Margie McComas (left) Donna Oatman (center) and Susan Haller are three of the 85 volunteers who work at the Butter Paddle in Saratoga to raise money for the children of EMQ.
Photograph by Dai Sugano
Business Call
EMQ's hard working volunteers earn recognition for their dollars and sense acumen
By Sandy Sims
Photographs by Dai Sugano
A story that includes smuggling, prostitution, orphans, rescue missions, old-fashioned charity, the Chinese Mafia and S&H green stamps added another footnote last Thursday, as the National Society of Fund Raising Executives' Silicon Valley Chapter gave its Distinguished Volunteer Fundraiser Award to three local businesses.
What the businesses have in common is EMQ (Eastfield Ming Quong) Children & Family Services, and they are all run by women. The winners are the EMQ Guild--owners and operators of the Happy Dragon Thrift Shop in Los Gatos; the EMQ Junior Auxiliary--owners and operators of the Butter Paddle in Saratoga; and the Almaden League of EMQ--owners and operators of the Unicorn Thrift Shop in Almaden Valley.
The intertwining stories of EMQ and the three businesses is largely a tale of brave and caring women. Ladies bountiful, as they used to be called, hardly captures the dedication, difficult and sometimes dangerous work these women performed in the community.
Long before the South Valley business angle entered into the story, the beginnings of EMQ took place far up the peninsula when the Chinese Mafia, the Tong, was selling young Chinese girls into slavery and prostitution. The story of EMQ begins with two organizations--Ming Quong and Eastfield, each of which had its roots in the 19th century.
Photograph by Dai Sugano
The Happy Dragon in Los Gatos is always in the market for more donations--and more volunteers.
Ming Quong
In 1849, Ah Toy, the first Chinese madam in San Francisco, arrived and brought young girls from China. Toy and the Tong sold Chinese girls for a few hundred dollars each into slavery and prostitution. However, these nefarious activities didn't go unnoticed. Missionaries began rescuing the girls and hiding them in the Presbyterian Mission Home on the outskirts of Chinatown. The missionaries eventually changed the home's name to Ming Quong meaning "radiant light."
When Donaldina Cameron, a 23-year-old lay missionary, came along in the 1890s, rescue efforts escalated. Cameron was a fighter. Stories relate her hitting Tong members over the head with her umbrella, sneaking girls over rooftops and along secret tunnels to the Mission Home. This young rescuer earned herself two names, Angry Angel and Love Mother.
The Tong began stealing girls back from Ming Quong, so Cameron moved her girls to Mills College in Oakland. There they lived in a building designed by another important California woman, Julia Morgan. What became known as the Ming Quong building still stands on the campus today.
When the Tong found and began stealing back the girls at Mills, the Presbyterian Church moved them to 13 acres of land on Loma Alta Street in Los Gatos in 1936, on property the Spreckles family donated for taxes that were due.
In her diary, Cameron says she heard that this place was out in the country and that the cows give better milk than in the city. By now the angry Tong had their own name for Cameron--the She Devil. They followed her to Los Gatos. Even though the Tong tried to kill Cameron several times, she continued her work well into her 90s.
"Donaldina Cameron is our big hero," Jerry Doyle, president and CEO of EMQ says. Cameron is the subject of an exciting biography, Doyle says. He says one of the former Ming Quong residents, Non Mock Wyman, has named her Walnut Creek boutique Ming Quong and written a book called Chopsticks Childhood in a Town of Silver Spoons.
Eastfield
Though the Eastfield part of the EMQ story doesn't have such an intriguing plot, it has been an important part of San Jose history. More than 100 years ago, women again took a major role in helping children. The Ladies Benevolent Society was formed. This was the first service organization in Santa Clara County.
The Society's purpose was to feed and clothe needy children and families in San Jose. When a farmer bequeathed his east field, at the corner of Market and 11th streets, to the Society in 1867, local personality and benefactor, James Lick, endowed $25,000 to build the Home of Benevolence, the valley's first orphanage. The children lived in a sprawling building. The Society took on more than housing orphans during those days. It also provided meals for the elderly and the poor.
In 1934, the board of the Home of Benevolence formed another women's group, a junior auxiliary, to help develop social, economic and educational programs for its children. During the Depression and into the 1940s, the Home of Benevolence also provided housing for children whose families could not afford to feed them, a common problem in those days.
