St. Jude's Ranch for Children is marking 60 years of caring for Southern Nevada's most vulnerable kids with a black-tie gala in Henderson later this month, capping a year that saw the Boulder City nonprofit open a $25 million campus built specifically for child trafficking survivors. The organization began as a vision on 40 acres of desert land six decades ago and has since grown into what its leaders describe as a campus of healing and innovative programs, according to seed facts detailed by KLAS 8 News Now.
The anniversary event, called Gala for Good: A Diamond Jubilee, will take place at Green Valley Ranch Resort on Saturday, September 19, running from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., according to KLAS 8 News Now. Proceeds are meant to raise support for the nonprofit's continued work with vulnerable children and young people who rely on services throughout the region. The station notes the organization grew with support from the community — a description that traces back to its earliest days, when the ranch received fundraising help from Las Vegas entertainment royalty including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shecky Greene, according to the Boulder City Review.
A Purpose-Built Campus for Trafficking Survivors
The gala arrives less than a year after St. Jude's Ranch opened its Healing Center, a 10-acre campus in Boulder City featuring six residential homes designed specifically to house child victims of sex trafficking between the ages of 10 and 18, as reported by the Las Vegas Sun. It is the first purpose-built residential facility of its kind in Southern Nevada. St. Jude's Ranch also opened a dedicated Clark County School District school on the same campus, staffed with trauma-informed educators to teach trafficking survivors and foster youth without requiring them to leave the therapeutic setting, according to Vegas PBS.
As of August, the nonprofit had raised $21 million toward the Healing Center's $25 million goal, with the remaining funds earmarked for furnishing and finishing the homes so young survivors have furniture and technology in place, per Nevada Business Magazine. The fundraising milestone underscores that the campus, while open, is still being completed piece by piece with community contributions.
From Foster Care to Cradle-to-Adulthood Services
St. Jude's Ranch now serves youth from infancy through age 25, a scope that includes therapeutic residential foster care, transitional housing for homeless youth, and support for pregnant and parenting teens, according to entity background compiled by Lexicon Bank. That expansion reflects a broader push to interrupt generational cycles of abuse and trauma rather than simply house children temporarily. Leading that work is CEO Dr. Christina Vela, who brings more than 20 years of experience in child welfare, including prior leadership roles with the Clark County Department of Family Services, as reported by Voyage LA. Vela previously served as the organization's Chief Program Officer before taking the top role.
The nonprofit also runs Clark County's only dedicated nonprofit program for Sibling Preservation, an effort to keep brothers and sisters connected when they are separated within the foster care system, including through events like Camp To Belong Nevada, according to St. Jude's Ranch for Children. That program has expanded beyond Southern Nevada, offering consulting nationally to help other agencies replicate the sibling-focused model.
Why the Need Keeps Growing
The scale of the challenge locally helps explain why St. Jude's Ranch keeps widening its services. Federal statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recorded 4,044 children in Nevada's foster care system as of late September 2024, alongside 5,778 verified child maltreatment victims statewide that year. Separate federal outcome tracking found that just 61% of surveyed 21-year-olds who aged out of Nevada foster care between 2020 and 2024 had earned a high school diploma or GED, while none had completed a bachelor's degree, according to the U.S. Administration for Children and Families.
Those gaps are part of why St. Jude's Ranch has built out transitional housing and career scholarship funds for older youth exiting the system. In March, the nonprofit partnered with Las Vegas eatery The Blooming Bistro to place transition-age youth into hands-on hospitality jobs, industry certification programs, and mentoring — a collaboration Hoodline previously reported gave trainees working experience alongside industry-recognized credentials.
Sixty years after starting as little more than desert land and a plan, St. Jude's Ranch now points to that arc — from basic shelter to a specialized campus with an on-site school, sibling program, and workforce pipeline — as the story it wants supporters to fund at the Henderson gala this month.
