Estrella Vista Ranch | About EVR

Our Co-founders

Our co-founders, sisters Erica Palacios and Cindy Dickinson (born Cindy and Erica Tahse), have spent a lifetime trying to help the kinds of teens that they themselves were. They were once the teenagers facing the same kinds of challenges that today’s teens struggle with. They also made many of the choices that girls today make and suffered the same results and consequences – some of them quite extreme. Each gravitated toward the helping professions – Cindy to public education dealing exclusively with at-risk teens and Erica to Occupational Therapy and the chance to help kids change those behaviors with more positive results. Through these professions and a commitment to volunteer work, each met many, many girls who could have used a little more help, a little more security, a little more guidance. It became apparent that there was a need for places where girls could rest a bit, maybe catch their breath, and explore some other kinds of behavior that might help them navigate sometimes very difficult lives.

Having had the privilege of helping each other through these difficult times – through high school, college, marriage, child-raising and professional commitments – the story continues on behalf of ALL girls. They realized that they would never have made it without each other and the support that comes with that guidance, that steady hand, that time to reflect -- enough of it to learn to rely on the true gift – ourselves and our connection to something bigger than ourselves.

So it was that our co-founders, with the passion that comes with an overwhelming desire to serve, left their successful careers to give back – through Estrella Vista Ranch. The effort was years in the making, and they have given it their all to produce a place of safety, support and comfort – all in the effort to help girls learn the tools to rely on themselves and to regain their sense of personal freedom and self-respect and the release from victim hood. It is their hope that Estrella Vista Ranch can help these girls become self-respecting, empowered young women with all the hope and opportunity that can and should bring.