The junior auxiliary women raised money for the home by holding bazaars where they sold their homemade items. During World War II, the women donated their ration tickets to provide cake for the children. They worked at Hale's Department Store in downtown San Jose on "Eastfield days," and donated their salaries to the home. They threw parties and organized activities for the children.
Changes for Children
When foster care came into being in the 1950s, children living at Ming Quong and the Home of Benevolence, known by then as Eastfield, were moved into private homes. The two institutions were forced to examine their purpose.
Eastfield commissioned a Child Welfare Board investigation in 1955 that found some children had such serious emotional problems they couldn't succeed in foster homes. Eastfield and Ming Quong were then transformed into residential treatment centers for those emotionally troubled children, and Eastfield moved to its current location in Campbell.
Women's groups continued to support the two facilities through charitable work. "That's what we did back then," Lu Sanner, former EMQ Guild president, says. "Women didn't own businesses and many didn't have jobs, they worked for charity." Through auxiliaries and guilds, women have worked hard and smart, so much so that they've created and operated successful businesses solely for the purpose of charity. This is how the Butter Paddle and the Happy Dragon came into being.
Photograph by Dai Sugano
Lorena Fontes (left) and Nancy Latos are two of the 78 volunteers who work at the Happy Dragon in Los Gatos, which raises money for EMQ. Fontes, who has 12 years experience, is the store manager.
Happy Dragon
Ironically, the beginnings of the Happy Dragon thrift store fit the Silicon Valley mold. It started in a garage. In 1958, a group of Los Gatos women who knew about Ming Quong's rickety facilities held a garage sale to raise money for the children. The $1,800 the women raised (a lot of money in 1958) inspired more garage sales.
"They couldn't continue using their homes," Sanner, says. So the women formed a Ming Quong guild and rented their own rickety building at Main Street and University Avenue for a thrift shop. "There were holes in the roof," Sanner says. "But the women painted the store and cleaned it up."
The guild didn't make a lot of money in the beginning but gave everything they made to Ming Quong. Some even volunteered at Ming Quong. The two Pennington residence halls at Ming Quong are named after the first guild president, Bea Pennington.
When a local Realtor offered the guild an old feed and grain store for sale, they were interested. The hitch was a $7,000 down payment. In a stroke of genius, some of the members came up with a plan. A few of the women who belonged to the Los Gatos Presbyterian Church sent letters to Presbyterian churches around the country, asking for retail trading stamps--Green Stamps, Blue Chip Stamps and others that could be redeemed for cash. The stamps actually provided the entire $7,000.
"When I came into the auxiliary in 1966," Sanner says, "the stamps were still coming in. So we used them to redeem prizes for fundraisers."
The new store looked like the feed and grain store that it was, with cinderblock walls, a cement floor and an old barn door at the back. "It was pretty raw," Sanner says. "Mice came in under the door."
But the women rolled up their sleeves and washed and painted their new place. With no cash register, they wrote out all their sales slips. They hauled the dirty clothes home and to laundromats to wash.
"We wanted every penny we earned to go to Ming Quong," Sanner says. "The women were educated, intelligent and willing to work hard," she says. "And they still are."
Today the washer and dryer are in the back where the guild added a whole new addition. The store is clean and shiny and the merchandise is in excellent condition.
In the early days the store might earn $30 on a good day. After awhile, the guild raised prices. As a result, over the last eight years the guild has given more than $2 million to EMQ.
Photograph by Dai Sugano
Volunteers at the Butter Paddle form a close bond with other volunteers united in the same goal. Lynne Seay, EMQ Junior Auxiliary president (center), hugs Jill Murray before Murray leaves the shop for the day. At left is volunteer Angie Evalich.
The Butter Paddle
After some 30 years of bazaars and other fundraisers, the Home of Benevolence's junior auxiliary decided in 1967, on a long-term investment. The members opened a gourmet kitchen shop in Saratoga's Plaza del Robles on Big Basin Way, at a time when it was considered appropriate for women to prepare gourmet meals in their own kitchens, but unlikely that they would actually own a business selling gourmet items. In fact, working women were still the exception rather than the rule.
The volunteers called the shop the Butter Paddle, and they sold homemade preserves, kitchen utensils and small electrical appliances. "It was blind optimism," one of the organization's old letters says.
That blind optimism has paid off in one of Saratoga's more successful businesses. Saratogans buy their Fitz and Floyd table pieces, hand-painted linen towels, unusual gifts and holiday decorations at the shop. All of the Butter Paddle earnings go directly to the children at EMQ. Last year the store donated $192, 567 to EMQ.
