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Welcome to a Christmas special of Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. There's no politics on this program today. We're not dividing people. We're bringing them together. We're bringing a little hope. We're bringing some stories of hope on the line today and all this week and next week. We are featuring some local charities that people need to know about and should be supporting today.
And the first of those, and thank you very much, Tim Berry. Tim Berry with Hope for the Homeless. Hope for the Homeless organizes recovery meetings and brings them to the homeless where they gather, like the Andre House and CAS, Central Arizona Shelter Services. They also support meeting attendees with food, blankets, clothes, new socks and underwear, toiletries, and other basic necessities, things you need to be human, etc.
Tim, welcome to the program. Hey, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, Merry Christmas to you. You know, Chuck, every time I see something like this and you see the work people put in on these, you know, whether it's Hope for the Homeless or the Food Bank or these things, those acts of selflessness are what, to me, define America. And it's far more prevalent here than it is in many, many places around the world. But Tim...
When you got into doing this, what was your driving? What drove you to start doing this? Well, you know, to be honest with you, this is all kind of evolved out of my addiction recovery journey. Sure.
I had spent a number of years being a pretty successful business person, your weekend partier. And then in my late 30s, I was prescribed some opiate pain medication for a sports injury. And that just put me into a really dark down road spiral in and out of rehabs. One of those things, it was something that...
that I couldn't kick and it was a big struggle and over the a few years you know literally lost everything essentially found myself homeless had worn out all my my family's efforts to help and
and uh was uh finally introduced um to a program of recovery through some strangers which was like the last the last house on the block of people that were willing to to help me um and they had started a meeting down at cass um back in 2008 and uh they uh they drugged me along um gave me a
responsibility to organize a meal after each meeting. And, uh, and that was kind of the kicker for my, my recovery. Um, the first Christmas rolled around and I, and I, and I saw kind of a bigger need than just the food. And, and I just decided to pass a hat and hit up a bunch of the guys and girls to, to,
put in and we bought new socks and underwear where I noticed that they get a lot of used clothings, but I thought I'd offer them a little bit of dignity by buying them new socks and underwear. It's just kind of grown from there. The need for hygiene and stuff, we've put together these hope bags with our partner at the Midwest Food Bank. We put a first aid kit in there, some hygiene kit,
snack packs it's socks and blankets um you know we were making a few hundred of those up you know basically around in our or our meetings um is where we would supply them but then when covet hit um everything was shut down we weren't allowed to to have our meetings but the need was still there for those those hope bags and we actually reached out to some other um
you know, ministries and programs and organizations and, uh, you know, asked if they would be interested in our hope bags and all of them said, yes, they actually go out in the street. They use our bags as kind of an introductory, um, uh, ice breaking thing to, to get,
talking to some of the homeless. And we've seen a great, great response for that. We went from doing a couple hundred to, to produce about 1500 a month right now where our goal is to make about 5,000. There's certainly a need all over the, over the Valley for those. Now, how can people help you do that? Where do they have a website? How do they contribute or how do they get ahold of you to help you do that? Yeah. Our website is www.hope.org.
The number four, thehomelessaz.com. You can donate right on that. One of our also a fun fundraiser. I'm in the automotive industry.
business. I have a couple of collision repair shops, but cars are, I mean, I literally traded my 1969 Cougar convertible for the last rehab I was in. It was the last thing I've actually owned in my life. Lost my house and everything, traded that car. So I'm a big car guy. So we do these car shows and we do a car raffle. Right now we have a 1963 Cougar
Ford Galaxy convertible that we'll be raffling off at our fall car show of 2022. But they can buy those tickets there. They can donate directly, buy the raffle tickets for the car, whatever they'll need to do. And that's a beautiful, beautiful car. I saw the photos of it. It's gorgeous.
Yeah, it's a fun thing. That was one of those things that kind of fell into our laps a few years ago where a guy needed some help, and he had an 89 Corvette that he had some medical bills he needed to pay, so he needed to sell his car, and it just kind of fell into us where we had just done our first car show, and we decided to try the raffle, and it's been a big hit ever since. And the car show, you were out at our last car show. It's a fantastic event.
