He's led one of Southern Nevada's largest charitable organizations for 12 years, bringing help and hope to some of the valley's most vulnerable people.

Deacon Tom Roberts is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Deacon Tom Roberts is set to retire from Catholic Charities at the end of this year.

He leaves behind a legacy of more than a decade of service to the people Catholic Charities serves and the Las Vegas community as a whole.

Deacon Roberts shared some of his experiences with us during a community meal service.

So take me back to 2012; that is when you started here.

And how did that come to be?

(Deacon Tom Roberts) So I got ordained as a permanent deacon in 2011.

It takes about five years in the Catholic Church.

And I was working as an executive for the Fertitta brothers at Station Casinos.

Also did some work for the UFC and was still doing that full time and had my part-time gig as a deacon at my local parish.

And so it was a year after I was ordained, and the local bishop at the time, Bishop Pepe, called me over the weekend and said, We've had this tragedy.

You know Monsignor Leary?

I said, Sure I do.

And he said, Well, he's passed away.

Very unexpected.

It was devastating for all of us that knew him, you know, first and foremost.

And I said, Gosh, I'm so sorry to hear that, Bishop.

He said, You know, we don't know what we're gonna do with Catholic Charities, because this was unexpected and, frankly, we weren't planning for this.

And I said, What can I do to help?

He said, Maybe come over to the house, and maybe you could talk with me, because you're a business guy.

I said okay.

I did.

And we talked about it and decided that--that was over a weekend--on Monday morning, we would come here, and he would tell the staff what had happened.

So we talked to the staff, and I'm in the back of the room just listening.

You might imagine, there were a lot of tears and a lot of shock and a lot of what I'd say, paralysis.

People were frozen.

But nobody stopped working, and I remember that still very clearly.

So we came back to the conference room, and we were there to counsel and just listen to people.

So I went home and my wife Karen says, It had to be a tough day.

I said, it was really a hard day, but nobody stopped working.

And I said, Everything that they do every day still happened.

And that stuck with me.

So I went back to work the next day, and the bishop called again and said, you know, Can you maybe help us out with some transition leadership, because we need to figure out what to do.

Sure.

So I'll come down a couple hours a day, in the afternoons after I get some of my day job stuff done, and I'll just help out.

So that's what I did.

So that went on for a couple months, and I finally said to the bishop, Look, I gotta really get back to my full-time job.

I got traveling to do and stuff.

He says, Well, the Board and I'd like to talk to you, sort of download with you.

So I went down to the bishop's office, and they asked me for some feedback.

And I said, Maybe this will help you, my two cents for the last couple months, just giving you an outsider's perspective as a business guy, but as an outsider.

And so I did, and they said, Can you give us a couple of minutes?

And so I stepped out and went back in.

They said, Well, we have already started a search process, and we've interviewed some folks, and you know what, we've made a selection.

We'd like you to do this.

And I said, You who?

He said, Well, you know, you, Deacon.

We think you're the perfect guy for the job.

And I said, Well, I already have a job.

And they said, We, I know that.

But you know, would you give this some thought?

Just give it some thought.

So I went home.

Of course, my wife's like, how did the meeting go with the Board and the bishop?

I said, You better sit down.

So anyway, I elected to take it after a lot of prayer and discernment, and that was 12 years ago.

So maybe God had a funny way of tickling my ear because of this tragedy, and at least I was perhaps a good enough listener.

I loved my career in the gaming industry, almost 30 years, and I've done some crazy things, like open The Forum Shops and help build the Rio and travel around the world.

And I'm so grateful that I have the chance to be here.

-How would you describe the growth since you've taken this position?

-Beautiful, unexpected, maybe a little unprecedented.

I never had, when I first started, a master plan for what was going to happen until I was trying to finalize where the stability level was.

Where is the sustainability level?

Start with that.

Don't get over your skis and start thinking about growing the program until you know about it and understand where the sustainability margin is.

So really, for the first year, that's what I focused on and then put together sort of a three-year projection for the Board and rolled that out.

Just kept it in three bullet points, because I'm a really simple guy.

I say I try to keep things in the Fisher Price level, right?

Because that's the only way I can understand it.

And then for me to make sure the team can understand it, I think it has to be distilled down into something easy.

Our strategic plan for the agency is on a mouse pad because it has the mission statement in four key areas that we focus on as an agency.

And everybody can understand that because it's simple and it's straightforward, and they see it every day, and I see it every day.

-What are those four points?

-You know, it's sort of our four, what we would call our key competencies, and that would be, you know, being the largest men's shelter in the market, being one of the largest food providers, as we call it, food for life.

So food for life; sustainability; collaboration is one of those four bullets, because we don't do everything.

We do a lot of things, but it would be silly for us to try to replicate resources that exist in the market.

