She was in her Jeep Cherokee parked at the Valencia mall, on a phone call with her cousin, when she’d learned she was previously mistaken. She rushed the conversation to a close, then jumped on Google, and within 30 minutes, she was on the national kidney donor registry. That was a little over a year ago.
Of course, Valencia resident Renee Graves wanted nothing more than to get on the registry. When her oldest daughter, Jericho, was 25 years old, a routine physical found that she’d been born with only one kidney. Graves had adopted the blue-eyed Jericho, who was three days old at the time, in 1985 after having spent 10 years and 11 surgeries trying to get pregnant. When she learned Jericho had just one kidney, she had to do something about it, but she was not a match.
“I was always under the impression that — and this is the one thing I want to dispel — that you had to have the same tissue type and the blood match, which, because by virtue of the adoption, that would discount me,” Graves told The Signal. “I could not provide that.”
At 68 years old, Graves has spent her life trying to make the world a better place. She feels everyone has that responsibility. Before speaking with The Signal, she sent a Mother Teresa quote over text message: “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.” She takes that quite seriously.
But donating a kidney so her daughter can get a second one goes beyond her just wanting to make a difference.
“Your mother’s heart leaps out,” she said, “and goes directly to action to take care of it.”
Born to a nurse and a crane operator in San Diego, Graves grew up doing chores around the house to “avoid trouble,” she said.
“No one’s going to yell at you if you’re hanging up the laundry,” she said about what kind of kid she was. “No one’s going to yell at you if you’re doing the dishes. So, I did my chores.”
She comes from what she called a “good stock of giving people.” But Graves grew up quickly. In 1974, on the night of her senior prom, she and her boyfriend at the time thought, “Hey, let’s elope.” Hey, they were already dressed for such an occasion. A quick search through the yellow pages came up with the Chapel of Happiness on Broadway in San Diego. What seemed like moments later, the two were married. Then they were off to the dance.
“You know, at 18, you’re very impulsive and very hormonal,” she said. “And very stupid. How about adventuresome? Let’s go with that one. That’s a better adjective, maybe.”
After high school, Graves would attend Southwestern College in Chula Vista, with an interest in business and psychology, and she’d eventually receive her associate’s degree.
But it was during her time at Southwestern that she’d meet a partner she would dedicate her life to for the next 43 years, which, by the way, remains a union she still enjoys to this day.
“While attending Southwestern College,” Graves said, “they were recruiting on campus for a new place called Price Club. I believe it was during summer. I filled an app out, just thinking, ‘Ah, a little pocket money,’ and I let it go at that. Then, in December of ’81, I got a call for an interview.”
Graves was on her way out the door that evening to go roller-skating with her husband and sister-in-law. Upon taking the phone call, she quickly altered course, cancelling the fun night ahead and changing into a three-piece brown suit with vest and skirt, heading directly to the interview at what was then a new volume-oriented cash-and-carry warehouse wholesaler. She got the job.
Over the years, Graves worked multiple positions at the store, from cashier to vault clerk, from positions in membership to administration. While at the Chula Vista store, she even founded and wrote the location’s employee newspaper, which she dubbed “Chula Chat.”
“One of my greatest, prideful, joyful responsibilities was with Price Club,” Graves said. “We did a thing called ‘Food West.’”
At the time, Price Club was looking to provide community outreach, and they’d collect money from partnering individuals and groups, and Graves would pull food off the floor at the store, pay for it with the funds received, and then bring it to those in need at places like the Salvation Army and other community centers.
That work made such a difference, she said. It seemed to be a part of her being, in her “every molecule,” as she put it. She recalled a story she’d heard from her grandfather that might explain why.
“When he was just a kid, there was an epidemic — a flu epidemic,” she said, referring to the 1906-’07 “Typhoid Mary” outbreak. “Everybody was very, very sick. So, what my grandpa did, bless his heart, was he wrote an envelope — ‘If you need groceries, put your list and your money in here, and leave it under your mat, and I’m going to come by on Wednesday.’”
Essentially, those who couldn’t leave their homes could leave their shopping lists and money with Graves’ grandfather, and he’d do the shopping for them, and drop off the groceries and change on their doorsteps.
“He would try different ways to help people and meet them where they were at,” she said. “I like the quote in the movie ‘Robots’: ‘See a need, fill a need.’”
Graves applies that quote to all she does. In the 1970s and ’80s, one need she really wanted to fill was kids.
After Graves and her husband adopted Jericho in 1985, Graves tried one more surgery to get pregnant. This one worked, and on Christmas Eve of 1988, their son, Malachi, was born.
“I never went into any, like, consecutive pregnancies,” Graves said. “That was the one shot. That was it. And a couple of years later — in 1990 — we got a call from the adoption agency asking if we wanted to adopt Jericho’s half-sister, Bethany. We were there a couple hours after she was born.”
In 1994, Graves’ marriage broke up. She remarried in 1996, and in 2002, her second husband took a job offer in Santa Clarita, what she called, in a booming voice, “the job opportunity of a lifetime.”