Yeah. Yeah, the fall car show. Yeah. And that just keeps growing. That's a lot of fun. It's so great to see all the people that bring in. We had mountains of donations of socks, underwear, and blankets for that. It was just beautiful to see everybody coming together. I mean, you had at least a couple of thousand people out there in Ahwatukee at that event.
From what I saw. Yeah, we had over 600 registered cars, probably another couple hundred that showed up with it not being registered. And then the spectators, you know, we had the food trucks, the bounce house. It was a great, you know, just a great community event.
Tim, this is Chuck Warren with Tim Berry, Hope for Homeless. Tim, if you would be so inclined, can you tell us about your journey on this? What is someone going through right now during this Christmas season?
Who has an addiction. What is it like right now? Friends abandon them? I mean, one size fits all. It's not a true story. We don't want to generalize. But if you can give our audience a sense what these folks are going through, what their journey is like right now, that would be appreciated. Yeah. So, you know, like I mentioned, my journey is like, you know,
Many of us have families and stuff, and some of us do and some of us don't, but people that care about us. But this addiction, for some people, it grabs them so hard, and I didn't think I was one of them. I was the kind of guy that avoided homeless people, didn't have any empathy for them, thought it was a choice, thought it was something that they could just turn off, and if they decided to make a decision to stop using drugs or get off the street, they could. I wasn't...
I went through this for a reason because I realized that, you know what, when those opiate prescription drugs grabbed me, they didn't let go. And it didn't matter what I was losing. I had a heart attack at age 40 because of it. And it still took me another year to completely kick the drug off.
the drugs and alcohol. Um, and it, and it's a lonely thing when you get to that point because your family gives up, you know, many times they, they just, they don't know, they don't understand. They don't, they don't know what, what to do. Thank God there's programs like ours and other people that have been through it. You know,
They understand the depths that it can bring you and just the loneliness and despair it can bring. And we're there to lend a helping hand. I mean, Christmas time is really tough because people on the street, you have –
The addiction is somewhere about 40% of the homeless have some form of addiction. Almost 40% of the homeless have some type of mental illness. Usually those overlap. And, you know, we're just down there just trying to just show that there is people that understand and that there's a little love. And we do have some success with that. We get them into homeschooling.
organizations like Phoenix Rescue Mission, the Salvation Army, you know, there's a number of programs where we can get people off the street when they're ready. And one of the things is we continually do it. We're there over and over again. It's, you know, and then the same people we see every week, we go down there and, you know, after time they see the consistency and that helps break down some of those barriers.
So give us, give us a, skip our audience, a success story. You're, you're undertaking something that you have to, when you do this, you have to have hope. Right. And I'm sure at times it becomes very discouraging, right? When we love those or we invest time in people. And like you said, we're looking for consistency and they just can't seem to get there. Do you have a success story you can share with our audience? Because I'm sure you have to have some of these wins.
Yeah, one of the best ones is he's become a dear friend of mine. His name's Kenny B. He came into one of our meetings. This is probably eight, nine years ago. He was...
living at Cass. He got kicked off of Cass. He, you know, um, and, and literally, um, came to one of our meetings and then came back the next week and he got into one of the halfway houses, but he kept coming to our meeting. Um, and you know, he's been clean now for almost 10 years. He's, uh,
driving a tractor trailer for a company in town, making an extraordinarily decent living from where he was, just a homeless wreck of a person. One of those people that people kind of avoid on the street, a very active and contributing member of society, and he still comes and helps us out with our meetings every week. I think your story, Tim, and his, Kenny's story,
The similarity among them or the applicability for everyone out there listening is that this doesn't happen to bad people. This happens to any person, that the right circumstances, the wrong circumstances, whatever you want to call them, hit.
Anyone can find themselves there. Yeah, I mean, I was a normal kid. Mom and dad married their entire life. You know, born and raised in New England. You know, had everything I needed, didn't want for anything. It just, you know, and I was a successful businessman. I lost my business. I mean, I lost everything. And, you know, it's...
