Linda Bateman-Gomez:  

Well...let's see..starting this story at graduation seems kind of far back 40 years to be exact...but I can give you the nutshell version :) After graduation, I went to San Francisco State University where I majored in history, which I loved. However, before graduation I heard that United Airlines was hiring, so I applied and became a stewardess. I was hired in 1975 and moved to Chicago where I was based until 1982. It was a job I loved!!!! In 1979 I married my husband of now 34 years. He was a med student in Denver so for 3 years we lived in separate states....then in 1982 I had the first of our 6 children..and moved to Paradise Valley, Arizona where we still reside. Determined to be a stay at home Mom, I left the airlines and started a career in real estate..primarily buying and flipping properties..keeping some along the way as rentals and using some to donate for housing those in need. Special needs adults are often left without housing or support--we used our properties and unofficially adopted many, many special needs adults over the years providing family, food and housing--we are blessed to know so many really wonderful people. By the mid 1990's I wrote a program called Crossroads and was part of a fabulous team, pairing with the United Way and Mesa Cann--to offer a homeless men's shelter designed to put the men back to work-we donated the housing for this and ran it until the ci...Expand for more