“So, we packed up our then-three-young-teenagers and moved up here.”
By that time, Price Club had merged with Costco, and all Price Clubs eventually became Costco stores. Graves transferred to the Santa Clarita Costco (a former Price Club), where she’s been since.
“And then, a couple of years later, he (Graves’ husband) passed away,” she said. “At that point, I had the option to go back to San Diego or stay here.”
Here — Valencia — was the better option for her, with great schools for her kids, safe streets and a friendly, fun community.
“I’m next door to the park,” she said.
Her second husband had died of internal bleeding, possibly linked to a horseback-riding fall. But Graves has come to accept it.
“I always go back to, ‘OK, this was God’s plan, not mine. So, that’s what we’re going to work with.’ To this day, that type of thinking is what gets me through.”
Moreover, Graves’ work continues to bring her joy. At Costco, she continues to see needs and fill them.
It was in the fall of 2021 when management began talking about needing to work on sustainability. Graves locked in on that word — “sustainability.”
According to Santa Clarita Costco warehouse manager Elias Rahhal, Graves approached him around that time to discuss the prospects of sending damaged and destroyed produce to the William S. Hart Park barnyard in Newhall. Graves was a regular at the barnyard, as it was a favorite place for her and her grandkids to visit.
In no time, Santa Clarita Costco formed a partnership with Hart Park, and the program took off, Rahhal told The Signal during an interview at the store. About a year later, Graves approached him with a similar request to donate flowers that were otherwise going to be thrown out. She suggested working with the Santa Clarita Post Acute nursing home on Newhall Avenue.
“By the way,” Rahhal said, “flowers have to get tossed in a different format. They can’t go in the trash because it’s organic matter. So now that eliminated yet another step in our waste disposal, and it reduced the amount of organic waste that was going into the dumps because Renee worked it out with this woman to pick up all the flowers that didn’t sell, that we had to pull off the shelf. Now, these flowers may not be perfect, but they’re certainly perfect for the person sitting in a hospital bed who’s not getting any visitors.”
Rahhal was also more than proud to show off the building’s low damaged-and-destroyed numbers on a company spreadsheet from his computer, with 83% of organic waste that would otherwise be sent to the dump now being put to better use, making Santa Clarita the top Costco building for the fiscal year in the entire region, thanks in large part to Graves.
“Renee’s selfless community involvement is impressive, and it sets the standard that we all should aspire to,” Rahhal said. “She’s truly representative of what Costco stands for in the community.”
John Bonilla, the supervisor who heads the damaged-and-destroyed program at the store, added, “I would always say that Renee is the heart of it all, and I’m just the muscle. I just pick up the stuff and deliver it.”
Bonilla applauded Graves for volunteering her personal time at these places, even inspiring co-workers to join her in donating their own time as well.
“She truly is an honest, caring and wonderful person,” Bonilla said, “who exemplifies everything we should all hope to be.”
It helps that Graves is never short of energy. While she typically works the membership counter, she’s sometimes called upon during store rushes to help out at the registers.
Graves said, “My attitude has always been, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to keep up with these 20-year-olds?’ Oh no, honey, these 20-year-olds need to keep up with me.”
Ask anyone in the building, they’ll tell you that once she’s in “full Renee mode,” she’s unstoppable.
But at 68 years old, retirement must be in her foreseeable future. Graves said, “I’m prepping the house. I mean, I just poured a bunch of money into it.”
She expanded on some of the home improvement projects she’s currently doing, perhaps hinting at the idea that she’s getting the place ready for more time at home, before she finally got to speaking about possible retirement.
“You know what?” she asked. “I’m still coming up with so many ideas, and I’m so willing to share my ideas, my time, my energy. I just don’t see me changing that course right now.”
If she wasn’t busy enough at work, Graves finds time to volunteer with Celebrate Recovery, a Christ-centered program that addresses what she called others’ “hurts, habits and hang-ups.” She’s also working to volunteer in another program called GriefShare, which is a grief recovery support group.
But still, she waits to donate that kidney. At first, her transplant team at UCLA told her she had to lower her blood pressure. The determined person she is, Graves quickly adjusted her diet and removed some stress in her life by way of shifting responsibilities off her plate and using a meditation app every night, among other things, and, lo and behold, she got it down. Now she’s told she must lose 14 pounds.
Similar to the phone call she had with her cousin a little over a year ago in the Valencia mall parking lot — when she rushed off to get on the kidney-donor list — Graves is wasting no time trying to get those pounds off, despite everything else going on in her life.
“I’m going pretty full speed ahead right now,” she said. “I mean, Monday, I go from work to my women’s Bible study. Tuesday, I go from work to grief share. Wednesday, I go from work to —”
Just then, the “Gonna Fly Now” theme song from the movie “Rocky” rang out from her phone, an incoming call she had to take, and Graves, answering it with the greeting, “Good day,” went into what must’ve been “full Renee mode,” ready right then and there to tackle her next task.
She was off and running.
Know any unsung heroes or people in the SCV with an interesting life story to tell? Email [email protected].
