The Joe Carroll story is the archetypal American epic: A poor kid from the Bronx with a knack for making a buck seeks fame and fortune in California with the goal of becoming a millionaire. But Carroll’s fame, fortune and notoriety were divinely redirected from personal gains to more universal ones.

   He arrived on the West Coast in 1963 with $50 to his name and began to reflect on his childhood. Carroll remembered sitting down to dinner with his family in the two-bedroom apartment that sat directly across the street from their parish, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Despite meager accommodations of its own, the family of 10 would pray for the less fortunate.

   So rather than making financial investments, Carroll made a spiritual one and entered the seminary. In 1974 he was ordained a Catholic priest and for the next eight years devoted himself to parish work, building a strong group of supporters who found his charisma and gregarious personality hard to resist. But as his congregation grew, so did another group of San Diegans: the homeless. Bishop Leo T. Maher was well aware of the problem and appointed Father Joe to head St. Vincent de Paul in 1982, which at the time was nothing more than a lunch line and thrift store.

   Father Joe realized a meal was only the first step; there needed to be a more substantial collection of programs and services in place to positively impact the lives of San Diego’s homeless. With that in mind, he devised the idea of an urban oasis, organizing a board of prominent San Diegans who joined him in putting into action his grandiose plans of building a Village within a city.

   Father Joe developed a "one-stop-shopping" approach to rehabilitation that profoundly impacted the entire country’s philosophy of care by placing clients in a respectful and dignified environment, while facilitating easy access to a comprehensive list of services.

   In addition to shattering the status quo of second-rate buildings and scattered services, Father Joe and his team developed what has become known as the Continuum of Care, a unique approach to human service assistance combining all of the elements of rehabilitation in one location. This innovative formula for programs and services has been endorsed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a prototype homeless rehabilitation facility.