Angel of the Garbage Dump: How Hanley Denning Changed the World, One Child at a Time

Angel of the Garbage Dump Hanley Denning pulled thousands of children out of the desperate Guatemala City garbage dump and gave them a Safe Passage.
Maine-native Hanley Denning saw poverty and desperation in its ugliest form, and refused to turn a blind eye. A former track star at Bowdoin College, Denning was struck by what she saw at the Guatemalan City dump: garbage pickers competing with vultures for the food dumped by trucks, toddlers playing amidst rats. The experience prompted her to, as Mother Teresa said, “find her own Calcutta.” Hanley called her family in New England and asked them to sell everything she owned and wire her the money. Then, she launched an educational reinforcement nonprofit called Safe Passage, or “Camino Seguro,” and helped pull thousands of children out of one of the largest urban landfills in the Americas. Denning was killed in a car accident outside the Guatemalan capital in 2007, but Safe Passage continues to change countless lives today.

Author and journalist Jacob Wheeler lives in Traverse City, Michigan, with his wife Sarah and children, Nina and Leo. He publishes the Glen Arbor Sun newspaper and teaches at Northwestern Michigan College.
Wheeler fell in love with the Central American nation while studying Spanish in Quetzaltenango in the Guatemalan highlands. His first book, Between Light and Shadow (University of Nebraska Press, 2011) covered Guatemala’s child adoption industry.
Wheeler’s reporting has won awards from Project Censored and the Michigan Press Association. A native of Denmark, he has filed stories from five continents, and his work has appeared in such publications as The Rotarian, Teaching Tolerance, Utne Reader, In These Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Detroit Free Press, and San Francisco Chronicle.

“Guatemala City overwhelms with its crowded, harsh and even hellish realities, its endless varieties of human cruelty and corruption. But it is also home to beauty and innocence, humble and brave human endurance, resilience and generosity. An observant and compassionate writer, Jacob Wheeler is impressively up to conveying all that he encounters. The story he tells here, of the unlikely heroic young American angel and her collaborators, will alternately make your heart and mind glow with hope, but also painfully wrench them. I felt the majestic yet modest shadow of the young George Orwell rustling through pages of this beautifully written, remarkable book.”
— Francisco Goldman, Guatemalan-American bestselling author

“Hanley Denning’s story is filled with practical magic, brought to warm, vivid life by Jacob Wheeler’s reporting and storytelling. It’s a handbook, too, filled with dramatic triumphs and hurdles, on how to be a neighbor, a maker, a parent, an engaged citizen, no matter your home. In this book are simple but critical lessons about living; there is much we can learn from Wheeler’s telling of the story. This book needs to be on every library shelf and in every city hall in America.”
— Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author

“Gorgeously written, Jacob Wheeler’s compelling tale of the power of one is required reading for anyone who feels the call to serve humanity. It is an account of how selfless love, lived presence and trust earned mobilized a community and created diamonds of hope from the ashes of despair. It begs us to ask, what we, too, can do?”
— Carrie Hessler-Radelet, NGO leader and Former Peace Corps Director

“Today the world needs more Hanley’s. If you’re 17 or 70, Angel of the Garbage Dump will inspire you to action, and nothing would make Hanley more excited than for you to read this book and say, “I can do that!”
— Paul Sutherland, Chairman, Utopia Foundation

Author Jacob Wheeler fell in love with the Central American nation while studying Spanish in Quetzaltenango in the Guatemalan highlands. His first book, Between Light and Shadow (University of Nebraska Press, 2011) covered Guatemala's child adoption industry. Wheeler's reporting has won awards from Project Censored and the Michigan Press Association. A native of Denmark, he has filed stories from five continents, and his work has appeared in such publications as The Rotarian, Teaching Tolerance, Utne Reader, In These Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Detroit Free Press, and San Francisco Chronicle.