For 45 years, Rainbow Acres has served as a home for adults with developmental disabilities in the Verde Valley.
In the time since it founded in 1964, what was once a makeshift facility that housed its ranchers in trailer homes, the facility has evolved into 12 homes for ranchers, with space for 10 each in a modern building featuring a common living area and kitchen.
This weekend, on its 45th anniversary, Rainbow Acres began sales of its first ever historical retrospective of the growth of the community on the edge of the Yavapai- Apache Nation. “For The Ranchers: A History of Rainbow Acres” was unveiled at an anniversary banquet on Friday, Oct. 25, and will be sold in the future on the Rainbow Acres website and through the Camp Verde History Museum.
“This really is a major milestone for Rainbow Acres, because we’ve come so far,” Rainbow Acres Development and Marketing Director Tony Zodrow said. “Especially in the last 20, 25 years, with the growth of the campus and the improvement of the quality of life for the ranchers.”
Though Rainbow Acres treated its 45th anniversary as a major step in its history, the weekend was typified as well by the same anniversary activities that the ranch does every year for this weekend in October: Family & Friends Weekend.
“Mainly we get a lot of families of the ranchers who come to spend the weekend with their loved ones and to be together to experience the ranch as a collective community,” Zodrow said. “The real value is not only spending time with the loved ones who live at the ranch, but also getting to connect with other families who have adult children with developmental disabilities. And then also we offer special programs throughout the weekend.”
Among those special programs were a panel on financial resources and navigating the legal issues of guardianship for adults with developmental disabilities and another on how to assist in vocational and career skills. In addition, the weekend, running from Thursday, Oct. 24, through Sunday, Oct. 27, featured a barbecue open to the public, a choir performance, and a talent show. Throughout it, parents and friends of the ranchers were given a chance to see how their loved ones live at Rainbow Acres.
Rainbow Acres currently houses 91 individuals, all with some form of developmental disabilities. According to Zodrow, there are 20 different diagnoses for the 91 ranchers, ranging from more common issues like autism or Asperger syndrome to rarer ones like Fragile X — a learning disability caused by damage to the X chromosome. The ranch has seen notable growth in recent years, especially with a rise in new patients on the autism spectrum.
“What it’s all about is quality of life, providing an opportunity for personal growth so that they realize their full potential as individuals in a very supportive, caring environment,” Zodrow said.
“People with special needs are actually some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet in your life,” Zodrow said. “They have a genuine affection and curiosity about other people, and it manifest itself in ways that are quite profound relative to how people respond and interact with them, get to know them, and get to realize that people with disabilities are some of the best people you’ll ever meet in your life.”
