Salvation Army center in City Heights. Kroc’s gift to the Salvation Army was the largest single gift to a charity ever recorded.


SAN DIEGO’S RICHEST PERSON is someone I’ve never heard of: Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer. The Rancho Santa Fe resident owns a 7 percent stake in the family business, Cargill, a purveyor of grain and agricultural commodities with for- ays into financial services and a hedge fund. For a woman whose estimated worth is $4.3 billion, Meyer keeps the lowest of profiles. She lives and trains horses at her Coral Reef Ranch and is a champion jumper.


Forbes magazine, whose definitive billionaire


lists are the oligarch’s equivalent of the Oscars’ red carpet, drops Meyer into their “Silver Spoon” bowl — those who did absolutely nothing to earn their fortune. All inheritance. Cargill, America’s largest private company, is independently man- aged but owned by two families. Forbes says, “They are richer than the Rockefellers, Vander- bilts, and Carnegies combined.” Lord knows I’ve searched, but I can’t find any charity she supports.


COVER PHOTO BY ANDY BOYD. ABOVE PHOTO BY MATTHEW SUÁREZ.


Maybe her giveaways are anonymous. Maybe Meyer is Scrooge McDuck. But many of the gifts of San Diego’s wealthiest donors are well known, in part, because the check-writing moment, if possible to stage, is a media event charities dream of and publicize. Among the top local recipients of San Diego’s


mega-donors are UC San Diego, the University of San Diego, and San Diego State University. Since 2000, UC San Diego has received $730.18


16 San Diego Reader April 20, 2017


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