Adviser’s philanthropy takes surprising turn

Until last summer, Constandinno “Gus” Petsas hadn’t spoken to his former stockbroker, Keith Bottoms, for 25 years.

Mr. Petsas, president of Petsas & Hill Certified Public Accountants Inc., ran into Mr. Bottoms again in an unlikely setting — the Bay Area Rescue Mission in downtown Richmond, Calif., where Mr. Petsas has served as a director for the past 14 years, including five years as its chairman.

“One of the homeless men looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him at first. After a few minutes, I realized it was Keith,” Mr. Petsas said.

“He was sitting at the end of a table — stoop-shouldered, looking down, like a broken man. But I knew what a bright, successful guy Keith had been,” Mr. Petsas said.

At the time, Mr. Bottoms, 59, was homeless, struggling with alcoholism and addicted to methamphetamine.

After his initial shock, Mr. Petsas responded in the way he typically does — he began to help.

“Just look at the sign on the front door of the mission: ‘If you don’t have a friend in the world, you have one here,’” he said. “That’s what this place is all about; that’s why I’m here.”

Volunteering at the mission, according to Mr. Petsas, 62, flowed naturally from his work as a financial planner and from his religious faith.

Although he started his career as an accountant in 1971, he became increasingly interested in financial planning and now holds a personal financial specialist certification from the New York-based American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Mr. Petsas also is a registered representative with H.D. Vest Financial Services of Irving, Texas.

“We work closely with our clients and get to know their families, their goals and their values. I realized that holistic planning is the best service we could offer to meet our clients’ needs; fee-based financial planning is now about 30% of our business,” Mr. Petsas said.

“Being a financial adviser is about serving people,” said Mr. Petsas, whose Richmond-based firm manages about $50 million in assets.

“It’s about taking lives and making them better,” he said. “It’s really the same thing that we do at the mission; there’s not a lot of difference.”

Indeed, Mr. Petsas’ encounter with Mr. Bottoms resulted in an intersection of his financial and charitable-work worlds which he never could have anticipated.

Mr. Bottoms had been a broker for more than 12 years, including a stint in the bull market of the mid-1980s at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the now-defunct New York junk bond giant, where Mr. Petsas was a client.

Then things changed. After an on-again, off-again battle with drugs and alcohol, Mr. Bottoms said he began “a long downhill slide” in 1994 that resulted in a full-blown addiction to methamphetamine.

His problems brought him to the mission, a spotless, white two-story complex that is an oasis amid the squalor of crime-ridden downtown Richmond, a once-thriving East Bay port city. Inside, its facilities include a soup kitchen that feeds more than 1,000 people a day, a homeless shelter with 250 beds and a rehab center for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics.

Mr. Bottoms now lives at the mission and participates in its rehabilitation treatment program.

“I’ve been through a lot in my life, and it wasn’t easy for me to go to the mission,” he said. “But it’s been a very supportive environment. People like Gus and the staff who work here really know what they’re doing. It’s been like a spiritual hospital, and it’s saved my life.”

Mr. Bottoms said he hopes to leave the mission by the end of the summer.

“I’m not worried about what will happen when I get out,” he said. “I think I’m going to be fine this time. Being here is like building a house on solid rock. I don’t see how I can go wrong.”

Mr. Bottoms isn’t alone.

Leo Freels, 38, was also homeless and addicted to methamphetamine when he entered the mission’s recovery program in October.

“I had been ostracized from my family and had nowhere else to go,” he said. “The program opened the door for me to start over.”

Today, Mr. Freels works in the mission’s kitchen as a chef and is taking courses at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, Calif., working toward a degree in culinary arts. He expects to have a full-time job in a restaurant within months.

“You see the crazed look in the eyes of the men when they come in,” Mr. Petsas said. “But after we’ve worked with them, you see smiles on their faces, and you see they’re happy, that they’ve found some meaning to their lives. I just love that. It touches my heart.”

Indeed, the redemptive and spiritual components of the mission are critical for Mr. Petsas.

His church, Calvary Temple in Concord, Calif., became involved with the mission in the early 1990s as part of a local outreach ministry program. The mission has re-mained a faith-based organization that does not accept any government funding.

“Before the mission, I did service work with the Rotary Club. But I couldn’t relate to those people. This is so much more rewarding,” Mr. Petsas said.

Over the past 14 years, his dedication to the mission has been nothing if not comprehensive.

As volunteers, Mr. Petsas and his wife, Judy, have worked in the kitchen, served meals and assisted in toy giveaway programs for children at Christmas.

He also has raised money to help the mission expand its facilities to include warehouse space to store food for distribution to more than 2,000 people daily throughout the Bay Area. The mission also provides dormitories for homeless women and their children, a summer camp for kids, job skills training and after-school education programs.

As an accountant and financial adviser, Mr. Petsas has worked with one of his clients to donate a medical building to the mission and also has helped create charitable trusts with the mission as beneficiary. Currently, he helps oversee the mission’s budgeting and reporting process.

“Gus has been deeply involved in helping people here on a personal basis,” said John Anderson, the mission’s president and chief executive. “And he has provided wise stewardship on budgeting and other financial matters.”

Mr. Petsas is hardly slowing down. This year, he is spearheading the mission’s drive to open a facility 35 miles east in Antioch, Calif., and is working with city officials in Richmond to relocate the mission’s downtown building.

“There’s a lot more to do,” he said.

E-mail Charles Paikert at [email protected].