So I spent time getting to know the landscape of the not-for-profit sector.

And then the fourth is really being an area of trust for clients in the community and our team.

That, I think, is really important, because I've learned that the only way these folks will stay here with us for more than a day or two is to trust us.

That takes time.

And that doesn't mean that you question why they're here.

You don't ask what happened right away.

You let them bring it up, and you just let them know that they're always welcome.

-Tell me about what's going on here right now.

-So this is the daily community meal.

I've been told that it's been going on every day, never missed a day, for 50 years.

I know it hasn't missed a day in 12 years, even during the pandemic.

-Under your watch.

-Never stopped.

We found a way to keep going during the pandemic.

And that's a testament to this team.

And nobody blinked when we were all getting this news, right, as a population.

Lots of unknowns, more unknowns than knowns, about what was happening.

Nobody here said, You know, I just want to go home, or, you know-- again, not to criticize how other organizations handled their team and their organization.

I can only know about what we did, and we were able to stay open, because we quickly realized that the people we serve had no place else to go.

We were not going to turn our backs on them; we were going to keep helping them.

-Was that your proudest moment here?

-Gosh, I think so.

There are a lot of them, but I'm so proud that the team never wavered, and I didn't have to ask.

Frankly, by then, I knew.

I didn't know what I didn't know as far as what was happening, but what I did know was I didn't have to really ask anybody to stay open.

There was never even a question.

It was, okay, what are we going to do to pivot to keep going when other things around us are closing for very good reasons.

But we said we really can't.

I mean, we're the last line of defense for many of these people, so we have to figure out a way to keep going.

So, yeah, I'd say that would be on the top of the list of things that I'm so grateful and humbled, humbled to serve with the team that does this kind of work, because they set their own wounds aside, and they focus on the wounds of others.

And that's not easy to do, but that's what our team does every day.

-When we talked ahead of this interview about your history here, you brought up the task that you were given following One October.

What was that?

-Well, like us, right, everybody was shocked and horrified.

I may have shared with you that my wife and daughter and their friends had gone to that show every year before that weekend.

And as irony or, as I say, the Holy Spirit had it.

There was a mix up, and they weren't able to get tickets.

They would have been in the front of the stage, because that's what they did.

So I was home that night and was asleep, and I got a phone call.

And Governor Sisolak said, you know--Commissioner Sisolak--you know, You heard about this tragedy?

Well, I hadn't.

I had been asleep.

So I went down to the site with Sheriff Lombardo and walked and cried, and there were no words.

And at that point, he said, Will you help us with our recovery?

I said, Yeah, what are you going to do?

He said, We're going to start this thing called the Las Vegas Victims' Fund so people have a way to give to support recovery.

Sure, whatever you need.

That was it.

And then I think it was the next day, the Commissioner called a meeting with maybe 16 or 18 people in the county conference room and said, We need to form sort of a group that can sort of organize and lead this charge.

And so they'd asked me if I'd be on the group, and I said, Well, sure.

Then they said, Will you be the leader of this initiative?

And I said, I really don't think having a clergy guy lead it is probably the best, because we want to make sure this is large reach, right?

Don't want to give anybody a reason to say no.

Why don't you-- I'll be the vice chairman.

And my old boss at Station Casinos, who was the right guy for the job, Scott Nielson, was selected as the chairman of the commission, or the group that led it, and I was the vice-chairman.

And 16 of us met over at the Springs Preserve in that conference room next to the kitchen every week, or sometimes multiple times a week, and debated and thought about and researched and came up with a protocol to try to figure out a way as, how do you rate or rank death and transactional destruction when you give out money?

So I reached out to the folks in Boston and Miami and said, What did you guys do?

And we came up with the protocol, and we distributed all that money.

Every cent that we collected went out.

Everybody donated.

Bank of America, lots of organizations that helped with the transactional issues, nobody even asked for a dime.

I think we got all that money out in about 75 days.

And that was a proud moment as a Las Vegan, that as my community was suffering, my home, I was able to do a little something, maybe, to help.

-Why are you retiring?

-This team is ready for the next step, and I think having fresh leadership after 12 years is a good thing.

I love this place.

I love the people.

I always will.

And, you know, I think that I'm gonna have a chance to maybe do some things that I have not been able to do because I've had a busy, great career, like travel and see some of my siblings that are getting older like me and that live in other parts of the country, and maybe spend a little more time with my wife and my adult children.

You know, this is a very demanding job and I love it, but I'll always be a permanent deacon in the church.

The word "diakoneo" is Greek for "service."

So having a deacon run Catholic Charities has been a special gift for me, and I'll continue to serve the church, and then I'll ask to see what God has in store for me.

-Deacon Tom, thank you so much for talking with Nevada Week.

-God bless you and keep you safe.

-For more interviews like this, go to our website, vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

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