This ethnographic case study describes and analyzes the life narratives of five women who tell little stories and lead big lives in a heartland community in Indiana. They are from disparate social, economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. Two women are teachers, three are nurses, and all are fluent in English and Spanish; each has an affective connection with Latinos. Their lives were transformed when they became connected in an intricate web of caregiving in response to a massive influx of Spanish-speaking newcomers who began arriving in their community in the mid-1990s. This study identifies and describes how these women drew from kinship-based wisdom, experiential learning, and acquired knowledge as professional caregivers to create a new social construction of place in an Indiana community. The women redefined place as a site for belonging and caring (especially for dis-placed persons); in addition, the women illuminated belonging and caring as crucial elements of the effectiveness and integrity of civic culture. This process of redefinition is referred to as place-making. Place-making includes assigning particular meaning to why life is as it is in a place, as well as participating in the complex, ever evolving web of meanings that compass place. This study also investigates the role of identity, ethnicity, and gender in shaping lifelong learners and the formation of a community of learners in this particular place, which is a new destination community for Latino immigrants. The women actively embraced teaching for change and caring for both the Spanish-speaking newcomers and long-term residents. This teaching and caring formed a two-pronged strategy that fostered the integration of the Spanish speakers into the receiving community. A synthesis of caregiving skills, teaching for transformation, redefining place as a site for participation, understanding the role of the family, and using the power of personal story to develop relationships positioned these women as strong community leaders who promoted the integration of dis-placed persons into a new place. This synthesis has national and global implications in an age of transnational migration.