‘We’re all in this together.’ Coronavirus shutdown brings out the best of Kansas City
On some nights during his childhood, Mark Gonzalez didn’t eat. Went to bed without dinner. His single mother of three would arrive home — in the “Little Mexico” district of Kansas City — late from a full day’s work and too tired to cook.
So Gonzalez orchestrated a solution: He taught himself to make dinner. By 12 or 13, he was preparing full meals for his mom and siblings. Burritos. Enchiladas. Chili con carne.
“My mom worked her butt off, so to have food ready for her, it was all I could do,” Gonzalez said. “I wanted to do something to help.”
The instinct stuck with him.
Gonzalez runs his own business now — a street taco food truck, to no surprise — and with the coronavirus slowing that to a halt, he has turned to the same compulsion that got him through those days as a kid.
Offering to help.
In what he’s dubbed “Burritos for a Cause,” Gonzalez is making burrito spreads this weekend and delivering them Monday to a group of people who need them most — the elderly, those at risk to be most adversely affected by the virus and single parents who resemble the household in which he grew up.
All free of charge.
“I know what it feels like to go home with nothing to eat, and it’s gonna come to that point where some people are looking for that next meal,” Gonzalez said. “I thought maybe it would put a smile on their face, knowing their next meal is coming.”
His story illustrates a bigger story. A story of kindness spreading across Kansas City.
Whether it’s Chiefs players Patrick Mahomes, Tyrann Mathieu, Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill supplying meals. Or neighbors using the Nextdoor app to offer a hand. Or readers calling The Star after learning of others’ hardships and asking where to donate.
In the midst of a pandemic, many are looking to do something — anything — to help. These are the stories of just a few who have taken matters into their own hands.
“If I can take that pressure off someone for just one night, as much as this community has helped me,” Gonzalez said. “I have the passion to keep doing this.”
‘We’re doing this’
Earlier this week, Clinton (Rico) Denney went grocery shopping with his three sons. As they strolled their cart down each aisle, items on their list were absent from the shelves. Bread. Toilet paper. Some canned goods.
They went to multiple stores that day before finally finding what they needed.
It sparked an idea.
“If my family was having an issue with all this, I knew it was going to be even harder for people in worse situations,” Denney said. “I told my kids, ‘We’re doing this.’ We’re all in this together, you know?”
At occasional points throughout the year, Denney holds some food drives. But he wanted to abide by CDC recommendations during the coronavirus outbreak — and didn’t want people to congregate in one location.
So he made lists of some basic necessities — bread, milk, toiletry items — strapped his three boys into the car and went shopping.
Again. This time, not for his family.
But for 50 families.
Over the past few days, with his three boys, Denney has delivered food to Olathe. To Wyandotte County. To Harrisonville.
One visit stood out. A woman named Mary Ann greeted the kids outside as they approached her house with plastic sacks. She was crying as she thanked them.
“That’s what I needed my kids to see,” Denney said. “That’s the lesson I wanted to show them —how we can make people feel.”
Denney, a barber in Raytown, has a few donors backing the cause, but much of the finances come out of his own pocket. He’s “not the richest guy in the world,” as he puts it.
But the journey must go on.
He is already hatching plans to make another run, asking friends and family on Facebook to suggest people in the metro area who might need help with groceries. People who have lost their paycheck. People too worried to leave the house.
His goal: 100 families.
Feed it Forward
Driving to the airport this week to pick up his mother, BJ Kissel stopped at a gas station with his 2-year-old daughter. He let her pick out an item of candy, and she considered the gummy worms before opting for a sucker.
As he approached his car on the way out, a woman flagged him down. In her hand, she held a pack of candy.
The gummy worms.
“It was the smallest thing, but it was just a really cool act of kindness,” Kissel said. “For the next hour as we drove to the airport, I’m just trying to figure out how to pay it forward.”
He bounced around a few ideas with his wife before settling on one — he wanted to purchase a Jack Stack Barbecue meal for some nurses. He’d hoped to feed one shift at one hospital.
Kissel posted a Facebook message seeking input — were hospitals even allowing outside food right now? He received an answer (yes, with some protocol guidelines), and then he received some unexpected donations.
So he posted the idea on Twitter. Maybe others were interested in donating, too. Maybe he could rally up enough money to feed one hospital’s day and night shifts.
A few days later, the total has surpassed a bit more than that: $14,000.
On Friday, Jack Stack used its catering van to deliver food to 10 hospitals in Kansas City. And like Gonzalez and Denney before him, the idea isn’t stopping after one stint. Kissel has paired with a similar idea and created a GoFundMe page.
Feed it Forward.
“This is not what I had in mind when we started this idea to help some people,” Kissel said. “It’s overwhelming to see the response.”
From gin and whiskey to ... hand sanitizer?
As the owner of a distillery, Benay Shannon receives some requests from time to time. But this? Well, this was an unusual one.
On her Facebook page, people had asked her to consider making hand sanitizer at Restless Spirits in North Kansas City, which she and her husband opened to the public in 2016. After all, she had the equipment for it.
One problem: She’d never tried it. Never even researched it.
That’s where this started.
A former science teacher, Shannon did some reading and came up with a formula. The initial run worked well as a surface sanitizer, she learned. The next, she says, she will be able to label FDA-approved.
It’s been distributed throughout the city at non-profits and community necessities. Hospice facilities and homeless shelters. Police and fire departments
“As I’m working on it, it’s been amazing to see how grateful people are,” Shannon said. “This isn’t going to cure it. But it’s going to help protect some people, and I feel like this is something I can do. It’s very gratifying to see the relief on their faces when I hand them a gallon.”
The makeup of this community
The Learning Tree has been a staple in Kansas City for 25 years, a store selling toys and games that progress childhood education.
The coronavirus has prevented in-store shopping for the first time since it opened.
The interactions with kids remain. With a twist.
Owners Jonny and Jane Girson have placed a bucket out front, asking kids to drop off letters and drawings.
The eventual recipients — elderly patients in Mission Chateau, a senior living facility where visitors have been banned.
“We want to bring joy in life to the people who can’t have physical contact,” Jonny Girson said. “And it also gives the kids an activity.”
On Friday, Girson reached into the bucket and noticed the stack. Letters from all over Kansas City have been dropped in there. Drawings, too. A 6-year-old sketched and colored a picture of a leprechaun.
For good luck.
“We’ve always been very community-oriented,” Girson said. “It’s part of our makeup. And it’s part of the makeup of this community.”