Where Your Heart Is, Your Treasure Will Be There A Conversation with Carol "Kelly" Thomas

We are sitting outside Good Earth Natural Foods in Tam Valley on a late April morning — the kind of rare fog-free day where the sun is warm on your face and you don't want to be anywhere else. I'm nursing a chai tea. Those of us who remember this spot as Cala Foods would barely recognize it now. Kelly and I have no shortage of things to talk about.

There's a saying Carol "Kelly" Thomas returns to more than once during our conversation: *"It's worth saying plainly: Marin City sits on prime real estate, tucked between Highway 101 and the hills, minutes from San Francisco. It is one of the most well-located communities in the entire county. Developers have known that for a long time. In the late 1990s, residents were offered vouchers to relocate to Hamilton and other areas outside of Marin City. When the community didn't leave, development moved in around them instead. "Affordable" housing was built — but affordable by Marin County standards, where a single person earning nearly $100,000 a year qualifies as low income. About 16% of Marin City residents live below the poverty line. Compare that to Sausalito at 3.4% and Mill Valley at 5%. The median household income in Mill Valley is over $200,000. In Marin City it's around $69,000. Same county. A few miles apart. The demographics have shifted steadily ever since. Historically disadvantaged and systemic problems persist, creating barriers to equitable access to the arts.

Where your heart is, your treasure will be there."* It's a biblical principle — and listening to Kelly, you can tell she has built her entire life around it.

Kelly has been singing in her community since she was ten years old. She has performed at funerals and festivals, played Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at College of Marin, played Motormouth Mabel in the Mountain Play, and — on a trip to New York with Griot Theater — under the lights of the Apollo Theater. She studied architecture, pivoted to communications, became a certified community coach, worked in mortuary services, and now — at 65 — she is ready to bring a lifelong vision to life: a comprehensive arts-based youth development program rooted in Marin City. The Aragon Foundation, which I co-founded, is committed to helping make that vision a reality by finding the funding to get it off the ground. The more I uncover about what Kelly wants to do for Marin City, the more excited I become. I can't think of anyone more perfectly suited to take on this task — she has the knowledge, the experience, the talent, the vision, the drive, the ability to execute, and the calling. Our visions align. But before any of that can be properly understood, you have to understand where she comes from. And where she comes from is a place most people have never taken the time to truly know.

A Community Within a Community

Marin City is small — fewer than 3,000 people tucked into a valley just off Highway 101 in Southern Marin. About 600 of them are children. To outsiders, it is often defined by statistics and stereotypes. To Kelly, it is something else entirely: a living, multigenerational family.

To understand Marin City's layout is to understand how its community was built. The main streets loop around in a circle, and at the center sat a wide open field shaped like a bowl... a natural gathering place that generations of children claimed as their own. Kids would cut straight through the middle rather than walk the long way around Drake Avenue, throwing rocks into the gravel just because that's what kids do in wide-open spaces. And at the heart of it all, at the corner of Cole Drive and Drake Avenue, was Hayden's Market — founded in 1956 by Daniel Hayden, a Louisiana family who had come to California during World War II. It was more than a corner store... it was where everybody gathered. People parked along the curb, lingered out front, and called the gathering spot "The Front." The bowl itself was eventually developed into townhouses. And Hayden's Market... the community's anchor... met its end in the mid-1990s when the Tamalpais High School District, which owned the land, sold it to developers as part of the Gateway Shopping Center project. The developers made clear they had no obligation to make space for Hayden's in the new development.

When development eventually came to the bowl and new residents moved in, many were puzzled or even upset by the foot traffic cutting through their neighborhoods. What they didn't understand, Kelly says, was that they had built their homes on ground that had always belonged to everyone.

"People parked along there. That was a big parking lot. People hung out there," she explains. "When you see people hanging out around Drake and Cole — that's not a gang thing. That's not loitering. That was a community within a community. And mostly everybody was family."

"When you are a part of something and you can take ownership in it," she says, "you take care of it. You appreciate it. You don't trash it." For Kelly, that's what civic engagement really means — not a concept you teach, but something you feel when the rec center is yours, when the stage is yours, when the community is yours.

The Problem With Programs

Kelly is quick to acknowledge the good work already happening in and around Marin City. "It's all great," she says. "We all work hand in hand." But she also raises a question that deserves an honest answer: when significant funding is raised on behalf of a community, are the children in that community actually feeling it?

"There's a lot of funding coming," she says, "but where do we really get to benefit?" She describes a "split the pie" reality — programs with limited slots, waitlists, and funding structures that can prevent a child from accessing more than one type of enrichment at a time. For the child who doesn't fit neatly into one box — the quiet artist, the sensitive kid who has no interest in athletics — the gaps can be profound.

