This Human Interest story involves several players, a tragedy, a dream and a Will to make a difference. Every story has a beginning and a purpose and a whole lot of challenges on it's journey to success. Signs Of Silence has all of that and more. Few know about our beginning ... It goes beyond our home page message and much deeper.

SOS's owner, Roy, comes from a family of 7 children and a father who served in the US Navy for close to 30 years, a dedicated and loving mother and 2 brothers who served in the Airforce. A very structured, moral and old fashioned values upbringing. After graduating HS, Roy became a banker for 10 years where he learned business sense and management. During those 10 years he got married and had 2 children. Also during that time Roy decided to take asl classes to communicate with his brother in law Dan, his oldest sisters husband, because he is deaf.

It was after Roy completed asl 4 at Mesa college his family moved to Jacksonville, Florida for more training working with the deaf and learn interpreting and deaf culture. On Valentines day in 1991 is when the tragedy happened with his deaf friend Debbie (explained on the website homepage), who died when 911 was not equipped to respond to a call from someone deaf.

After this tragedy, Roy moved his family back to San Diego. Unsure of his future, a friend of Roy's named Dorothy, suggested he start a business for the deaf and raise money to help them. (Roy's skill in banking was marketing and bringing failing banks to profitability). Roy accepted the challenge and received his non-profit application from the IRS to become a 501 C 3. With no business degree or background at owning a business, let alone a non-profit business, Roy decided to quit his full time job, live on his savings account and start researching our deaf community in SD. It took approximately 4 years of research meeting with high profile deaf leaders asking advice, gathering statistics like unemployment, population, legal and educational statistics and more. One question was asked every place Roy went (police stations, fire departments, schools, court houses, hospitals, etc)...If a deaf person came to you and needed an interpreter where would u get one? Surprisingly not one place knew. D in the phone book for Disabled or D for Deaf ?? That was their response. The need became obvious.

Roy also made appts and met with several agencies in SD in an attempt to find out what services were available to our deaf friends for every kind of need and to partner with them to make sure everything was accessible. It wasn't a pleasant and well received beginning with SOS. There was overwhelming opposition, in part because SOS mission was not clear or understood. In the process of starting SOS there were many challenges to overcome including financially.

Because SOS did not have a reputation in SD there was not alot of support from our deaf community. But in spite of the challenges and opposition from the community SOS wanted to serve miracles started happening. The application to the IRS took less then 2 weeks to approve (in most cases it takes 9 months or longer). And with the application there were fee's involved, $750. Someone from our community stepped up and paid for it, an asl student and her parents who were taking asl classes. They understood the need and liked what they saw.

Once we were approved as a no-profit agency we were offered a free office space for the 1st two months, the same location SOS is at now. But with no money or investors or established fund raising plan SOS became one year behind in rent, struggling to get things going at the beginning. The owner of the office space was patient and believed in us and allowed us time to catch up, which we did. We were selling hot dogs and sodas in front of WalMarts, and Target stores on weekends, making $800 each time...car washes, See's Candy sales, anything we could do to not only raise money but get the word out. It worked !!! Not only did we catch up on rent but word started spreading about us.

In the 14 years SOS has been around it has been named Business of the Year 10 times, received the Channel 10 Leadership award, over 600 mentions in the newspaper (several feature articles), 12 times on CNN, 10 different radio station interviews, Voted top non profit agency in the world for the deaf, 2 Wall Street Journal recognitions and several international advisory boards invitations. We've written 7 small grants and received everyone of them (usually to fund a deaf event like Summer camping trips). To this day our mission has never changed, we've never had to move our location or discontinue a program, we are debt free and our total support comes from fund raising events in the community.

Signs Of Silence's direction comes from a board of directors who are regular everyday hard working deaf citizens who have no lables or notoriety. They are deaf and hard of hearing people just like those we serve. They are our heroe's because they care about their community.

There's more we could share, much more, but before SOS started being recognized for it's accomplishments there were many failures along the way. Lessons have been learned too, but the Vision has always been clear and the path has always been straight and one thing is guaranteed...SOS and those involved will always remember where we came from and our beginning. What has always worked will never change...People Driven, not Program driven. Thanks....