A grandmother makes a difference

• Posted By: Bryan Chan
• Posted On: 6:34 p.m. | August 20, 2011

She went from go-go dancer to trucking company owner, and now she helps the poor.

Rose Rios is 65  and goes into the worst parts of South Los Angeles to give people money, blankets, clothes and food for her Cover the Homeless Ministry, an organization she started a decade ago. She runs it by herself out of her home, with little to no help from others. Donations fill nearly every room of her house: bedsheets on the porch, cereal and lotion in the kitchen, clothes in the guestroom, dishes and dressers and 40-pound bags of chicken in refrigerators. Some of the people she helps hug her and say thank you. Others scream at her and curse her out. Rios says she doesn’t do it for the gratitude. She does it because she can relate: she dropped out of school at 15 and before the age of 19 she had three children. She was in one bad relationship after another. She learned her lesson and wants others, especially women, to do the same.

Read Esmeralda Bermudez’ story, “A Grandmother Makes a Difference.”