"If that boy or girl isn't into sports," Kelly says, "what is there for them to do? Nothing. And a lot of times they get isolated. It turns within. It can be very destructive."

What makes this especially striking is how localized the inequity is. The disparity in access to arts programming exists within the same zip code. A few miles — sometimes less — can separate a child with a full slate of music lessons, theater programs, and creative enrichment from a child with nothing. Southern Marin is home to some of the wealthiest communities in California, and yet the children of Marin City, right in the middle of it all, often can't access the cultural infrastructure that surrounds them. The resources exist. The talent exists. What's missing is the bridge.

Kelly's hope is not to compete with or criticize what others are doing, but to fill the gaps — to reach the children who are falling through them, and to do it without turning any child away. The Aragon Foundation's approach is 100% volunteer-run, with no overhead, so that every dollar flows directly into programming. "I've never wanted to see a child not be able to be a part of something because of the numbers or because of the funding," she says simply.

Underlying all of this is a distinction Kelly draws that I keep coming back to... the difference between servicing a community and truly serving one. "You can service a community," she explains. "You can put funding in. You can say, 'We did this, we did that.' But are you really connected? Are you really in tune? Do you really care?" She has a simple test for anyone who wants to do this work... would you do it if there was no money? For Kelly, the answer has always been yes. The question, she suggests, is whether that's true for everyone showing up in Marin City's name.

What an Artist Needs

Kelly's approach to youth development is shaped by her own experience.

From age ten to twenty, she performed in shows organized by David Jones through Concerned Citizens for Marin City, a community platform that raised scholarship funding through theater twice a year. But when those ten years ended, no one asked what came next. No one helped her audition for the Mountain Play, or pointed her toward Juilliard — the school she had dreamed about her whole life, though she didn't quite know how to get there.

That door eventually opened, but decades later than it should have. Through a trip to New York organized by LeShawn Holcomb — founder of Griot Theater Company, a Marin City-based nonprofit dedicated to celebrating artists of color and empowering local youth through the power of storytelling — Kelly finally got to stand on the stage of the Apollo Theater. A bucket list moment she had only ever seen on television... she walked through the doors of Juilliard. Breathed it all in. "Better late than never," she says with a laugh. But the feeling underneath the laughter is something more serious: imagine if I had been able to do that as a young person. Imagine if I had actually attended.

"I've been performing live on stage since I was ten," she says. Those later-in-life roles finally came — playing Motormouth Mabel in the Mountain Play, and Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at College of Marin — but she was fifty years old by then.

The talent was always there. What was missing was access: to mentorship, to pathways, to adults who could see the arc of a child's gift and help extend it beyond the immediate community stage. Griot Theater gave her a glimpse — but it came at fifty, not fifteen. That is the gap Kelly now wants to close.

Her vision is not simply a choir or a dance class. It is what she calls a "full ecosystem" — a comprehensive program that develops the whole person, not just the performer. Singing, dance, theater, stage management, costume design, camera work, writing. Social-emotional development alongside artistic development, because, as she puts it, "if you're not being creative, you're being destructive. They're two sides of a coin."

She speaks from experience. Artists, she says, are deeply feeling people. If they can't channel that sensitivity into creation, it festers. And when young people develop artistic gifts without the emotional intelligence and discipline to handle success, they can shipwreck even when they reach the platform they worked so hard to find. "With each new level, there's a different discipline. They have to have that, too."

The People You Don't Hear About

One of the most important things Kelly wants to do — perhaps as important as any program — is tell the truth about Marin City.

The community has produced physicians, architects, researchers, Olympic-level athletes, professors, and activists. Malachi, granddaughter of community legend Royce, is a nationally recognized researcher. Alicia Sweeney ran at an Olympic level and still holds records at Tamalpais High School. Kelly's own father, "Peewee" Thomas, ran a successful auto detailing business for years and quietly pioneered what became a formal work-readiness program for men returning from incarceration — placing them in jobs, vouching for them with other business owners, giving them the one thing nobody else would: a chance.

"People don't know those stories," Kelly says. "All you hear about is the bad stuff. But if you can see it, you can be it. And most people dream to aspire to be like somebody — but the story out there is that nothing good comes from here. That is not the truth."

She imagines a wall of fame — photographs, names, stories — so that young people walking through Marin City can see themselves reflected in those who came before. It's a simple idea with enormous implications. Representation is not decoration... it's infrastructure.

The sun has shifted slightly through the windows. We've been talking for a while now and show no signs of stopping. Kelly pauses, looks at me, and says something that I hadn't expected: "I appreciate you, Carrie, for stepping into this place and wanting to bridge those gaps — for really wanting to know and see the community for who we are and what we are. For seeing our heart." I tell her the feeling is mutual. It is.

