Stan Rubinstein grew up in the Bronx, New York. His wife, Christine Sevcik, was born half a world away in a displaced persons camp in postwar Germany. Their paths crossed decades later in Sacramento, and from that meeting grew a partnership that has taken them across deserts in a Jeep, through years of world travel, and more recently into a shared decision about what they want their lives to mean after they’re gone.
“Early draftees were canaries in a coal mine,” Stan reflects on his service in Vietnam, where exposure to Agent Orange would, years later, cost him his health. Having learned firsthand how vulnerable life can be, he and Christine deeply understand the difference compassionate support can make when hardship arrives.
Two Lives, One Road
Christine and her first husband worked side by side, nights and weekends, sharing in the demanding physical work of building homes for sale before he passed away 26 years ago. She met Stan a few years after that and the two have spent most of their years together retired, filling their days with cruises, adventure, and each other’s company.
Stan’s journey to Sacramento took him from Vietnam, back to New York, and finally to California, where he worked as a transportation planner for nearly 40 years. But it was something he built on the side as a creative outlet that he describes as the highlight of his life — a singles group called “Meeting of the Minds” that he ran for 15 years. Stan designed questionnaires to match people by interests and outlook, then brought them together for discussions that grew into game nights, ski trips, and beach weekends. Marriages and friendships that lasted for decades came out of it. Christine, who volunteered with the group and quickly became indispensable, was one of the people it brought into Stan’s life.
“It was gratifying to provide a safe place for people to open up and meet with compatible people,” says Stan of that memorable period. After retiring, he and Christine spent several years in Baja Mexico, driving the desert with a local Jeep club, before growing medical needs brought them back to the U.S. and, eventually, to Sun Health’s Freedom Plaza, less than two miles from Banner Boswell Medical Center.
A Diagnosis Written in Wartime
Stan has leukemia, a legacy of Agent Orange exposure during his military service. His official diagnosis was preceded by years of chemotherapy, radiation, and a search for a bone marrow donor that stretched on for two and a half years. When Mayo Clinic’s age limit for transplants ruled him out, he found a hospital in San Diego willing to take his case. The donor came through, he recalls, “at the last hour.”
Stan and Christine are quick to credit the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), a nonprofit veterans service organization, for the advocacy that helped them secure disability support. The VFW provided critical guidance through a system that isn’t easy to navigate alone. They now point others facing illness linked to military service toward that same kind of help.
Their day-to-day experience with Sun Health, Sun Health Foundation, and Banner Boswell has only deepened their sense of connection. “Stan has had surgery and procedures at Boswell and the doctors have been consistently skilled and genuinely caring,” shares Christine. “It makes you feel good to be part of the people who support Sun Health Foundation,” adds Stan.
Why Give — And Why Now
Ask Stan how he and Christine decided to focus their charitable giving, and he answers like the planner he spent a career being: he looks at what he has found beneficial in life, and who showed up when he needed support. Add to that his desire to “be both kind and generous” and the logic is simple: “Do you want to put your money into something risky or material, or into something that you know is going to be put to good use?” he asks. “It’s an investment in good.”
“As you get older, you experience the generosity of others. You come to appreciate kindness and the support of strangers more deeply. It inspires you to be generous in the same way to people you may never know.”
— Stan Rubinstein
Christine agrees. She encourages people to sit with the question of what matters most to them, to really get to know the causes and organizations they’re considering. For the two of them, that reflection kept pointing back to the community that has helped support their health and happiness, whether down the street at Boswell or at home at Freedom Plaza.
Neither of them talks about their sharing, but there’s a quiet pride in it, too — a sense of belonging to a group of people who give back without needing credit for it, who may never meet the others in that group but feel connected to them all the same. “We feel that we are getting a lot in return,” they explain. “It’s a pleasure to give back to the universe in our twilight years.”
Stan and Christine have already established charitable gift annuities with Sun Health Foundation, and they’ve since taken the next step of naming the Foundation as a beneficiary in their trust. It’s a decision that grew naturally out of their gratitude, their history, and their belief that generosity is worth passing along.
Your Own Investment in Good
Stan and Christine didn’t set out to become philanthropists. They simply asked themselves who had helped them and how they might return the favor. That question is one anyone can ask.
Make-A-Will Month is a fitting time to ask it yourself. Whether through a simple sentence in your will, a beneficiary designation, or a gift that provides income during your lifetime, including Sun Health Foundation in your estate plan is easier than most people expect, and it ensures that the care you value keeps reaching others long after you’re gone.
To learn more about including Sun Health Foundation in your will, trust, or estate plan and request a free estate planning kit, please visit our planned giving resource page or contact our philanthropy team at (623) 471-8470.
