2025 True Heroes: Matthew DeGumbia

IN THE SHADOW of El Morro National Monument, where soft Zuni sandstone cliffs rise against the New Mexico sky, a small hub of mutual aid quietly sustains a community of aging artists and homesteaders in a food desert stretching 60 miles from a city in every direction. At its center is Matthew DeGumbia, known affectionately as Twinkle Toes, whose work embodies the kind of grassroots care that has turned isolated rural living into the definition of loving thy neighbor.

For more than a decade, DeGumbia and his partner, Cameron “Dinner” Castro, have wrangled a group of volunteers to become a helping hand for the roughly 400 residents of Ramah. DeGumbia organizes weekly grocery, medication, and animal feed deliveries from Albuquerque, and brings community members together to look after elders’ needs and assist them in their transition to the spirit world. 

“One woman is 92, lives completely alone, and hasn’t left her house in two years,” DeGumbia says. “We’re her lifeline. We’re not a company serving a bunch of strangers on a route. I know these people. It’s all relationship based.”

In June, DeGumbia and Castro took ownership of El Morro Feed and Seed, where they are fixing roof leaks, installing energy-efficient windows, replacing the plumbing, adding a second bathroom, enclosing the back porch, and making the building and parking lot ADA-accessible. 

The more than $25,000 in renovations are an effort to reopen the store and reestablish it as a community hub for local farmers and ranchers to sell their organic lettuce, eggs, and grass-fed beef raised just up the road. In the interim, the property serves as a farmers’ market on Saturdays and Sundays. “It’s more than just buying and selling,” DeGumbia says. “It’s a chance to look each other in the eye, to connect in person, to talk to each other, which is something we’re all missing these days.”

The foundation for DeGumbia’s leadership comes from his mother, a nurse who always advised him to look out for those who are overlooked. But the building blocks were laid while he was living in San Francisco during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. At 17, DeGumbia became involved in the Radical Faeries, the global network of queer activists and artists who practiced community-based mutual aid. “We had to take care of each other when no one else would,” he says. “That value system has stayed with me ever since.”

Today, those principles support a community spread across 50 miles of high desert, often connected by dirt roads. On any given week, 15 to 20 individuals receive deliveries or other direct support. But on a larger scale, DeGumbia says, he and his allies serve around 200 people a month. Over the last three years, for example, the group has built three aluminum wheelchair ramps in homes and modified four bathrooms and showers with grab bars.

“He’s really involved in stepping up whenever there’s a community need,” says Keegan Mackenzie-Chavez, Region 1 representative for the New Mexico Economic Development Department. That includes working to reinstate the nonprofit status of the feed store to broaden its reach. 

“Remember that none of us should be invisible,” DeGumbia says. “Everyone deserves to be cared for.”