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Her neighbors in La Jolla, California, knew her only as a gentle older woman who lived alone. She drove herself around in an aging van. She dressed simply. She opened her own mail. She walked her own small dog. If you had asked her name, she would have smiled and said, "Margaret." Just Margaret. She never offered a last name. Her last name was Cargill. Her grandfather, William Wallace Cargill, had started a grain storage business in Iowa in 1865 with a single flat house at the end of a railroad line. That business grew into Cargill Inc. today the largest privately held company in the United States, a pillar of the global food supply. Margaret was one of eight heirs to that fortune. Forbes listed her among the 164 wealthiest Americans. She could have lived any life she chose. She chose this one: quiet, private, and almost invisible. She never married. She had no children. She did not buy a grand estate. She loved fiber arts, beadwork, jewelry making, and the textiles of Native American peoples. She loved animals, nature, elderly people, and the kind of deep solitude that lets a person think clearly. And quietly for decades she did something that almost no one knew about. She wrote checks. Large, anonymous checks. To the American Red Cross. To the Nature Conservancy. To the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. To the San Diego Humane Society. To St. Paul's Senior Homes and Services. Always with one firm, non-negotiable condition: no one could know it was her. No plaques. No buildings with her name. No press releases. Not even thank-you dinners. She gave away more than $200 million this way, and many of the organizations that received her largest donations never even learned who their donor was. She did allow herself one small, private pleasure. She liked slipping into the dedication ceremonies of the buildings she had helped fund just another face in the crowd. She walked through the new halls of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington and listened as people thanked an anonymous donor. She stood inside the new senior care center near her home and watched elderly residents smile in their new space. No one recognized her. She loved every quiet, hidden minute of it. When Dr. Mark Goldstein of the San Diego Humane Society finally met her, she arrived in an old van with no outward sign of wealth. He later said you could never have imagined she could afford the van. She had given that organization alone more than $6 million. On August 1, 2006, Margaret Anne Cargill passed away at her home in La Jolla at the age of 85. And then the world found out who the anonymous angel had been all along. Her estate was arranged into the Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies two foundations, one carrying her name, the other honoring her mother, Anne Ray. Their combined assets grew to more than $9 billion, placing them among the top ten philanthropic organizations in the United States. The same causes she had quietly loved in life continued receiving hundreds of millions of dollars long after she was gone. She had wealth, freedom, and privacy. She used all three in service of others and never once took a bow. The size of a life is not measured by how many people know your name. It is measured by how many people you helped, even when they never knew yours.