Every part of the work of running the business is done by the auxiliary volunteers, some of whom also work regular full-time paid jobs.
As it is for all retail stores, the holidays are the Butter Paddle's most successful time, and volunteers work even longer hours. Since July the tiny stock room upstairs has looked like Santa's workshop with stuffed animals, tree ornaments, stockings, toys and holiday table decorations spilling off the shelves.
"Our buyers ordered this stuff in January," Lynne Seay, EMQ Junior Auxiliary's president, says. On Oct. 30, auxiliary members closed the store. They hauled all their holiday stock downstairs and transformed the store into a Christmas merchandise feast. "It will go fast," Seay says. "It always does."
Customers often say such things as "Keep the change; I don't need it," Seay says. "Our customers know where the money's going." She says a little boy come in one day and donated his allowance to the store.
The Unicorn Thrift Shop
This newest business, founded by the Almaden Valley League of EMQ, started in 1993. The league created an upscale second-hand store with clothing, housewares, toys, books, sporting goods and accessories. Over the past six years the league has donated more than $818,000 to EMQ, and the store has tripled its square footage. Besides also giving the children books and an Easter party, the league adopts a family at Christmas and provide furniture, clothing and gift certificates for foster families. One of the group's members who was a foster mother to one of EMQ's severely emotionally disturbed girls has adopted the girl.
Photograph courtesy of EMQ
For many years, the Ming Quong facility in Los Gatos was the setting for the Strawberry Festival. The EMQ Strawberry Festival now takes place on the campus of West Valley College.
EMQ is formed
The two organizations survived the transition from orphanages, but Ming Quong was struggling financially, according to EMQ president and CEO Doyle. Eastfield's and Ming Quong's boards convened to work out a solution. Jerry Doyle, who started at Eastfield in 1970, recalls, "We decided whatever we do should not be based on what's good for Ming Quong. It should be based on what's good for the children."
The two organizations merged in 1987 and made Ming Quong the residential treatment center for EMQ.
Services for EMQ's children has transformed again. It's become a family-centered, strength-based program. "The welfare approach," Doyle says, "was always save the child from bad parents, and the mental health approach," he says, "was let's find out what's wrong with the child and fix it."
The new program, dubbed "wraparound," assumes a child's parents are "more important than we can ever be," Doyle says. The children remain at home as much as possible, and EMQ engages the parents to help develop the plan.
"Since the program started in 1993, 84 percent of the EMQ children have been able to stay at home. Many have done so well that the courts have terminated dependency for the children. With this expanded approach, even more services are being offered. Recent legislation has enabled EMQ to reach out to youngsters and families before their troubles reach crisis level.
All three of these charitable organizations stipulate that their donations go directly to the children--for example, the Well Spring Fund covers things other sources don't cover: camp, music lessons, dental care, bus passes, tutoring. Much of the money goes to the EMQ foster parent program. Last year the EMQ guild gave $10,000 for Christmas presents and donated the money for new playground equipment. The EMQ Auxiliary provides parties throughout the year.
Then there's the Strawberry Festival, a major West Valley event for some 40 years. It started at the Ming Quong's property, moved to Los Gatos Town Hall, but has become so large that it's now held on the West Valley College campus. The festival is organized by the EMQ Foundation and run by more than a 1,000 volunteers. It raises some $70,000 each year for EMQ.
Doyle says the volunteers and the auxiliaries are the heart and soul of EMQ. They represent community, ordinary people who care about kids in trouble. They give their time, their energy and their hearts. They are a constant source of inspiration to EMQ, Doyle says. The three organizations hold their meetings at the Campbell campus, and the current presidents sit on EMQ's Board.
Donaldina Cameron rescuing Chinese girls from prostitution is certainly a far cry from the purpose of today's EMQ. But the support of women for children in need remains unchanged. The guilds and auxiliaries have only grown more solid and more professional, and are giving even more these days.
But there's more than benevolence to this volunteering. These women form a support group of their own. "Whenever there's a family problem, an illness, a tragedy of some kind among the volunteers, we help each other," Lynne Seay says. They have made good friends, and some have found meaning in their work that surpasses a paycheck.
When the volunteers were recognized last week by the National Society of Fundraising Executives, the passion and spirit of Donaldina Cameron and the women of the Ladies Benevolent Society were very much alive.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
