Ruth Orford just wants to "help make good citizens." So once a year she invests generously in the lives and education of children at-risk whose backgrounds might otherwise offer them limited chance of success in school or in life.

Save Our Students (SOS) is the program Orford and her late husband Dr. Richard Orford founded in 1998 with money they had originally set aside for the care of their daughter who had Cystic Fibrosis. After their daughter died at the age of 31, the Orfords, who have two surviving sons, sought to use that money to make life better for children struggling with social, emotional and financial hardships.

"We wanted to put that money to good use, and we knew the Catholic schools had a good reputation," Orford explains.

It was that reputation alone that drew the Orfords to make their money available to Catholic schools. Neither Ruth nor her husband had a background in education: Ruth was an art student and stay-at-home mother and Richard held a PhD in Engineering. And neither was Catholic: Richard was Jewish and Ruth was a non-denominational Christian, but not attending church at the time.

"Richard used to read the New York Times regularly," Ruth recalls. "He read about scholarships in the schools of the Archdiocese of New York and figured there would be something comparable here in Los Angeles."

The Orfords had previously funded college scholarships, "but I got to thinking about children who may not even make it through high school and realized our money could help these children that others might give up on," Ruth says. So they approached the Catholic Education Foundation of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to set up a program that would reach out to children that others might shun.

In SOS, children are selected for assistance based on social need in addition to their financial need. "The children we select do not have to be good students, but they do have to be children at-risk," she emphasizes.

On April 23, Ruth Orford is being honored for her work by the CEF at a luncheon that celebrates SOS' tenth anniversary. She admits that beginning SOS was a gamble at first, knowing that the children they sought to help were very needy in so many ways. Nevertheless, they put their faith in Catholic schools to provide the education, support, structure and values that the children so desperately needed.

"We were concerned at first about how they would do on exams, wondering how their academic performance might affect the outcomes for these kids," she says. "But we are very pleased with how it has gone. They are all success stories."