Longtime Rancho Santa Fe resident maintains an unwavering commitment to community involvement

For more than three decades, octogenarian, financial advisor, and longtime Rancho Santa Fe resident John Seiber has been a generous philanthropist, serving on foundation boards and spearheading multiple fundraising efforts for organizations including the Rancho Santa Fe Foundation, Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park, and the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy, now known as Nature Collective. Still, his longest philanthropic involvement is with St. Madeleine Sophie’s Center, an organization established in 1966 whose original mission was to support preschool children with developmental disabilities.

In 1972, however, in response to newly enacted government requirements to educate children with learning disabilities, SMSC changed its focus to meet the needs of adults with disabilities instead.

Now, more than 50 years later, the center offers one of the largest programs of its kind in San Diego, providing educational and vocational programs to more than 400 individuals with intellectual disabilities such as autism, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy.

Seiber first became involved with SMSC through his wife, Patricia, whom he met on a blind date in San Diego while she was a student at the San Diego College for Women, now the University of San Diego. While in college, Patricia was close with one of her teachers, Sister Maxine Kraemer, who a decade later in 1968 became director of SMSC, overseeing its transition to adult care. 

In 1992, while serving as the center’s board chairman, Seiber established the Kraemer Endowment Foundation in her honor to give SMSC a firm financial footing.

Born in Kentucky and raised in Kansas City, Seiber arrived in San Diego — like so many others — via the Navy. Following graduation from Rockhurst University, a Jesuit university in Missouri where he studied economics, Seiber enlisted in the Navy aviation flight training program in Pensacola, Florida.

“The Navy asked me where I wanted to be stationed after flight training. I was hoping to see Europe and the Mediterranean, so I said the East Coast. Naturally, they sent me to MCAS Miramar,” laughs Seiber, who served as a naval officer and carrier pilot from 1955 through 1960. “And the Navy knew what they were doing,” Seiber adds, still laughing. He and Patricia have been married for 66 years and have four children, as well as nine grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Today, SMSC sits on a five-acre campus in El Cajon, and many of the adults the center works with have autism, which, as Seiber notes, “comes in varying degrees, some more disabling than others.” But rather than “disabled,” Seiber prefers the term “differently abled.”

“Many of these people have unique abilities, including a woman who if she heard a song only once could immediately sing it back to you, even if the words were in a foreign language,” says Seiber.

While leading programs in everything from Adaptive Computer Training, Aquatics and Fitness, and Behavior Modification to Art Therapy, Culinary Arts Training, and Organic Gardening, the teachers at SMSC understand these hidden talents and work to pull them out, empowering students to reach their full potential.

Under Seiber’s leadership, the foundation has given more than $6 million in direct aid to SMSC. The endowment has also grown from $200,000 in 1993 to $15 million, with a goal of reaching $16 million by December. To that end, the Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Foundation in San Diego, which supports autism education, is currently matching all donations dollar for dollar up to $50,000.

To learn more about St. Madeleine Sophie’s Center and to support the Kraemer Endowment Foundation, visit stmsc.org or contact kraemerfdn@gmail.com.