Class Act: A Lifetime of Giving

In September 1983, Rich Vannucci sat on a concrete floor in Calcutta having a one-on-one discussion with Mother Theresa. The 24-year-old from Pennsylvania, who was on a yearlong mission to help the poor in India and Africa, exhausted from months of hard work and suffocating Indian heat, was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Happiness is a Cold Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.”

“Mother Teresa pointed at my chest, smiled, and asked, ‘Do you believe that to be true?’” Vannucci recalls. “I said, ‘Yes, I would be very happy to have a cold beer, Mother.’ She giggled like a 16-year-old girl.”

That’s just one of the more epic encounters in Vannucci’s anything-but-typical life, which has been primarily dedicated to serving the needy. His wife of 30 years, Bonnie, has been his steadfast partner in human charity. 

The Lakewood Ranch residents run Operation Serving Children, a small but robust relief agency that provides medical kits to the poor in 38 countries, as well as food and other necessities to people in the Sarasota/Bradenton area. They founded their organization in 1998 — and were all in from the start. Vannucci resigned from his position teaching theology at Cardinal Mooney High School to start the nonprofit. He had no job. The couple had no income and were raising two small children. They got by on their savings. “Conventional is not part of our vocabulary,” Vannucci says. “God provided. We got through it.”

The Vannuccis’ latest venture is a novel titled “Maximum Joy,” its updated edition released on Origin Press in January. The work of biographical fiction recounts Rich’s world travels and life of sacrifice and includes protagonist Nic’s personal archangel, Michael. The 300-plus pages intersperse ample portions of spiritual and socially conscious dialogue. One potently relevant example is this line: “A powerful few own almost everything, and billions live in dire poverty.”

The “Maximum Joy” project had a convoluted backstory, Rich says: He originally wrote a screenplay about his endeavors, which gained some traction in Hollywood, including an offer from a major producer. But Rich wanted to make a film in which the cast and crew donated their time, so the lion’s share of the proceeds could go to charity. “I was naive,” Rich, 61, says of his eight-year screenplay saga. “Hollywood does not do things of that nature. The guy I was working with from DreamWorks suggested I turn it into a novel. This was 2007. I went outside on the lanai thinking, ‘My God, I can’t write a novel.’ I went inside and said, ‘Bonnie would you like to write a book?’”

“I said sure,” Bonnie, 58, chimes in. “I knew Rich’s story, of course, and I also asked him a lot of questions. I did some research on the places in the screenplay. When I wrote, I would get in the flow and feel myself being there.”

The first edition of “Maximum Joy” was self-published in 2008. The new version was rewritten — with increased emphasis on spiritualism and social sustainability — at the behest of Byron Belitsos, the founder and owner of California-based Origin Press, which publishes mostly nonfiction works concerning spirituality, health and philosophy. All proceeds from “Maximum Joy” go to Operation Serving Children, Rich says. So do all the funds they raise from other sources, roughly $25,000 a year. The charity is able to exponentially grow the value of that relatively small sum with donations by food banks and pharmaceutical companies. 

The medical kits, for instance, are packed with about 75 pounds of vital drugs and supplies. Each has a retail value of $30,000, according to the charity’s website. As of October, the Vannuccis were planning to ship 20 packs from Miami to Haiti by boat in January. The disruption of air travel due to the coronavirus pandemic has hampered their overseas efforts in 2020. In an ordinary year, the agency uses roughly a hundred volunteers around the world to deliver relief packages.

Operation Serving Children’s local relief program “teams with other agencies to turn a dollar into 25 dollars’ worth of groceries,” Rich says. The giving — which can also include help with delinquent rent, plumbing services, car repairs and other immediate needs — comes with conditions. In return, a recipient must register at Suncoast Workforce, take workshops and mount a job search. “Our approach is to teach someone how to fish after you’ve given them something to eat,” Rich says. “If they’re hungry, they’re not going to be able to concentrate on how to fish.”

Rich works as a building inspector, and he and Bonnie pour countless hours into Operation Serving Children. They are helped by their sons, Pablo and Marco, and their daughter, Nina — all in their 20s. The family members don’t extract administrative fees, pay themselves salaries, or even stipends. “None of us get any money from it,” Rich says. “We want all of it to go toward helping people in crisis.”