Our beginnings

It was a cold and rainy evening when my husband, James and I, were coming back home from visiting our daughter, Tatiana, and her husband, Roman, in downtown LA.  As we drove by, we witnessed the homeless and their cardboard boxes, sleeping along the streets on the cold and wet sidewalks.  We thought: wouldn't it be nice if we could surprise them with a warm breakfast in the morning?  

We kept thinking about it but took no action, waiting perhaps for when we had enough money to put all this together.  Finally, on Friday, October 11, 2007, I came home to find my husband sitting on the dining room table with a huge surprise in hand.  He had purchased food and supplies to prepare a breakfast for the following morning.  “How many should we make?” we asked. “Let’s make it 48 bags.”  And that’s how we started.

The next morning, I woke up at 3:30 AM to prepare coffee.  The night before we had filled the paper bags with cheese sandwiches and snacks.  The coffee preparation was very rudimentary, but the flavor was excellent! Boiling four big pots of water, measuring coffee, sugar and cream, mixing it all up, tasting, then filling the cups and clicking  the cover.  The kitchen had steamy windows and the whole house was filled with fresh coffee aroma.  At that point my husband woke up. 

It was 5:00 AM and we loaded 48 brown bags carefully arranged in four cardboard trays in the back of our car and started heading to downtown.  The next question was, where are we going to find 48 homeless?  Well, it wasn't that hard at all.  They were cuddled under tunnels, hidden within bridges, tucked in the shadow of luxury hotels. When we first approached them they were surprised, sometimes fearful, and sometimes curious of what was inside our paper bag.  Some plainly said no.  However at the end, we were able to distribute all of the 48 paper bags, and that’s when we realized something magical had just happened, they had all said to us “God bless you”.  We had just received 48 blessings!

With the passing of the years, we have increased the weekly distribution to about 100 people per week. (eventually coffee was replaced with water and soda,) clothing and personal items.

 We continue expanding our program to better serve our friends in need.