The PRT Good Neighbor Award recognizes people who voluntarily build a better community in Canelo, Elgin, Sonoita and Patagonia. We asked our readers to nominate someone they knew who was a ‘good neighbor.’ Thank you for sending in your nominations for the 2024 Good Neighbor Awards. Congratulations to this year’s winners!
Marynell Spicer of Patagonia is one of three people to nominate Darlene Hilgeman of Patagonia as ‘Good Neighbor of the Year.’ Spicer met Darlene two weeks after Spicer moved to Patagonia. Spicer needed a cat sitter when she was called out of town for an emergency, and her neighbors recommended she call Darlene who quickly responded to her call for help.
“One of the first things Darlene did was to get on the floor, eye level with our cats, to greet them and say hello,” said Spicer. “I call her the cat whisperer. People plan their vacations around her availability. She embodies kindness of the highest level, is thoughtful, and always willing to lend a hand. She is a gift and an asset to our community, and I’m proud to call her my friend.”
Darlene and her partner Gage Best, the love of her life with whom she spent 30 years, moved to Patagonia in 1996. They were both consummate volunteers, starting at the Food Bank where twice a month Darlene still helps set up, bag and distribute food. They picked up trash along the roadsides. The couple house sat and pet sat, lived in the back section of a home near the Catholic Church—where Darlene still lives—and did errands for their landlady, such as taking her shopping and driving her to Nogales for appointments.
After losing her partner, Darlene continued her volunteer activities. This past year she made 50 suncatchers for the Patagonia Pool yard sale. At the end of the sale she drove all the unsold items to Hope in Nogales, “so people there can have clothes, kitchen stuff and other things they need,” she said.
Ten years ago Darlene and Patagonia resident Phyllis Klosterman started the Coffee Club, which meets on Wednesday mornings at the Senior Center. Six to 12 people come together to chat and enjoy, or not, coffee. Darlene usually brings greeting cards—get well, sympathy, birthday and friendship ones—and passes them around so that members of the coffee group can add their names and messages. She takes the cards to the post office or sometimes hand delivers them to the grateful recipients. “We have a bell at the coffee club, and if anyone has an announcement or anything to say, they ring the bell,” she said.
Patagonia resident Barbara Ellis also nominated Darlene for the Good Neighbor award.
“Darlene is there for pet and house sitting, picking up mail, grocery shopping and driving to Nogales when needed,” said Ellis. “She is the ultimate volunteer—library book sales and activities, the pie auction, the food bank, helping set up for potlucks. She reminds us of those in need, such as Hope in Nogales and the flooding back east, so that donations can be made. For those in bereavement she makes lists of items that need to be taken care of. She is always ready and willing, with a cheerful face and smile, to help those in need. A Good Neighbor indeed!”
Claire Bonelli, who also nominated Darlene for the Good Neighbor award, added, “She sends greeting cards to friends. Who sends cards anymore? She is on the Board of the ESCCC Food Bank, stayed at the Community Garden Pie Auction to help clean up when almost everyone else had left, walks daily with a friend, and checks books out of the library to read to cats for whom she is sitting. I’m sure that there’s more that I don’t know, but she’s a Good Neighbor.”
Darlene’s life journey began in Western Washington state where she graduated from high school and college. She lived for a few years in a small town near San Jose, California, before moving to Lexington, Kentucky where she worked for the U of K Extension Service for four years. She wrote for the newspaper there, sharing household information like how to use a microwave and providing recipes to readers.
From 1984 until 1996 she worked at the U of A in Tucson, assisting international students “getting in and out of Masters and PhD programs,” she said.
She plans to continue volunteering for the rest of her life. “People here are so friendly and so helpful,” she said. “I don’t do computer or smart phone. I just have that little flip phone. I don’t have any trouble. I love animals and enjoy cat sitting—only cats, and only Patagonia. I am not trying to bring in more work.”
The Good Neighbor award comes with a monetary prize. Hilgeman will receive a $50 gift certificate, and she chose it to be from the Gathering Grounds. True to her nature, she plans to take a friend to share her prize.