This article explores the particular challenges and possibilities of service learning pedagogy for basic writers. Because a number of scholars of service learning and basic writing (Adler-Kassner, Arca, and Kraemer) are concerned primarily with developing underprepared students' academic literacies, I investigated how the students in a service learning basic writing class situated their service experience--represented that "text" rhetorically--in their major academic research essay for the course. The article draws on one student's experience of making connections among the "rich mix" of course texts, including personal experience, as a best case. From this example, I argue for strategies of service learning pedagogy that could better help basic writers achieve their goals for academic writing. (Contains 3 notes.)