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.’
Gift certificates to local restaurants were awarded to both the winners of the contest and to those who nominated them.
Thank you for sending in your nominations for the 2023 Good Neighbor Awards.
Congratulations to this year’s winners!
Dena Ploetz
Gail Christmann nominated Dena Ploetz for the PRT’s Good Neighbor award. She wrote, “Since opening her business, The Corner Scoop in Sonoita, three years ago, Dena has been an amazing contributor to our community’s welfare. She has annually collected winter coats for children and adults, collected backpacks and school supplies, supported the local food pantry locker, and most recently sponsored a larger, locked, and staffed food pantry at her place of business. She assisted with the Sonoita Helping Hands Thanksgiving Dinner at the fairgrounds on Thanksgiving day. I don’t know what else she may be involved in, but I’m sure there is more. Dena is a supporter of local 4-H, our fire and rescue service, and is always stepping up for those in need in Sonoita and Elgin. She employs local staff and is always ready with a smile. Dena works long and hard hours and is a valued businesswoman in our town. Oh and another thing—she has been coordinating holiday meal boxes to be distributed by the Arizona Rangers Sonoita unit.”
“If I have it, I’m going to share it. Money means nothing to me,” said Dena Ploetz, founder of the Food Bank and Helping Hands Sonoita, parent organization of the food bank/pantry. “My dad was that way. He would give you the shirt off his back. I watched him and saw what a great person he was. It breaks my heart to see people go without.”
Dena Ploetz was born Dena Cummings in Silverton, OR, where, as a young girl, she helped her dad race greyhounds. During her childhood, the Cummings family moved all over the West following the greyhound races, until settling in Marana, AZ where Dena attended high school. She and her dad maintained a close relationship, and during her senior year at Marana High, they started a plumbing business together. (It remains active today as Cummings Plumbing, run by Ploetz’s nephew.)
After graduating from high school in 1986, Dena married Jason Ploetz. The couple had three daughters. Currently one lives in Minnesota, one is a senior in college in Las Vegas, and one is in Albuquerque with her two children, ages nine and six. “I can’t wait to go home and be with my grandkids,” Dena said earlier in December.
Dena combined marriage, parenthood, and a career for the next nine years, working as a respiratory therapist and X-ray technician at Tucson Medical Center. Then, in 1995, she moved to Albuquerque. Ever the entrepreneur, she started three internet companies. After a time, she became interested in working for Starbucks, eventually becoming a manager and then a training manager for the company.
Three years ago, Sandra Cummings, Dena’s mother, opened the Corner Scoop in Sonoita. Cummings had long had a dream of running an ice cream/coffee shop where local people could meet, gather and share time together. But three weeks after the Corner Scoop opened, Cummings fell, had hip surgery, and was subsequently confined to a wheelchair and couldn’t possibly run the Scoop. Dena came to the rescue, coming from her home in Albuquerque to run the shop. She even brought a Starbucks espresso machine with her and has trained all her employees to use it.
Dena loves being at the shop and shares her mother’s commitment to provide a place in the center of Sonoita where neighbors can gather to meet and share their daily lives. “I have good people working here. They are amazing,” Dena says of her eight employees.
Seeing the need in the community for a food bank, Dena set to work to establish one in Sonoita. In October, a structure to house the food bank was placed next to the Corner Scoop. The Food Bank is staffed and open seven days a week to serve good healthy food to the community.
Dena was home in Albuquerque over the holidays, enjoying her family, especially the two grandkids. Her plans involve eventually, perhaps in about two years, going back to Albuquerque to retire near family.
“I would miss Sonoita so much,” she said. “I have to find the right person to run the Corner Scoop. And I want to be sure to keep Helping Hands Sonoita/the Food Bank operating. I am honored to be the Good Neighbor Sonoita for 2023. I would never have thought of it. I am not doing anything special.”