People were, you know, I was as baffled as anybody else would be. But, you know, thank God there is a solution out there. And there are people that have been through it, like myself, that are continuing to stretch their hand out to help others. Tim, we got just one minute before we go to break. Can you give folks again how they get in touch with you? How can they contribute and help you out?
Yeah, on our website is www.hope4thehomelessaz.com. All information is there. And there's an email there if you want to send me an email. I get those emails personally and I'll respond right away. Awesome, Tim. Thank you so much for joining us today. And we're going to have Broken Potholes. If you go to brokenpotholes.vote, we're going to have links for these organizations up on our website.
so you'll be able to connect with them that way. Merry Christmas, guys. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas to you, Tim. Okay. Broken Potholes, coming right back.
Merry Christmas. It's time to buy those Christmas gifts. If you know someone who's thinking of running for political office, we've taken the stress out of thinking about what to get them. A one-stop shop way to let everyone know where they stand on all their issues. Head over to GoDaddy.com and get a dot vote web address for that special someone today. Welcome back to a special Christmas episode of Broken Potholes. No politics this week. No politics next week.
Folks, we want you to have a Merry Christmas. We want everyone out there to have a Merry Christmas, which is why we're talking to folks from various charities throughout Arizona and throughout the country. And very, very pleased to have on the line right now, Jerry Brown. Jerry works with St. Mary's Food Bank. Jerry, thank you so much for joining us on Broken Potholes. Thank you very much for having us. We appreciate it. Can you tell us a little bit about St. Mary's? I know you're like the world's oldest food bank, right?
Correct. We're actually the world's first food bank, and in February we'll be celebrating 55 years in Arizona. We started in 1967 with a man named John Van Hengel, who was working at St. Vincent de Paul as a volunteer, and decided to come up with a way that food could be saved and put into a bank. Okay.
and then distribute it to folks who needed it. So those who had extra could contribute, and those who needed some could come and get it. We've been doing that since 1967. We've distributed more than a billion pounds of food in Arizona, and we'll easily top 100 million pounds again this year.
And Jerry, Chuck and I have talked about this on the program before, I think, especially around some of the stuff that was going on with COVID. But for folks who want to contribute to an organization where their money is going to go a long way, food banks in general, but St. Mary's Food Bank in particular, you guys do amazing things with a tiny amount of money.
Right. Every dollar we receive at the food bank, we can provide seven meals into the community. And that's because of the buying power that we have and the ability to buy food in bulk. There are a lot of great charities out there, but there are also a lot of charities that have a lot of overhead. So that dollar that you give, you know, maybe in some cases 40, 50, 60 percent of that dollar actually goes toward the cost. At St. Mary's, 95 percent.
of all donations go directly to our programs. And that's directly to, and our programs really come down to feeding the hungry of Arizona. And that's- - So what, so Jerry, this is Chuck Warren. So what you're saying is that 95% of all donations go directly to purchasing food for people who are experiencing homelessness or food insecurity.
Some of that goes to gas in the trucks to pick up the food. Some of it goes to other things like that. But 95% of it goes directly to our mission. And the mission is to feed those who are hungry. That is remarkable. It's unbelievable. And there's so much need, Jerry. You guys know this obviously better than we do, but there is so much need here in Arizona and in our community right now.
Right. And during COVID, I mean, we have, thankfully, because it's not the same situation we were in in 2020, we've come down to levels that were almost pre-pandemic when you're talking about the need. Now, of course, that need is one in five Arizona families and one in four kids. That's on a good day in Arizona need help. Right.
But when we were dealing with COVID last year, especially last spring, we lost 80% of our volunteers because obviously we understood they couldn't come anymore, especially the older folks who are the backbone of some of what we do as far as packing food boxes and
You know, young kids weren't coming to schools. The businesses were working from home. They weren't working from the jobs, so they weren't putting together volunteer teams. So when you think of 10 volunteers going to an event to help, eight of those people weren't coming anymore. And I'll give a shout-out to Governor Ducey. If it wasn't for the Arizona National Guard being mobilized to help us get through, we would never have been able to do what we did last year. And what we did was we had never distributed...
10 million pounds of food in a month at the food bank. And in 2020, we averaged 10 million pounds a month. So we put out 120 million pounds of food. How many trucks is that? A million pounds of food would be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trucks.
