precious dream
In search of a meaningful anniversary gift, entrepreneur finds something much more important than a diamond
Mike Parker stood in front of a glasstopped wooden case in the E.D. Marshall Jewelers in Scottsdale. He was looking for a gift for his wife, Ana, for their 25th wedding anniversary.
He had asked to see pink diamonds, rare and expensive, running sometimes into six figures. The shop’s owner, Ed Marshall himself, showed Mike one diamond after another.
Mike had done well for himself over the years, from driving a delivery route for Frito-Lay to running his own business, Next Phase Enterprises in Phoenix, a venture with 70 employees and sales offices in eight states.
He studied the glittering diamonds, each more beautiful than the last, each price tag higher than the one before. He had bought Ana a diamond 15 years ago, on their 10th anniversary, so this one needed to dazzle her that much more.
Then, he felt a thud in his chest.
“When we can move past ourselves, past our pride, our ego, past having to prove something, we can do something so much more meaningful.” MIKE PARKER ON WHY HE CHOSE TO CREATE THE DREAM CENTER
It wasn’t the money. He had that. It was the questions that flooded his mind: Why am I doing this? What is my motive? What am I really trying to accomplish? What does this really say — and for whom?
Mike told the owner that he needed to take a break. He thanked him for his time and left the store through the security door and out the canopied entrance.
He got into his car and sat for a few moments.
Why am I doing this? His wife wasn’t the kind of woman who asked for, or even hinted about, flashy jewelry. Was this his pride? His ego? Was he trying to prove something to someone?
What else could I do with this money that would be more meaningful?
He thought about it. He had an idea. It wasn’t fully formed, but it was a start. He knew where he had to go.
He made a phone call to his assistant and started his car.
Two lives, then one
Mike and Ana met at a party when they were students at the University of Evansville, a private college in Indiana. Ana was Ana Manta then. She ran track and was studying personnel management. Mike played baseball and majored in marketing, though Ana doesn’t remember him attending classes often.
Ana had grown up around the world, her family following her father, an agronomist for the United Nations, on assignments to six countries: Uruguay, where Ana was born, then Guatemala, Nepal, Australia and South Yemen. She attended high school in India.
Luis and Ana Maria Manta put all five of their children through college, though they themselves had never owned a house or a car. Ana was the second-oldest.
Mike grew up in one place, Cincinnati, in the house his parents purchased in 1967 for $46,000. He was the youngest of five siblings. Bikes were passed down from one kid to the next. The bike was secondhand, but you got to pick out a can of spray paint in any color and a new accessory, a bell or set of streamers for the handlebars. His dad sold bar soap for Procter & Gamble. He showed Mike how to juggle bills, paying these one month, those the next, so he could save and send his kids to college.
His parents both had college degrees. “Get the paper,” his dad would tell Mike. “You’re going to work hard and make a difference.”
Mike and Ana married in December 1985 and had three daughters. They moved to Phoenix in June 1995.
Ana’s parents lived with them to help with the girls — three generations in one house, even today.
Ana never cared much about money, not even in the days when Mike’s new business — selling, marketing and distributing products — struggled. For her, as long as her family was together, that was all that mattered.
In their life together, there was a time when Mike drank too much. He didn’t stop until one night when he left a restaurant, took his car from the valet and was arrested for driving under the influence before he even left the parking lot.
He has been sober since, 16 years now. It has made him introspective and reflective. He is grateful for the strength and love of his wife and family.
A diamond and a mission
On their 10th wedding anniversary, Mike decided he would buy Ana a diamond ring, something they could not afford when they got engaged and married. He flew to Los Angeles, to the diamond district, to buy it.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” Ana said when he gave it to her. “Thank you!”
Her reaction was genuine and loving, but it was not what Mike had seen in movies and on TV.
“I saw this going differently in my head,” he said. He was disappointed. So who was that really about? It was the same question that would occur to him 15 years later, when he was on the verge of repeating the whole episode. Why am I doing this?
The second time, he left the jewelry store without the diamond, but with a mission.
He drove first to a children’s hospital, where he and Ana had once donated money. His assistant had called ahead and arranged for a tour.
Mike wanted to do more than write a check. He wasn’t looking for a plaque on a wall or a name on part of a building.
A few hours later, Mike got back into his car. He drove to a food bank, where he saw the well-organized pantry and warehouse. He watched semitrucks come and go, like clockwork.
Mike wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for. Whatever it was, he hadn’t found it. And it was getting late. He asked his assistant to call the third place he had planned to visit and say he would come in the morning.
