TIME Magazine

Certain Charity

Posted Oct. 08, 2001 It's a quiet midnight on a muggy weekend in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. Along the city's grimy main artery, Calle Ruben Dario, homeless people are camped out in a clutter of cardboard boxes. Suddenly a caravan of vehicles wheel up, and a handful of youths pile out. They begin ladling plates of steaming beans and rice from kettles in the rear of a pickup truck.

Leading the charge is Cameron Gray, a paunchy Texan with a booming laugh, who greets the startled street people in rapid-fire Spanish. Checking a nearby culvert for more mouths to feed, he spots a bedraggled young woman lying, arms outstretched in the dirt, with three young daughters sleeping by her side. Gray dispenses food and then reaches into a bag for three Beanie Babies. "It's people like these, who are the hardest to help, that need our help the most," he remarks.

Every other month for more than 15 years, Gray, 57, has been making a humanitarian-aid run to Latin America to personally deliver food, clothes, wheelchairs, medicines and other essentials to thousands of orphans and other homeless souls. A onetime Fort Worth trial lawyer, Gray gave up a lucrative practice in the late 1980s to create Orphans of the World, a charity that he runs with his wife Mary and a tiny staff from a group of cluttered warehouses next to his home in Grand Prairie, Texas. "Cam looked in the mirror as he was shaving one day and didn't like what he saw," says old friend Bob Wilson. "He realized that there was a more fulfilling life out there helping others."

What makes Gray special among relief workers is that he personally documents the delivery of the goods he collects, thereby assuring donors that their gifts are getting to the needy. Toting two cameras, Gray snaps pictures of aid recipients sitting in their new wheelchair or clutching their new Reeboks and sends them to the benefactors, sometimes from a laptop. "Nothing grabs givers like photos, receipts and other hard documentation," he explains. "Givers tend to remain generous when they really know their gifts are being received by the poor." That assurance has helped him build a stable of more than 100 steady contributors, including National Spirit Group, a Dallas custom-apparel maker that keeps him stocked with T shirts, hats and warm-up suits. The Mormon Church sends food and hygiene kits, and Southwest Airlines provides old uniforms and flight bags.

Gray acquires goods at liquidation sales and by bartering with a network of Latin contacts, who help smooth his way through Customs and provide other favors. He recently secured corrective surgery for a Salvadoran boy with a deformed leg in exchange for providing a surgeon with a supply of crutches and leg braces. A range of Rotary Clubs and other service groups assist the Samaritan with logistics and funding so that he can mount missions as far afield as Kosovo, Kenya and Argentina. Through Airline Ambassadors, an aid group of airline employees, Gray grabs air-cargo space for his bulky shipments.

Dozens of volunteers, including farmers, real estate agents and computer execs, join him on missions at their own expense. "My motive is selfish; I feel so good doing this," explains Paula Moran, an airline passenger-services agent in Boston. "I meet the most generous people up here and the most grateful ones down there."

Says Gray with a chuckle: "People think I've gone off the deep end, but I feel like the luckiest guy in the world because now there's the opportunity to give back." The empathy springs from his own youth in Oklahoma City, where he spent five years living on the streets. "I know what it's like to be hungry," he says. And because of him, this is a knowledge that some kids might not have to share.