I mean, if you pick up a 10-pound bag of potatoes and say, hey, that's pretty heavy, that's 10-pound or 50-pound bag of dog food, think in terms of 10 million pounds.
And that's how much we were distributing every month to people in need. And the need was unbelievable. I mean, we went from distributing food at our normal St. Mary's Food Bank locations to going to sports arenas and baseball fields and any place where we could find huge parking lots where we could jam 400 to 500 cars in in a two- to three-hour period. So that's what we were facing last year. And as dire as that sounds, here's the good news. Donations kept pace.
For us to do that, people were going to go, okay, it's going to cost that much more money for the food bank. And those who were not affected, or even those who were and still had the financial means, stepped up and said, we need you to help these people. We understand that we're in a crisis situation as a country. And they stepped forward and they said, what can we do to help?
And for every dollar that we needed to get that job done, people were providing it to the food bank. And that's just amazing. And it's a testament to the philanthropy and the great feelings that the people have for helping people in Arizona and helping St. Mary's Food Bank.
We're with Jerry Brown. He's the director of public relations for St. Mary's Food Bank. Jerry, tell us right now what's going through the mind of families that have food insecurity, not only during the year, but during this holiday season. I think sometimes they become sort of, for a lot of people, these anonymous, cloudy faces. But these are real-life people. These could be our neighbors even.
Absolutely. What is going through their minds right now? You run into them. Just explain a little bit about the families we see. I think a lot of times we hear this, we think, well, this is some homeless person or something of that nature. But if you could talk to us a little bit, what's going through these families' minds right now as Christmas approaches and the new year, that would be fantastic.
We definitely go through. We definitely help the homeless. Food banks will always help the homeless. But I will tell you that 50% of the people who come to the food bank for emergency food have jobs. They just don't have the job that's going to be able to cover everything that they need. And especially now, when you're talking about inflation, when you're talking about gas prices doubling, when you're talking about food prices doubling,
Those are the things that you still have to pay your rent and you still have to put gas in your car. But food is that one part of your budget that if everything goes up except for your paycheck,
then that's the thing that you can come to St. Mary's and you can get that food box and you can save that money and put that money towards the things that you need, which is putting a roof over your head and putting gas in your tank so that you can continue to go to work and continue to bring home that paycheck. And you wouldn't be able to do that if you didn't have it. So that's a lot of what we see from people. There were concerns last year from COVID. There were concerns from we...
instituted delivery systems so that we could take food to elderly folks that were shut in, that couldn't leave their house, that were afraid to leave their house, but still needed food, the handicapped, places, people who couldn't go to these large-scale distributions that we were doing. We instituted all that. Right now, I would say the number one fear for people is inflation. I had enough money this summer to get by, and now the fall has come, and I still have that same paycheck, and it's not enough.
Hey, Jerry, we only have about one minute left in this segment. Tell people how they can get a hold of you, how they can contribute and help you, or if they need help, how do they get a hold of you? Right, absolutely. If you need help or if you can help, our number is 602-242-FOOD, 602-242-FOOD, or you can go online to stmarysfoodbank.org, and it'll tell you where you can make a donation, how you can volunteer with us, or if you need food, the closest location to go and get it.
Fantastic, Jerry. Thank you so much. Jerry Brown with St. Mary's Food Bank. Amazing, amazing work they do. Happy holidays, everybody. Happy holidays to you, Jerry. Everyone, get on one of these websites. Contribute. Broken Potholes coming back in just a moment. Love your friends and family and political office but want to stay further than six feet apart from them this Christmas?
Right now, there is no other way to say Merry Christmas like buying them the perfect Christmas gift from afar. Just go to GoDaddy.com and get them a dot vote web address. It's social distancing approved. Welcome back to the Christmas special of Broken Potholes.
