in the rodeo.”

Gene was 8 years old on that first trip to Trail Creek Ranch on Wyoming’s western border. From then on, he was hooked.

In 1979 he found himself working on a cattle ranch in Daniel, Wyoming. “It always bothered me that I couldn’t shoe my own horses like the other cowboys. Somehow I found out about horseshoeing school in Montana and they had an opening, and off I went!” 

“I was fit, I was lean, I got to work outside… it was heaven”

Like most life stories, it didn’t always make sense. “None of it makes any sense,” says Gene, reminiscing. “But boy was that great, just the good people — I was fit, I was lean and I got to work outside. It was heaven.”

Since then, Gene managed to do a lot more than live his cowboy dream. For the past 40 years he has been considered “The World’s leading authority on dude ranches” by American Express. What started as an aptly named travel guide, Ranch Vacations, has turned into a vast network of websites showcasing everything from high-end luxurious ranch resorts to authentic western cattle ranches. 

Gene with his first edition of Ranch Vacations at an Orvis book signing in San Francisco

He still travels the west, visiting hundreds of ranches dedicated to offering travelers a taste of the cowgirl and cowboy culture. Some guests enjoy the much needed time to relax, others roll up their sleeves and join in on the action.

“A lot of life is luck,” Gene says, wearing one of many cowboy hats in his office. “At the end of the day, you hope that you made a little difference to make the world a little better. That’s what I think.”

Luck played a big role in guiding him away from medical school and into his life in dude ranching. Before his ranching career, he was studying to be a doctor at Grenada's St. George's medical school. During his time there, he started to feel that something wasn't right, that maybe he wasn't cut out for medicine.

“When I was out on the tip of the island in Grenada, I remember going right to the edge of the shore and the waves were lapping in front of me and beside me and I looked out to Venezuela and I said, ‘God, guide me…what should I do?’”

“God, guide me… what should I do?”

Gene comes from a family of doctors. His grandfather was a cardiologist and founded a medical unit from UC Berkeley that was sent to France during the first world war. His father was a well-known hand surgeon in San Francisco. His sister was a nurse. All the stars had aligned for him to follow in his family footsteps, to continue the medical tradition. But after struggling through his biology major in college and barely making it to medical school, he found himself here on a Grenadian cliff, wondering where to go next.

What was God’s reply?

“He talked to me and said, ‘This is not it.’”

“I think it’s important to be spiritual and to acknowledge that you don’t know everything. The more we’re out in nature the more we ought to stand back and say ‘Wow,’ it’s nature who is brilliant, man is only a fraction of the brilliance.”

Reflecting on how this spirituality has helped to guide him, he advises, “find your path, find your railroad tracks. Once you find that, you can pour all your energy and all your emotion and all your goodness into that one thing and it makes such a huge difference.”

“I think anybody that’s doing anything well, whether it’s gymnastics or ballet or jazz piano or business tycoons, the one thing that they have besides their passion is their focus.

Gene focused his life on the beauty of the west, showcasing the rugged country-side and tough outdoor spirit all in his trademark pink button-down and matching bandana.

When asked how he would like to be remembered, he pauses before saying, “I would like to be remembered as someone that did what he loved, that was a good father, husband, brother, friend, and somebody that tried to make a difference.”

Besides his huge impact on the ranch business, he will also certainly be thought of for the difference he makes in the lives of others. His selfless acts of generosity include showing up to doctor’s appointments with burritos for the staff or bottles of his Gene Kilgore Ranch Red  wine to his friends and neighbors — always with genuine kindness in his heart.

Before we ended our interview, he shared one last story about friendship.

“You know I looked all over the west for an Australian Shepherd: Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho… But God opened up the door and here was Lucky in Glen Ellen. I feel very very fortunate and blessed we have her in our lives.”

For a man who spent much of his youth following the footsteps of his family’s medical legacy, there’s something to be said about rekindling the passion for ranch country he discovered in childhood.

“Sometimes what you need is sitting right next to you,” and the best stories are often right in your backyard.