Margaret Case spends hours each week helping at the Immigration Resource Center across the border in Naco, Mexico. The resource center helps immigrants who are sent back from the United States find their families and give them food and shelter until they find their way back home.

Case grew up in a loving family, participating in Girl Scouts and being an active member in her church.

“Girl Scouts is the reason why I am the way I am today,” Case said, “I have had so many people open the doors for me so I have the desire to give back.”

Case dedicated her life to helping people in different ways. In Kentucky, where she lived before Palominos, she was a defense attorney until 2007. She focused on death penalty defense and set out to challenge the laws. She also tried to help people from getting the worst penalty possible. Ironically, she met her husband while working at a prison.

“He was an official at the prison, and that is how we met,” Case said, “It was pretty funny because during the wedding, on my side there were a lot of public defenders, and on my husband’s side, there were a lot of prison guards and officials.”

Case fell into volunteering for the center because her love for birds, which lead her to this side of the country. Case and her husband share a passion for bird watching. “If you ask any bird watcher, they will tell you that Southeast Arizona is a mecca for bird species. In Kentucky. you can find about one species of humming bird. Out here there is about 15 different species of humming birds.” Case said she has found birds from all over the world because of the open space in Arizona.

“We have even had jaguars and bobcats in our backyard,” Case said. “Tell any bird watcher you’re from Southeast Arizona and they’ll start drooling.”

Because of bird watching, Case has traveled the world in search of some of the most beautiful and rare species. She has traveled to Italy twice, Costa Rica, Nova Scotia and many other places, including England where her sister lives. Case does not have any children of her own but her husband has five grandchildren from his first marriage.

“Each time one of the grandchildren turned 12 years old, we tried to take them on a trip somewhere,” Case said.

Since retiring to Palominos in 2007, Case has been enjoying the time off and spends most of it exercising, reading and following her passion for bird watching. When she first moved here, Case went to Douglas where filmmakers were showing films about immigrants and their stories and travels through immigration. When she was down there, Cecile Lumer, the creator of the Immigration Resource Center, was passing out flyers and asking for people to volunteer and help.

“I was watching these films and they were just amazing. I had no idea what happened behind the scenes,” Case said, “Then I saw Cecile and she was passing out flyers. She also got up on the stage and gave her speech for people to come help.”

Case began working at the Immigration Resource Center as a volunteer for only four hours a week helping with whatever needed to be done.

“My Spanish is not that great, so it was tough for me to help translate and communicate with the immigrants, but I did my part in helping with food and making coffee or doing paperwork,” Case said.

Now she spends more time volunteering at the center, helping with writing human-interest stories or press releases.

“I have a journalistic background, so I can help with doing the writing portion,” Case said, “We are also opening up a shelter area so now a job of mine will be to find sheets, beds, things like that to make a place comfortable for them.”

“It’s a shame how the country treats the immigrants,” Case said. “I just want to help them, and I understand what they’re doing is illegal, but there has to be a better way to manage things.” Case, along with her colleague, Lumer, was just in El Paso for a conference about border issues.

“Even at the conference, the border patrol had said that the wall we are building could slow down an immigrant only three or four more minutes,” Case said. “It’s like they say, ‘You build a 40 foot wall and someone will find a 41 foot ladder’.”

Case is happy with her retirement and the time she spends out in Palominos. “Recently, my sister from England came out to visit, and I didn’t realize how much I was talking about being retired,” Case said. “But I am just really satisfied with how my life is right now; I’m really just happy, happy, happy.”