Thousands attended Larry Thomas's funeral after the former Mountain Pointe High School track coach died from brain cancer in 2019, and nearly seven years later, the mentorship and food-assistance work he started is still reaching students across the Valley. His mother, Charley Taylor, turned that grief into the Larry Thomas Youth Development Foundation, a Chandler-based nonprofit that now runs mentorship programs, food assistance, backpack giveaways, and leadership development opportunities for students well beyond Ahwatukee.
Thomas spent his life helping young people find direction, working as Mountain Pointe's dropout prevention coordinator while also mentoring students as a track coach, according to abc15. Taylor founded the foundation to honor her son, and it has since grown from a personal tribute into a registered nonprofit with institutional backing. The organization received official 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status from the IRS in 2020, and as recently as June, Salt River Project approved a $10,000 grant supporting its workforce and educational programming, according to Granted AI.
A Pantry Built for Weekend Hunger
The foundation's Larry Thomas Pride Pantry helps students get meals over the weekend when school lunches are not available, distributing food boxes to students facing food insecurity. That mission speaks to a broader problem across the region: Feeding America's Map the Meal Gap data, released by the Children's Action Alliance, found that 18.5% of children in Maricopa County experienced food insecurity in 2024, matching the statewide rate of roughly 1 in 5 Arizona children facing hunger.
Weekend food instability remains a significant obstacle for public school students across the county, which is precisely the gap the pantry was built to fill. The same data source found that Maricopa County recorded a 77.6% four-year high school graduation rate in 2024, mirroring the Arizona state average of 77.5% — a statistic that underscores why Thomas's dropout-prevention work mattered as much as his coaching.
Mentorship That Outlasted the Coach
Beyond the pantry, the foundation runs the Iron Sharpens Iron program at Mountain Pointe, delivering weekly mentorship sessions focused on academic tutoring, financial literacy, life skills, and college readiness for minority student-athletes, according to the Larry Thomas Youth Development Foundation. The initiative specifically targets high-risk students in an effort to lower dropout rates and improve their long-term economic prospects. City of Tempe workforce data has found that Arizona high school graduates earn an average of $8,000 more annually than non-graduates, illustrating the stakes behind that kind of retention work.
Thomas's path to youth mentorship ran through the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served during the Persian Gulf War and the Somalia conflict after graduating from Tempe High School in 1991. He later completed a bachelor's degree in 2007 and two master's degrees by 2019, balancing fatherhood and military service before returning to college full time to pursue youth work, per the foundation's account of his life on its website.
From Group Homes to the Arizona Saints
Long before Mountain Pointe, Thomas worked for the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, co-founded the Garret House group home for troubled youth, and established the Arizona Saints Sports Club in Laveen in 2007, according to his obituary from Eastlake Mortuary. The Arizona Saints continue to offer organized youth sports including football and track, extending his grassroots athletic work alongside the more formal mentorship role he later held inside the Tempe Union High School District.
That district still keeps his name attached to its scholarship program. Mountain Pointe High School and Tempe Union maintain three annual $1,000 Larry Thomas Memorial Scholarships for graduating seniors in athletics, academics with a 3.75 or higher GPA, and fine arts, according to the Tempe Union High School District. Applicants must complete at least 35 hours of community service and maintain a minimum 2.5 GPA to qualify.
A School Still Finding Its Footing
For the 2025–2026 academic year, Tempe Union earned an overall A letter grade from the Arizona State Board of Education, while Mountain Pointe individually received a B grade, per district data. The foundation's continued presence on campus comes as Ahwatukee has also weathered heavier moments in recent years — Hoodline previously reported on the community's turmoil after the Maricopa County Attorney declined to file charges in a Mountain Pointe student's fatal stabbing in November 2024, a case that drew strong community appeals for youth violence prevention.
The foundation now describes itself as serving students across the Valley, not just Ahwatukee, and it has an upcoming golf tournament fundraiser planned for September to keep that reach growing. For Taylor, the work remains a way of keeping her son's role as a youth mentor alive in the same hallways where he once served as track coach and dropout coordinator.
