CARE 66 founder, noted cardiologist leaving Gallup

Dr. Bruce Tempest gives Dr.Tom Richtsmeier, president of the board and a founder of CARE 66, a pat on the back during a celebration on April 25, 2008. Richtsmeier is stepping down as president of CARE 66 and moving away from Gallup. [photo by Brian Leddy / Independent]

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — Dr. Tom Richtsmeier has left impressive footprints for others to follow.

And according to the many people who attended a recent going-away gathering at CARE 66, Richtsmeier has left a particularly impressive legacy of compassion and caring in Gallup.

Richtsmeier, a cardiologist at the Gallup Indian Medical Center since 1994, recently retired from the Public Health Service after serving as chief of cardiology at GIMC for the last decade. However, he is best known in Gallup as the founding president of CARE 66 and the president of the organization’s board of directors. With his retirement and move to Wenatchee, Wash., Richtsmeier will be leaving the nonprofit organization he helped establish.

Richtsmeier admitted it will be difficult.

“When you get involved with something like this, it’s sort of like a child,” he said in a recent interview. “You fall in love with it.”

CARE 66 — officially known as Community Area Resource Enterprise Inc. — opened the doors of its Frances House in October 2005 with three residents and the goal of helping Gallup’s homeless men achieve self-sufficiency by getting them off the street, getting them back to work, and getting their lives back on track. In its beginning, CARE 66 operated out of the trunk of the car of Kristin Reeder, CARE 66’s first program director, who used to drive around Gallup delivering blankets, clean clothing, food, and water to the city’s homeless.

The organization has grown considerably since then: A number of men have been successfully rehabilitated back into society, a salsa factory has created job and fund-raising opportunities, the recent purchase of the Lexington Hotel will move CARE 66 into a permanent location, and the current construction of the Chuska Apartments will create 30 affordable rental units for low-income families and 10 transitional housing units for formerly homeless families.
‘Life of Service’

At CARE 66’s going-away event, friends, family members, volunteers, and fellow doctors and colleagues shared their stories about Richtsmeier. Even state Sen. Lidio Rainaldi Sr., initially a skeptic of CARE 66, was there to offer his praise. In an interview after the gathering, Rainaldi said he first thought CARE 66 organizers were just planning to establish a facility where street people could eat and sleep — a “revolving door” kind of program that Rainaldi described as “pointless.” Since then, however, Rainaldi said he’s been impressed by the work of CARE 66, and he said he’s sad to see Richtsmeier leave Gallup.

According to Richtsmeier, he’s always had an interest in living a “life of service,” and that first found expression in his career as a physician and in his personal life as a husband and father. In the late 1990s, he began training as a deacon in the Diocese of Gallup, he explained, and that program challenged him to live out the Gospel message of caring for the poor.

“I got really interested in the social gospel,” said Richtsmeier, who describes Catholic social thought as “the best kept secret of the Catholic Church.” Long inspired by the example of modern-day Catholic activists like Dorothy Day and Caesar Chavez, Richtsmeier said he began thinking about his own role in helping the poor of the local community. “Well,” he recalled saying to himself, “are you really going to do this, or are you just going to think about it?”

This led Richtsmeier to volunteer at the Community Pantry, and he and his wife, Jean, also began serving meals at Casa San Martin. It also led him to volunteer on former Mayor Bob Rosebrough’s Committee on Homelessness. In a recent letter to CARE 66 supporters, Executive Director Sanjay Choudhrie joked that Richtsmeier ended up becoming chair of the committee “because he didn’t know to duck fast enough.”

Serving on the committee opened Richtsmeier’s eyes to the reality of life on the streets in Gallup. Many of Gallup’s homeless people live in make-shift tent cities around the city, he said, or sleep in bathrooms, or live out of cars.

His work as a physician at GIMC further deepened this understanding. One particular former patient was a homeless man, Richtsmeier recalled, who came down with a very bad case of pneumonia and spent two weeks in the intensive care unit. Richtsmeier estimates that his medical care exceeded $100,000. However, once the man recovered and was ready to be released, GIMC had no choice but to send him back out onto Gallup’s streets. This and other incidents left Richtsmeier questioning why Gallup didn’t have a program to work with the homeless population. Thus began Richtsmeier’s efforts to establish CARE 66.

Lives transformed

Richtsmeier said CARE 66 has a success rate of about 40 percent, and he expressed satisfaction seeing the lives of residents successfully transformed. When men first arrive, he said, they are usually bedraggled, unkempt, and dirty.

“You just see this transformation,” he explained, as they work their way through the program. “You would not be able to pick them out of the crowd.”

In addition to his contact with CARE 66 residents, Richtsmeier said he will miss the close friendship he has shared with Choudhrie and Timothy J. Kelley, CARE 66’s chief operating officer. After being painted into corners and having numerous door slammed in their faces, he explained, the three have spent countless hours brainstorming ways to get around the many obstacles thrown their way while seeking funding for CARE 66 programs.

Richtsmeier’s ability to remain gracious and positive in the face of rejection is a common theme expressed in the comments of those who admire him.

That’s a spiritual lesson Richtsmeier said he’s learned.

“When you’re out begging and get doors slammed in your face, you just can’t let it bother you,” he said. People who initially rebuff you, he added, may eventually come around and help you once they see what you are doing.

That is what has happened with CARE 66, he said. Grant money and donations have been given to a program that once operated out of the trunk of a car. Community members have stepped forward to donate meals, to teach classes to residents, and to lead AA meetings.

Richtsmeier said he never used to understand the saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

However, he said, he’s begun to understand it now through the help that’s been offered to establish CARE 66.

Information: CARE 66: (505) 722-0066 – www.care66.org