“As a child, I didn’t know what poverty was,” Cecilia Ponce de Leon told the Rotary Club of Lake Arrowhead, of which she is a member. “But I went to school hungry. I loved a neighbor who always had food in her refrigerator. I remember going dumpster diving after church on Sunday and being excited when I found some lettuce that was still good to eat.”
Cecilia Ponce de Leon shared her experiences at the Mexican orphanage with her fellow Rotarians.
As an adult, Ponce de Leon said, she realized that was not normal. “My pain as an adult realizing it wasn’t normal was the gain of these children.”
The children she is referring to are the orphans who have a home at Casa Hogar de los Niños in Tijuana, Mexico.
A friend invited Ponce de Leon to visit an orphanage for babies and toddlers. Then they went to the next town where the friend said the children, ages 2 to 18, needed help.
“They had no shoes and were hungry but they had smiles on their faces,” Ponce de Leon said. “My heart was broken but I had to smile as they didn’t know what they didn’t know.”
In 2015 she started supporting Casa Hogar de los Niños, which was started in the 70s by Tony Ralphs, whose grandfather started Ralphs Market. She told the Rotarians that Ralphs is called the “Pied Piper of Tijuana” but the children there just call him Papa.
Ralphs, she noted, has been using his trust fund money to support the orphanage. “It became his passion. The children’s spirit and love brought him to life,” Ponce De Leon said.
While the orphanage began as a very rudimentary structure – with no electricity, toilets, beds or running water – Ralphs purchased two lots and built a stone block home for the children.
When he asked the children one year if they had any Christmas prayers, one 6-year-old said, “I pray my mother comes to see me someday soon.” A 10-year-old boy said, “I pray we will always have enough food to eat in this house.” And a 12-year-old girl simply said, “I thank God for Tony.”
“We need to surround the children with love and support so they feel safe,” Ponce de Leon said. Part of that support is instilling in the children the knowledge that they are good enough, that they are loved.
The children, she added, see each other as a big family that is ever changing. Some get adopted, some go to college, some get sponsored by a family when they leave the orphanage at age 18.
There are usually 32 to 36 children at the orphanage where there are separate sleeping quarters for the boys and girls, teen boys and teen girls.
Ponce de Leon usually visits the orphanage twice a month, taking supplies and gifts with her. That has been made easier with the opening of a Costco nearby. The administrator will give her a list of needed items. On one visit, she provided the children with computers as “knowledge is power. We are teaching them they can do commerce all over the world.”
The children are grateful for their food.
At the orphanage, the children have mentors from Spain who talk with them on Zoom. Every Monday, Ponce de Leon said, a Spanish soccer player talks with the boys about hygiene, something that is difficult for the administrators to teach the boys.
The building has been expanded over the years and now has a church and space for refugees.
Recently Ponce de Leon attended the first quinceanera held in years at the orphanage. “Everyone pitched in for the dress,” she said, adding the 15-year-old girl looked like a princess.
Ponce de Leon also told the Rotarians that the children who live at the orphanage have an advantage in that they are getting an education. After eating breakfast at the orphanage, they are picked up by bus and taken to school, where they eat lunch.
“I love children,” Ponce de Leon said. “It was always in my heart to do this.”
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