At PRC’s Mighty Real gala in San Francisco this month, Castro Country Club CEO Billy Lemon shared a story with an unexpected connection to the organization’s past. He told guests he entered a residential treatment program operated by Baker Places in 2013 and found sobriety there. The same residence, PRC later recounted, had been a workplace decades earlier for Louis Dunn, a counselor who supported people through recovery and other challenges.
The connection joined two moments in one place: a person receiving support, then another person providing it. PRC’s post-event account says Lemon spoke at the Oct. 2 gala at Bimbo’s 365 Club. The account was published this week as the organization shared stories from the evening and explained its coming transition to the name Ascend.
PRC says Baker Places later became part of the organization. Nearly 13 years after entering the residence, Lemon now leads the Castro Country Club, which PRC describes as an organization that creates community and possibility for people in recovery. Those details come from Lemon’s story as presented by PRC; the public event account does not provide a separate interview with him or additional personal history.
The link to Dunn emerged through a film created for the gala. PRC says Dunn had served as a residential counselor at the same home decades before Lemon arrived. The organization’s account also describes Dunn’s work with people living with HIV/AIDS, people in substance-use recovery, and people navigating benefits, employment, and disability services. It presents his work as part of a much wider network of programs that eventually came together at PRC.
After the film, Lemon offered a reflection on what communities carry forward: “Legacy isn’t simply what we leave behind. It’s what we set in motion,” PRC quoted him as saying. The line accompanied a story about a residence that held different roles in two people’s lives, years apart. It does not establish that Dunn and Lemon met or knew of one another; the connection is the home and the support offered there.
The San Francisco Bay Times independently reported on the Oct. 2 gala in an Oct. 9 account, describing its “Legacy, Purpose, Future” theme, Bimbo’s 365 Club venue, and PRC’s work in behavioral health, housing, workforce development, and legal advocacy. The paper also reported the announcement that PRC was changing its name to Ascend. Its coverage does not include Lemon’s recovery story, which comes from PRC’s own post-event account.
PRC said the gala raised $264,000 for its services. The Bay Times’ story had been published before PRC released that figure and said the total was not yet available, so the amount here is attributed to PRC rather than presented as independently confirmed. PRC’s current account says the name change will roll out across its programs, buildings, and communications over the coming months.
The evening included another image of how individual stories can be held together. PRC said guests wrote names on 150 mirrored pieces, each recognizing someone who had made a positive difference in their lives. The pieces were assembled backstage and later revealed as the word Ascend. That was the organization’s event description; its point was not that everyone’s experience was the same, but that a community can be shaped by many people’s acts of care.
The gala brought those reflections into one room, but Lemon’s story stretched back to a residential program and then forward to his work with a recovery community. Dunn’s earlier service at the same residence made the overlap visible. PRC’s account offers one specific example of support moving through an institution over time, without suggesting that a single program can define anyone’s path or guarantee an outcome.
The organization’s name is changing, PRC says, but its event account frames that transition around the people and programs that came before. For Lemon, the story began with help he says he found in 2013. At the gala, he described what that history means to him now: a legacy can continue through the care people choose to offer others.
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