Heart Warmer
Akron Snow Angels coffee station volunteer Becky Warner has tears in her eyes.
It’s Dec. 3, and volunteers are passing out hot coffee to homeless and impoverished people at Second Chance Village tent city. First-time volunteer Joyce hands a steaming cup to an older woman wearing a “Joy to the World” pin. Joyce compliments her on the pin and says it matches her name. Although she has little, the woman unfastens the pin from her lapel and secures it to Joyce’s coat — she wants to repay Joyce’s kindness with a gift.
Surprised, Joyce declares “You are an angel!” as she hugs the woman.
Watching the exchange from behind the coffee table, Warner says, “That is what makes me cry.”
The Snow Angels keep the needy warm with clothing, but they also share love by treating those they help as friends during three missions a month between November and April.
“ It’s the warmth of heart,” says founder Erin Victor, “and trying to ask people to take ownership of other people in the community.”
A volunteer shift at an Akron soup kitchen on a 2015 frigid January day led Victor to found Snow Angels. She was frazzled after a busy day at work in Cleveland and didn’t feel like volunteering. But she did. The experience changed her life.
She met three people whom she’s never forgotten: a purple man with holes in his socks and shoes, a man with slurred speech and a dragging foot who lost his job after having a stroke, and a woman layered in sweatshirts with a baby strapped to her chest in clothes too thin for winter’s chill.
“I finally noticed it, really noticed it this time,” says Victor, who has volunteered in numerous soup kitchens since she was a child.
She left sobbing that day. When she went to hang up her coat at home, she broke down. Her closet was stuffed with coats and boots she didn’t even wear. She posted an emotional Facebook appeal asking her friends to help the cold and needy. The response was overwhelming: enough donations to fill about five carloads. She distributed them every weekend that winter, and the response was so immense that her random act of kindness became a nonprofit.
Now the Snow Angels deliver thousands of warm clothing items, toiletries, food and coffee to homeless and impoverished in Akron each year. They take two special requests per person each season, so a homeless mom at Grace Park can get a 2T snowsuit for her child or a man at Second Chance Village can get an XL coat.
In 2015, the Snow Angels started doing Christmas missions after Tallmadge tween Ty Williams developed a friendship with people on missions to Grace Park and asked his dad what his friends were doing for Christmas. They called Victor and began a tradition of Christmas missions where they hand out bagged lunches and Christmas cookies, and play holiday music.
“I just did it because they are my friends and I care for them,” Williams, now 13, says. He became close to Javon Jenkins one Christmas, and Williams and his family occasionally take Jenkins out to dinner. Jenkins, who has lived in the woods for six years and recently got housing and a job through In One Piece, was singing a praise tune for a crowd at the Dec. 3 mission. Along with lifting spirits, he hugs volunteers and greets them with, “Hey! How are you doing?” He says volunteers strengthen him.
“That’s a beautiful thing,” Jenkins says of his friendship with Ty. “He’s an inspiration to me too. When I was young, I wasn’t thinking about nobody. I was thinking about helping myself.”
These relationships are the Snow Angels’ goal. Victor says while some of the people they meet may be struggling with addiction, mental health issues or a bad choice in their past, volunteers treat them as equals because they know they’ve suffered and need positivity.
“When you really get to know the ins and outs of someone, you can at least understand enough and have compassion for what they are going through,” Victor says.
This altruism has created a wave of community change. Upward of 3,000 volunteers have helped by sorting donations, spreading the word or going on missions. A retired woman knits hats and scarves. Another group makes sleeping mats out of plastic bags. Girl Scouts have made tie blankets. Each is a link in a continuous chain reaction.
For Victor, one Facebook rant led to an organization that has helped hundreds of people. Empathy has become a lifestyle and a 10- to 30-hour weekly commitment.
“I don’t have kids or a husband, so this is like my taking care of my family,” says Victor.
Find out more at akronsnowangels.com.