Looking and, finally, finding
At the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in south Phoenix, Shannon Clancy hung up the phone, disappointed. The agency’s chief philanthropy officer had been waiting for Mike.
His assistant had told her that Mike had wanted to do something for his wedding anniversary to honor his wife and family. Shannon was intrigued. “This doesn’t happen every day,” she said.
Shannon was waiting when Mike turned up in the morning.
She and Executive Director Steve Zabilski took him on a tour of the campus near Seventh Avenue and Buckeye Road. They showed him the free medical and dental clinics and then headed to the family dining room. Mike asked a lot of questions. “It seemed like he was on a quest, a journey to find something,” Shannon said.
In the dining hall, which fills every evening with low-income families who don’t have enough to eat at home, Mike told Shannon how he and Ana had several times volunteered there with their daughters when the girls were 12, 10 and 8. They had helped carry trays of food for small children and parents with more kids than hands. They asked about parents’ days, the children’s, and listened to their stories. “We found it meaningful,” Mike said. “You can’t do that and not be changed by that.”
One corner of the vast dining room had been sectioned off as a place for children after they were done eating. There were some old books in a crate, some beaten-up toys, games with the pieces missing and an old TV with a videotape player.
Looking around, Mike remembered how when he was in grade school, he would eat quickly so he could have more time at recess. In the dining hall, children were bolting down their dinner and running around until their parents were finished.
In that instant, standing there in the dining room, Mike knew what he wanted to do. What if this were more than a corner with a few books and games? What if it were a place where children could get help with their homework, use a computer and do science projects? A place where they could read or draw? A place where they could dream?
He turned to Shannon, grinning. Maybe this was what he was looking for.
Better than jewelry
The Ana Maria Manta Dream Center at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is 18 feet deep and runs 100 feet against one wall of the dining hall. It’s a warm and colorful place filled with books and games, places to read, to do homework and to play. About 75 children mill about each weekday evening after dinner.
To get it started, Mike and Ana Parker donated $250,000 — money Mike nearly spent on a pink diamond.
They both remember the day Mike told Ana how she almost got another diamond. How he decided he wanted to get her something else instead.
It did not surprise her. “It is who he is,” Ana said, smiling. Mike runs his business like that, too, making sure his employees’ futures are secure with health-care and savings plans.
She thought it was a great idea, so much better than a pink diamond.
“This is much better,” Ana said on a busy evening at the Dream Center. She reached for another card in the game of
Candy Land she was playing with a child in a Super Mario Bros. sweatshirt.
Ana and her daughters, who were in high school and college at the time, helped design the space, the girls mindful of the kind of play and activities they enjoyed when they were kids. The movable walls are made of 21⁄2-foot Lego blocks. There are computers, tunnels to climb through and places to draw.
All sorts of people volunteered to help or cut their regular fees significantly. Mike ordered new tables and chairs for the dining room. The kids helped paint, getting as much paint on themselves and the floor as on the walls.
The Dream Center opened Dec. 27, 2011. Mike had wanted to name it after his wife, but Ana said it was too overwhelming. Instead, she named it in honor of her mother, Ana Maria Manta, who had taught her the importance of family.
Kind, caring, compassionate
It’s been five years now since the center opened. Children read there and get help with their homework. They get tutoring in math, reading and science. They learn how to use the computer or play the piano. They play chess.
The space itself has inspired more people to think about what they could do to help, to volunteer and to give, Shannon said. She sees that when people come through on tours.
“We are all looking for meaning, of being connected to something larger than ourselves,” she said.
“I think there is this great desire to remind ourselves that we are kind, that we care and are compassionate. I really think right now that is what we all need to know about each other.”
Artists and authors work on projects with the kids. Dental students teach about good dental hygiene. Musicians from the Phoenix Symphony play there.
Sports teams and professional athletes come there to run clinics. Businesses bring their employees to volunteer. Highschool students pitch in.
For finishing their homework, children earn stickers they can convert to play money to exchange for game time or to spend in the Dream Center thrift store, which is stocked with donated goods and managed by the kids.
It now has several corporate partners, but the Parker family still is the main benefactor.
“It’s not just a place to keep the kids busy, but to inspire them to dream,” Mike said, “and to dream big.”
Knowledge is forever
Jennifer Dominguez was an eighthgrader and had been going to the center for about three years the day she got up the nerve to hand Mike a note.
“I was grateful for what he did here. I made him a thank-you note, and that’s how I met him,” said Jennifer, the oldest of five children.
The note thanked Mike for giving Jennifer a quiet place to do her homework, a place where she could use a computer and ask for help.
