Wings of Faith flies supplies, hope to poverty-stricken Apache tribe

SAN CARLOS, Ariz. — Using a stroller as a walker, Freda Hinton emerges first from the doorless doorway of a one-room plywood structure.

The 75-year-old is too hard of hearing to respond to greetings from Dale Whinery, who flew in from Tustin, Calif., on a mission that morning. So she raises a leathered hand and offers a hint of a gap-toothed grin.

There’s no smile on Carol Hinton’s face. Rubbing weary eyes, she ambles into the sunlight to meet this stranger who’s near her mom’s age but so far from her world.

Carol Hinton, 38, recently managed to get clean, distancing herself from the methamphetamine and alcohol addiction that plagues her San Carlos Apache tribe. The reservation in eastern Arizona is among the poorest in the nation, with staggering unemployment and 55 percent of the population living in poverty.

Though Whinery just met the Hintons, he’s unknowingly been helping them for years.

If it weren’t for Whinery, the six Hinton children and hundreds more on the Apache reservation likely wouldn’t have had any toys for Christmas. They would have gone to bed hungry a few more times, and they would have shivered through more winter nights.

On this visit, he fills Grandma Hinton’s stroller-turned-walker with donated jeans, T-shirts and shoes. He also jots down notes on a crumpled receipt, making plans for his next mission to what he calls “America’s forgotten people.”

They’re known as The Lost Bean Bunch.

Every morning at 6, Whinery and three of his buddies open The Lost Bean in North Tustin. Linked by their faith and zeal for service, the men drink coffee, read the Bible and swap stories — “Some are even true,” Whinery quips.

Here’s a true story that’s hard to believe: Whinery started flying planes at 14.

“I soloed on my 16th birthday, and I’ve been at it ever since,” he said.

He was a corporate pilot for a while, transporting supplies for a lumber yard. He also has pastored a church. But his heart always has been with missions.

Whinery flew to 17 countries in the 1960s and ’70s with Missionary Aviation Fellowship. He’d stay three to six months at a time, eating monkey meat and sleeping in a hammock, planting churches and building schools.

Through that work, Whinery met pilots who wanted to use their passion to give back but couldn’t commit to going overseas. So Whinery and his wife founded Wings of Faith in Tustin nearly 40 years ago to let volunteer aviators do what they loved while serving missionaries close to home.

The group occasionally takes supplies to the homeless or migrant farm workers. But the focus always has been on helping American Indians, flying supplies to remote reservations — some that otherwise rarely interact with the outside world.

“They’re a very proud people,” Whinery said. “It took a lot of years for them to be able to accept what we’re doing.”

Today, the organization serves 39 tribes in five states across the Southwest, with more calls for help than they can fill.

Leaving from Corona Airport, volunteer pilots run one or two missions a week. They also deliver toys each Christmas and stuffed backpacks each fall, plus take on projects like building a well for a children’s home. And grounded volunteers sort donations, service planes and schedule drops.