Ginny Graybiel

It was, to be sure, an unexpected way to rekindle her tennis game and reach a new height.

Fourteen years ago, Mia Vaughnes, then 46 and a financial planner in San Diego, asked her new client, Valveta Jones, also 46 and a personal trainer, to list her goals. “I don’t tell many people what my goals are,” Valveta responded. “No judgment,” Mia reassured her. “That’s what I do for a living. I need to know your goals so I can help you.” Relenting, Valveta wrote at No. 1: “Becoming a nationally ranked tennis player.” She had started playing with her mother when she was 9, then continued playing sporadically. 

Ironically, Mia, a deeply Christian woman, had recently had “a heart-to-heart conversation with God”. “Who are you? Write it down,” she recounted God telling her. “And the very first thing I put on that list was ‘I’m a tennis player.’” She had played tennis with her father from the age of 9 to about 16, something she recalled as a great bonding experience, but hadn’t played much since then. In the realm of sports, her college years at the University of California-San Diego had been occupied by crew.

So when Valveta wrote that she wanted to be nationally ranked, Mia immediately responded: “So do I.” They agreed, “Let’s do it!” Off they went to Houston, then Philadelphia, Mission Hills and Monterey.

“We were just having fun,” Mia said. “We just hit it off right away.” Mia and Valveta both attained national rankings though they didn’t end up playing together exclusively. But this year, Valveta told Mia: “We gotta get back to our dream. We gotta go back to Houston where it all started.” An early-round loss last March didn’t discourage them. “You always learn and you’re always growing,” Mia said. “You’re living the dream, and you just take it to the next match.”

Go back to Mia’s conversation with God.

Besides writing that she was a tennis player, a mother to a daughter and a daughter herself, she wrote: “I am an artist.”

“I knew in my heart that I was, but I didn’t know how it was going to manifest. But I decided to dedicate action to everything on that list in gratitude to God for creating me like he did.” Soon, a male friend of Mia’s offered to build her an edible garden. Then, the two built a garden together. “It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” Mia said. “It was massaging the earth like it was my heart. We picked out our plants and plot-planned everything. We prayed over every little thing we put in the ground. It was bountiful. But it was bittersweet because it would be so much sweeter if we could share it with others.’’

In short order, she and her friend were sharing in a way that would make a massive impact on San Diego. They started Good Neighbor Gardens, and over the past 11 years, their company has designed, installed and maintained more than 350 edible gardens in customers’ yards. They both left their other jobs.

“I always felt like I should be doing something bigger for the general public, like teaching people how to love each other, and sharing is a simple way to do that,” Mia said. “Love your neighbor. Get outside because God reveals himself in everything that He’s created.” Good Neighbor Gardens also assembles boxes of produce for online subscribers and donates leftover produce to charity or to elementary school programs for garden education.

“Every time I watch a video of these sweet children in the garden and how excited they are to harvest what they have grown, it brings me so much joy,” Valveta said. “I think, ‘Wow, Mia, look at what you are doing -- changing the world.” 

Mia’s mission to “change the world” also is rooted in her outspoken advocacy, as an African American, for social justice. “It’s our heritage. Even before we were brought here forcibly, we were one with the earth,” she said. “I call what I’m doing ‘urban share-cropping.’ People ask, ‘Why would you use that negative term? You know that’s when our people were subjugated.’  And I say, ‘Well, people are sharing their crops. So I’m trying to flip the script.’”

Whether Mia’s friends, tennis colleagues and customers are talking about her tennis, business or social justice initiatives, they tend to describe her with the same words: “beautiful,” “passionate,” “upbeat,” “community builder,” “absolutely memorable.” 

Esther Leeflang, a tennis friend and customer, noted that Mia’s voice is especially critical as one of the few African Americans playing upper-level tennis in San Diego. “One of the top things I love about her is that she takes on social and political causes unapologetically,” Esther said. “With the recent events and Black Lives Matter, it’s on her mind, and I like that. She talks about it to everyone because the world needs to change. Sometimes it just takes one conversation to open peoples’ eyes.” Esther also called Mia “a fierce competitor” who’s creative in her strokes and has “a nice little grunt.” She said she’s “absolutely a vision” -- even down to her court attire.

“When we played in Indian Wells, she showed up in a little bucket hat with ladybugs on it,” she said. “And then, the next day, it was a little bucket hat with bees on it. I played against her a couple of months ago and she was wearing ’70s tube socks. I said, ‘If I win, you’ve gotta give me the socks.’ I won, but she said she was holding on to the socks.”

Janene Christopher, another tennis friend and garden owner, noted that Mia’s tennis game is on par with her fashion game. “She’s a great athlete,” she said. “She has a helluva slice. She can run anything down.” Above all, Janene said: “She’s a warrior on the court. But she’s also a warrior.”