A safe place

Tim Norseen inspired his mother to build a ranch that would be operated by the developmentally disabled. Many hands are working to make it a reality.

February 4, 2001

By LORI BASHEDA
The Orange County Register
From Orange

When Karen Gillett told her grown son Tim that they were going to start a ranch where he could live and work with people just like him, he wasn't convinced it was such a good idea.

"But I know all the bus routes around here," Tim said. "And I have to bowl on Saturdays."

His mom assured him that he had some time to get used to the ranch idea. "It's not going to happen right now," she said. "It's going to be in the future."

"I'm not ready for the future," he said.

And that is exactly why Karen Gillett is starting the ranch.

Karen is 61. Her husband, Fred, is 57. Tim is 39. He's also developmentally disabled. When they go, who will look after him?

Even now it's tough. Tim has been on his own in an apartment in Anaheim for 13 years.

"Friends" steal his baseball cards and cash his checks. Cashiers short-change him. He has been sold everything from Franklin Mint sets to book-club memberships. Someone sold him a digital subscriber line; he doesn't even have a computer.

"It's a cruel world, in case you hadn't noticed," said Ralph Showers. The Baptist minister gained national attention in 1973 when he started Rainbow Acres, a first-of-its kind working ranch for developmentally disabled people. Rainbow Acres is what the Gilletts are using as a model for their own ranch.

Back in 1973, many people thought Showers was nuts. All he had was 10 acres of Arizona desert and a trailer. But he had friends and family who believed in him and agreed to help.

Then one day a few months into his dream, he straddled the metal roof of a barn he was moving to the ranch on a truck. While lifting a telephone wire, his back brushed against a power line and 7,200 volts of electricity ripped through his body. Both his arms had to be amputated.

The local power company gave Showers a $375,000 settlement. He used it to build the ranch. And he made national headlines: Disabled man builds ranch for the disabled. More money poured in, some in envelopes simply addressed to the "Man with No Arms, Arizona," he told the publication Charitable Legacies.

From the start, Showers has called the loss of his arms not a tragedy but a miracle. Eventually his ranch turned into four ranches. And he helped start two dozen others around the nation. Now he is advising the Gilletts on their ranch.

The couple formed a nonprofit organization called The Timothy Circle Inc. The land, when they find it, will be called the Circle T Ranch. "A circle," Karen Gillett said, "it's like a hug. It rings your arm around people. It just feels good."

Her son will be the model for the sort of rancher they want to live on the Circle T Ranch.

Tim Norseen is the first of three children born to Karen from a previous marriage. He has an IQ of 69. The ranch will take people with IQs of 60-80.

Tim bowls every Saturday morning with others who are developmentally disabled. Baseball is his favorite sport to watch, then basketball, ice hockey, auto racing and just about any other sport. He keeps two TVs on at once so he can monitor different games at the same time, and has savant-like tendencies of retaining sports statistics and music trivia. He is a huge rock 'n' roll fan; his favorite group is Yes.

Tim's dream is to be on the TV show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" and meet Regis Philbin. His mom taught him to read. He reads dictionaries and encyclopedias. But he has trouble making change.

He can cook macaroni and cheese but pretty much lives on TV dinners.

Tim has a counselor through his independent-living program, "but it's not enough," Karen said.

"Just like when you were in school and there was always some kid picking on some other kid," she said.

"The bullies," Fred Gillett added. "They're still out there."

This is what Karen was thinking about when she began sobbing on her knees in the church at Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside in August. She was there with two of her church friends. One was Loretta Miller of Santa Ana.

Miller and Karen call each other every morning at 8 a.m. to pray for a few minutes, often about Tim. She recalls that day when Karen broke down.

"Of course when she cries we cry," Miller said. "So we were just three girls, sitting there having a good cry. And then we got back on our knees and prayed. All of a sudden she looked up and said 'Look there.' And up at the ceiling there were some little square windows. All of them were open. Karen said 'God will open some windows for me.' So we all cried again."

Just then Debra DiPasqua, the third friend, remembered that her teen-age daughter had recently returned from Rainbow Acres. The girl went there with her church youth group to work with the developmentally disabled ranchers for a week and returned full of praise.

Later that day, back at home, Karen sent an e-mail to Rainbow Acres. The ranch was full. She called other ranches and they had waiting lists too. Fred suggested they start their own ranch. "And I felt like a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders," Karen said.

"This is not a whim of ours. We really feel God has placed this in our heart. We came to the point where we feel like we've been successful in our lives and now we want to do something significant for other people."

Circle T Ranch will be self-supporting, like the original Rainbow Acres. The residents, the Gilletts envision, will be ranchers growing avocados or citrus along with some seasonal produce such as herbs or pumpkins to sell. The salary they make will cover room and board, then some.

The ranch will have a chapel, a schoolroom, a dining room, and possibly a pool. The couple's mission is to create a safe haven where the residents can grow as individuals, face challenges and take pride in their work.

The couple will start small, taking in maybe half a dozen ranchers, but work up to two dozen some day, plus a small staff. They are looking for land in less expensive parts of San Diego County.

The second Timothy Circle board meeting was held last week. A fund-raiser committee was organized with friends, fellow members of the Old Town Preservation Association in Orange and fellow congregates at Crystal Cathedral, where Karen.

In spring the couple will open their 1888 historic registered home for a fund-raising antique fair and Victorian picnic. Eventually they will sell the house, which also is where they run their occupational safety consultant business, Xordium, to live on the ranch.

So far the couple has received $4,000 -- money friends and strangers mailed them after they sent out an e-mail in December about their dream.

Showers said he started out with less. "We were as poor as can possibly be, and we just kept sharing (our dream)," he said. "When you decide to help people, that turns people on."

For more information, check out www.thetimothycircle.org, or www.ralphshowers.com.

Links to other web sites do not imply an endorsement of such sites by The Timothy Circle, or any financial relationship with such entities or individuals. Such links are provided for informational purposes only.