Hometown Healthcare Heroes

Thomas Tighe, president and CEO of Direct Relief for 19 years, was lauded at a sold-out Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics Healthcare Heroes lunch at the Montecito Club.

During his time with the non profit, it has provided cash grants of more than $40 million and furnished more than $4 billion in essential medicines, equipment and supplies to support health services for low-income people in 88 developing countries and in all 50 U.S. states, including 1,500 clinics.

Tighe, who was draped with a laurel wreath by Dorothy Largay, a board member, who had just returned from a trip to Cambodia and Vietnam, was then surprised by a video from former president Bill Clinton commending the work done by the Goleta-based charity, after introductions by clinics board president Melinda Stavely and CEO Dr. Charles Fenzi.

Among the 225 guests for the charity, which has initiated the Healthy People Communities Campaign to raise $20 million over the next five years including a new Westside clinic building, were Leslie Ridley-Tree, Mark Asman, Lois Capps, Das Williams, Randy Weiss, Silvana Kelly, Geoff Green, Tom and Linda Cole, David Edelman, Maria Long, Penny Jenkins, Travis and Jessica Hawley, Peter and Gerd Jordano, George and Laurie Leis, Dana Newquist, Maryan Schall, Ron and Andrea Gallo, Peter MacDougall, Stan and Betty Hatch, Anne Towbes, Bob and Patty Bryant, Alixe Mattingly, Mike Eliason, Denny and Bitsy Bacon, Rolf Geyling, Carrie Towbes and Catherine Remak.