All this week and next week, we are featuring local charities throughout Arizona and from across the country that are doing amazing work this holiday season and throughout the year. And I want to introduce another one of those right now, Buck Richards with Packages from Home. Buck, thank you for joining us on the program. Buck is a board member and Air Force veteran. Packages from Home serves active duty U.S. military members stationed or deployed overseas.
to include military working dogs and military canine teams, as well as homeless, transitioning, and at-risk veterans by providing them with requested food, hygiene, and entertainment items to boost morale and their quality of life. Buck, thank you so much for joining us on this program. No, glad to be here. Glad to talk about it and get the word out. How did you get involved with this? And tell us a little bit more about it if you can.
Well, I got involved originally through a friend of my daughter's. My daughter was an Army veteran, and then my daughter ended up working there. So the organization, though, has its roots in 9-11. The founder, Kathleen Lewis, who's still part of the organization, her son, after 9-11, like a lot of people, died.
joined the Army on September 12th of 2001. And so when he first deployed, she was sending him care packages and was kind of surprised to find out that he was like the only one in his unit that was getting care packages. So she started out by just...
sending more to people in his unit. But that's basically how it started. And now it's grown up to a pretty large organization. Now, when I say large organization, there's not a lot of people that work there, but they ship a lot of stuff and a lot of money goes through there too. I think it's funneled straight to employed servicemen.
Yeah. I mean, looking at it, you so so folks know this is not funded by the government. There's no not at all. Not one penny. Yeah. One hundred percent of it's coming from people in our communities. Right.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Communities and companies that want to do team building, you know, packages from home sponsors, packing parties for those groups who, you know, they want to sponsor it, you know, some kind of give back event for their employees or there's corporate sponsors who donate to us regularly.
to support those things. You know, one thing I think is really important to get out is I know the war in Afghanistan, you know, obviously concluded this year, but there's still, you know, tens of thousands, actually more than a hundred thousand U.S. servicemen deployed overseas, you know, today. Absolutely. Absolutely. Buck, I think that's a great point. We have service members, I think in what, like 80 countries around the world right now, right? Yeah.
And always will. Yeah, you actually double that. Wow. So, yeah. Chuck, go ahead. Let me ask a question. Tell us what Christmas is like for somebody serving overseas away from their family.
Oh, yeah, it can be very difficult. You know, it's kind of a mixed bag of things sometimes. You know, I've spent a couple Christmases, one in Korea. I vividly remember the worst one I spent, which was December of 2005, and I was in Balad, Iraq, and...
We, uh, I woke up in the morning to a mortar attack and, uh, I hadn't planned on getting up that early, but obviously they, between the sirens and the, uh, and the explosions, I woke up and I was sitting in my, my little trailer with my, uh,
put my body armor on waiting for the all clear and the all clear wasn't coming out. So I was like, uh, you know, I opened my presence by myself in a, in a room, uh, just waiting for the all clear to finally sound, which it, which it didn't until like an hour and a half later. I remember that one being like, well, this is probably the worst one I've had. I've, I've had others though, where, you know, you're deployed and if you're with other, uh,
other people in a social situation, sometimes, you know, they can band together and, you know, kind of make it good, but it's always, you know, nothing, nothing is going to replace having those, those things from home to remind you, you know, what does it mean? So you're serving overseas besides dodging mortars, you're serving overseas. What does it mean to a service member to get something from home or from their, their community?
Oh, it's amazing. I always think back to that same deployment where I was at Blot. And I mean, just things like, you know, people would send a Starbucks out of thing going at the time. Just be able to get your Starbucks or, you know, I can't tell you. A lot of people sent chocolate chip cookies on their own back then. That wasn't through packages or anything. But I just remember thinking that connection, you know, because it's hard to get.
The food you are used to, those things that make you feel good like that. There's just little things like hygiene items sometimes. War is a dirty, dirty place. That's one of the hardest things is just staying clean, right? We're going to have more about that, Buck. I apologize. I have to cut you off. We're going to bring you back right after the break. Folks, Broken Pothole is coming back in just a moment. We'll be right back.
Welcome back.
It's a special Christmas edition of Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Morin. No politics this week. No politics next week. We're talking hope. We're talking positivity. We're talking good things that are happening in the world because of good people like the one we have on the phone right now and all the folks that work with him, Buck Richards.