Mike asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. She told him she hoped to go to college, though no one in her family ever had. It was a big dream. Right there, on the spot, Mike told Jennifer he would pay for her to go to college. At first, she couldn’t believe it: “I feel like that was really generous. I couldn’t believe that there are people who would do that.” And then she cried.
She’s a sophomore at North High School now. She’s taking honors classes and Advanced Placement classes so she can be ready.
“I don’t want to let him down,” she said. Jennifer plans to do something in the medical field, maybe be an anesthesiologist.
Jennifer volunteers at the Dream Center. On this night, she was helping 5-yearold Gabriel with his math homework. “Seven, eight, nine — what comes next?” she asked him.
He fidgeted. Jennifer was endlessly patient. “Let’s do your work,” she said, “and then we can play.”
Jennifer is one of five students Mike has pledged to support for college, as long as they do the work to get in and stay there.
“She’s just so smart. I can’t imagine seeing that intelligence wasted,” Mike said. Even before Jennifer knew she could go to college, she was doing the work required.
“I want them to think about not where they are today, but where they want to be tomorrow,” Mike said.
Because he and Ana believe that a person’s circumstances do not define them. A family that eats at a free dining hall won’t always have to. Every child deserves a chance.
Mike knows what it is like to struggle, because of his alcoholism. “My greatest difficulty and my greatest failure in life is now my greatest asset. I have been in that black hole, and I found my way out,” he said.
Education is a way out for the kids at the center, he said.
Mike and Ana both are awed by the children’s resiliency, that despite worries about where they will live, or if the electricity is on so they can see to do their homework, with toothaches and not enough to eat, they still work hard in school. And they dream.
Mike pointed to the ceiling, where iridescent circles hang in clusters like clouds. During the day, they catch the light from the high windows. In the evenings, he hopes they catch the children’s imagination.
“Even if just one or two kids looked up and thought, just for a minute, now that I’m reading, now that I have computers, now that I have tutoring, maybe this doesn’t have to be my life,” he said.
“Whatever I dream, that can be my life.”
‘So much more meaningful’
The Parkers were reluctant subjects for a story. They gave to build the center and continue to support it quietly. But pressed to talk about it, Mike thought maybe more people would get involved at the center — and they need more volunteers. Maybe it would inspire other people to think about what they could do, big or small, with their money and their time.
“We’re never going to be able to retire,” he said, smiling at Ana. He is 54, and Ana is 55. She smiled back at him. He drives a nice car, but it is more than a decade old. She drives her father’s van. They’ve lived in the same house for 18 years.
They live comfortably, but not extravagantly. Their daughters are grown now, all three college graduates. The Parkers can afford to give. So they do.
Mike shrugged. “How many cars and how many watches does a guy need?” he said. “When we can move past ourselves, past our pride, our ego, past having to prove something, we can do something so much more meaningful.”
There is joy in seeing children sound out words, figure out a tough math problem, think about the future and hope. Jaime, who wants to be a neurosurgeon. Frank, who wants to be an engineer, and Lizbeth, an architect.
“That fuzzy, warm feeling that you get there is incredible,” Ana said. “It doesn’t leave you.”
At last, the answers
On a Tuesday evening, Mike sat at a circular table, his arm draped over the chair of the small boy in a school uniform sitting next to him. He leaned in, listening to Jose Acosta, who’s 8, read over the din of a lot of people in one big room.
He and Jose took turns, each reading aloud a page from David Shannon’s “Duck on a Bike.” “The end,” they read together. Mike checked the timer on his cellphone. “You read that in 6 minutes and 19 seconds. That’s amazing,” he said. They high-fived.
Jose had to write a short summary of the book. He tapped the pencil on his forehead, thinking, and then wrote, “It was about duck riding a bike and at the end all the animals rode a bike.”
A little girl with a ponytail in a pink gingham jacket approached Mike’s chair and stood silently until he noticed her. She waved and handed him a piece of paper. He asked her name. Sofie. She wasn’t more than 6 or 7.
On the back side of the paper, she had written in pencil, “Dak you for bidin this mazin biden. Dak you so much.”
Without hesitating, Mike read it out loud, “Thank you for building this amazing building. Thank you so much.”
She hugged him. He kissed her forehead. He had his answers.
He had found what he was looking for.
How to help the Dream Center
St. Vincent de Paul needs all sorts of volunteers, from patient mentors to people to do some heavy lifting. In the Dream Center, volunteers are needed to tutor or just play games with children. A piano is available for lessons if someone could teach them.
To volunteer, email Jessica Berg at jberg@svdpaz.org. Or, to donate, email Shannon Clancy at sclancy@svdpaz.org.
Details: stvincentdepaul.net /volunteer or 602-266-4483.