The Man Who Showed What's Possible

No portrait of Kelly would be complete without mentioning Mr. Manaster, a teacher at what was then Richardson Bay School who became one of the most transformational figures in the lives of dozens of Marin City children.

He took kids skiing. He drove them to the go-kart track, then let them practice driving in his station wagon in an empty parking lot after hours. He brought them to the opera, to Black theater, to the Catalina Islands. He attended performances and birthday parties, mailed playbills and newspaper clippings, and showed up again and again — not as a program, not as an organization, but as a person who simply loved the children in his community. He eventually moved to Marin City because it had become his home.

"He could spot what your unique gifts and talents were," Kelly says, "and he would feed that. He made everyone feel special, even though we were collectively together."

She pauses. "I have not seen another one like him. But I think some of us who sat under his tutelage are the ones who do what he did. We just do it in different ways."

It's not a small thing she's describing. That kind of mentorship doesn't happen by accident — and it left a mark that Kelly carries to this day.

Building Lives

Kelly eventually studied architecture before carpal tunnel ended her ability to draft. She grieved the detour... all that work, right up to the finish line, and then a door closed. But in prayer, she found her answer. God, she says, made it plain: "I needed to give you the foundation of what it means to build. Because what you do is build lives."

And when she heard it, everything made sense — the architecture, the communications degree, the mortuary work, the coaching, the singing. As she puts it, community focus — from the beginning of a life to the end of one.

That relationship with prayer runs through everything Kelly does. It resonates deeply with me — I too wake up each morning asking simply: how can I best serve others today?

Now she wants to bring it all to bear on the children of Marin City — not as an outsider with a clipboard and a grant cycle, but as someone who grew up there, who cut through the middle road, who sang at her first funeral at ten years old and hasn't stopped serving since.

"If you're not an asset, you're a liability," she says. "Marin City has been looked at for too many years as a liability. We have to help people construct and reconstruct — and become assets to their community."

She's starting with a youth choir. But the vision is so much larger than that. At 65, Kelly thinks a lot about legacy. "With all the gifting, with all the talent, with all the ability that I have," she says, "what good is it if I take it to the grave with me?" Legacy, to her, is not about recognition. It is about continuity — training the next person to carry the work forward so that when she is gone, the community doesn't lose what she has spent a lifetime building. "Legacy is about what you leave behind for somebody else to continue."

More than anything, it's about making sure the next child with a voice like Kelly's and a dream like Juilliard doesn't have to wait until they're fifty to find their stage.

Before that, on May 9th, Kelly will take the stage at Bridging Creative Possibilities — an inaugural gala benefiting the Aragon Foundation and DrawBridge Arts at 2 Embarcadero in San Francisco. An evening of live music, an art auction, salsa lessons, DJ Legacy, and dancing in an immersive gallery setting. Every dollar goes directly to expanding access to music, art, and dance education for young people in Marin.

And then on May 16th, Kelly will be celebrating her 65th birthday at karaoke night at the Marguerita C. Johnson Senior Center, right there on Drake Avenue in the heart of Marin City — surrounded by friends, family, and neighbors, doing the thing she has done since she was ten years old: singing.

Our hour was up and my chai was long finished... but I could have talked another hour or two. It's clear we are passionate about the same things — singing, and being of service to others.

The sun is still warm on our shoulders — warm enough that I walked away with a little sunburn. No fog today. Marin City is just a few miles down the road.

As we wrap up, Kelly looks at me and says simply: "Thank you for coming into this place and caring."

It's worth saying plainly: Marin City sits on prime real estate, tucked between Highway 101 and the hills, minutes from San Francisco. It is one of the most well-located communities in the entire county. Developers have known that for a long time. In the late 1990s, residents were offered vouchers to relocate to Hamilton and other areas outside of Marin City. When the community didn't leave, development moved in around them instead. "Affordable" housing was built — but affordable by Marin County standards, where a single person earning nearly $100,000 a year qualifies as low income. About 16% of Marin City residents live below the poverty line. Compare that to Sausalito at 3.4% and Mill Valley at 5%. The median household income in Mill Valley is over $200,000. In Marin City it's around $69,000. Same county. A few miles apart. The demographics have shifted steadily ever since. Historically disadvantaged and systemic problems persist, creating barriers to equitable access to the arts.

Where your heart is, your treasure will be there.

For Kelly... both have always been in Marin City.

Carol "Kelly" Thomas is a community artist, vocalist, certified community coach, and co-founder of programs under the Aragon Foundation serving Marin City and beyond. To learn more or get involved, reach out through the Aragon Foundation.