City of Refuge’s Loren Ditmore serves Sacramentans in need as a ‘father to the fatherless’

Andrea Gill had been struggling with homelessness for years when she first showed up to the City of Refuge’s Oak Park safe house. After surviving nearly a decade of human trafficking, Gill fought to stay afloat without a consistent support system nearby. She hadn’t spoken to her adoptive parents in years.

Meeting Rachelle and Loren Ditmore, the co-founders of City of Refuge, transformed her life. Gill entered the program during its inaugural year in 2012, finding the confidence to improve her life with the Ditmores’ support. Having the couple as parental figures — especially Loren, the first man she’d felt fully comfortable around after years of trafficking and unhealthy relationships — encouraged her to rebuild bridges with her own parents.

Prior to officially debuting City of Refuge as a nonprofit, the Ditmores frequently opened up the beds and couches of their Oak Park home to at-risk young women. They had both been active in nonprofit work when they first met, and they said they strove to emulate God through public service after they married.

Elliana Ditmore, the couple’s 11-year-old daughter, called her dad the “father to the fatherless.”

“The way he loves Rachelle and the way he loves his children, it’s the most honest love I have ever experienced — and when I say children, I don’t mean just his children. The whole community are his children,” Gill said. “He reminds me of Jesus, honestly.”

Loren Ditmore brushes off most of the praise he receives from the people with whom he works. In his view, he’s merely a good neighbor who helps people get their lives on track.

The Ditmores have helped over 650 homeless women and families secure housing since founding City of Refuge, with thousands of people stopping by the nonprofit’s Oak Park location for meals, parenting classes, children’s activities, and a safe place to spend time each year. Women and children who stay in the nonprofit’s safe houses may live there for up to two years while they pursue job opportunities and treatment for mental or physical health. At another location, City of Refuge provides a daycare service for children while their parents attend classes or work.

Loren Ditmore has become a fixture of the community.

“You know you grew up in Oak Park if this was your dad,” a former student at a local after-school program captioned a Facebook photo of Ditmore playing basketball with him and other children.

A personal drive to serve others

When Ditmore was a child, his own father worked with underserved children as a youth pastor, giving him an early taste for serving those most in need.

“My own heart was drawn to this work, but then after being able to be involved with the kids and families, I fell in love with this neighborhood,” Loren Ditmore said. “I’m shaped by how much I saw my own dad loved others, but also just for the people.”

Ditmore is a father to six children of his own, including Heavenly, who he and Rachelle took guardianship over after the girl’s mother was incarcerated when she was in elementary school. Heavenly’s mother, who received help from the Ditmores before she was arrested, quickly called the couple to ask them to take her daughter in — she had no family able to care for Heavenly in the area, and she trusted the Ditmores.

They took Heavenly in without a second thought.

In part, the women and youth Ditmore works with feel comfortable around him because he personally understands many of the hardships they have survived. As a child, he endured a “tumultuous” upbringing, including periods of economic insecurity, relatives struggling with substance use, and experiences with sexual abuse.

“It was through my own experience in life that really crafted who I was and what I wanted to do. When I see these kids out here, I see a lot of what I grew up in,” Ditmore said.

Rachelle Ditmore emphasized her husband’s humility as the reason he is a “real father” to all those he works with: the best dads, she added, are those who make sure their children are fed before they are and are often never seen.

When the couple was in the process of building the nonprofit’s first safe house, Loren Ditmore would stay up working on the building past 3 a.m.

“I think about stories like that, of him working tirelessly by himself, building for others the kind of home that you would want your children to live in,” she said. “Loren finds joy in helping people live the life they deserve.”

An unconditional love

Jeanette Diaz joined City of Refuge’s program about eight years ago as a single mother. She survived human trafficking during her teenage years, and once she gained freedom, she found herself without housing, employment, or a stable source of money. She was terrified at the prospect of being separated from her daughter, making her afraid to get help.

City of Refuge allowed Diaz to reimagine a life for herself. Beyond the new resources and education that helped her gain access to housing, work, and social services, the Ditmores’ lack of judgment and investment in her well-being gave her the motivation to take control over her decisions. She began to see Loren Ditmore as the first father figure she and her young daughter had ever known.

Diaz spent several years receiving help from City of Refuge before graduating a few years ago. Today, she and her daughter live in their own apartment, and she works at a local nonprofit that supports survivors of human trafficking.

Gill’s progress towards self-sufficiency and stability wasn’t linear. Over the course of five years she was a self-described “prodigal daughter” to the Ditmores, leaving and returning to City of Refuge multiple times before graduating permanently. Loren Ditmore welcomed her with a “Biblical, unconditional love” each time she came back after “falling off.”

When Gill got a job as a construction worker after the first time she graduated, Ditmore gifted her with her first tool belt. It had been his own when he worked in the field several years earlier.

Thanks to the Ditmores’ unwavering support, Gill lives in a home with her son and plans to go back to school in the fall.

“The happiest thing is when you’ve known somebody for a long time and you see where they started and where they end up,” Lorn Ditmore said. “It makes me so proud to see someone like her being a mom and caring for her children.”