Buck, thank you so much for joining us again. Buck works with packages from home. If you didn't tune into the previous segment, really encourage you to get on our podcast and do that. But Buck, we were talking when we went to the break about how important it is for service members to receive these things and to have that connection to home. I have a lot of friends in the military who have talked about what it meant to them to get a package like that. How can folks help you make that happen?
Well, you know, there's two ways. The easiest one is you go to packagesfromhome.org, and you can click on there, and there's places you can donate on there or look and see what Packages is up to. You can follow them on Facebook and Instagram, and that will have more information, but you can donate on the website.
And obviously, if you go to Facebook or Instagram, there will be links to get you where you need to go. If your company has the opportunity to maybe is looking for an event to do, you can contact Packages and maybe participate in a packing party. You know, Packages does everything for you to make it easy. All you got to do is show up and...
fill a box basically and do the packing they have everything to make it streamlined for you but yeah go to
Go to Patrick's.home.org and Facebook or Instagram for them and get educated on it. Obviously, your contribution would be appreciated, but if you could participate in one of the events, that would be great too. Yeah, absolutely. I got to do one of those a few years ago, and as a Christmas office party, frankly, it was a blast. I mean, we had a great time doing it.
Yeah, it is kind of fun to kind of get together and kind of do it, you know, especially since, like I said, they make it easy. They solve all the problems for you. You just got to show up and, you know, at the end of the day, there's a whole bunch of boxes filled that are ready to go. Yeah, I think we ate pizza, drank way too much wine, and filled up a bunch of boxes. And honestly, just being able to do something for other people at your office Christmas party is pretty great. That's great. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Buck, in these packages that are sent, what is the one item that surprises you that people really like? Oh, good Lord. You know, that's good. I can't really tell you that. To be quite honest, you know, I probably should know that, but I'm not really on the part of the organization that gets the feedback on that. But, I mean, we do a lot of video tapes and a lot of... Go ahead. No, no. I mean, I remember...
I do something for the boys and girls club every year and I'm surprised how often they say they really like socks. I mean, something we all take for granted. And so I'm sure there are some items that people that we, you know, when you give money that people, you know, that these service members really like to get, you know? And so I was just wondering what, what are some things that you, when you did this just surprised you? I mean, it could be just crackers. It could be the hygiene. I mean,
What is something that surprises you that people get and they enjoy?
Well, you know, it's hard to say. And, you know, it's also going to depend on where they are because you don't know where the shortages are going to be or exactly how remote their location is. So, you know, in some places like hygiene items, certain hard to get hygiene items, you know, like tooth floss or something like that might just be, you know, something that somebody was just dying to get. But then, you know, in other places where the weather's different or something, obviously something like socks might be,
pretty important. But yeah, I wish I had a better answer for you on that. I do know that we pack cookies, we do pack socks, we do pack hygiene and entertainment items like DVDs and things like that. I had a friend serving in Afghanistan who said that they had a woman who was sending boxes to one member of the squadron that had those chemical hand warmers.
Oh, yeah, I can see that being. Yeah. And he said they were fighting over these things. I can totally believe that. Yeah, I can see sitting sitting along watching the middle of the night not moving. I can see your your hands just freezing cold. Yeah, absolutely. Very nice.
Yeah, absolutely. I know, like I was saying, I know when I was deployed, if I could get some Starbucks or a chocolate chip cookie, that was like the best thing I could get. Both at the same time, so I could dunk it. I mean, no kidding. Oh, that's heaven. That's heaven no matter where you are. The simple things. It's amazing. We spend so much money on so many things, but it's the simple things at the end of the day that really make us happy.
I spent a lot of time on alert in Iraq, and I just remember we just made coffee nonstop and tried not to eat all the cookies, which was usually a failing endeavor. But, yeah. Now, Buck, you guys have a fundraiser going on right now. You're trying to raise, I believe, a million dollars by the end of 2021. Yeah.
It sounds like you've done a great job of raising a lot of that money so far, but there's still a little room to go, right? Yeah, I can't tell you exactly where we are on that dollar value. My daughter would know really well. But I know so far just this month, over 3,000 packages have been processed. And, yeah.
We've had like a 44% increase in the amount of care packages that we've been able to send out compared to, say, December of 2019. So it's pretty big. We've had a big year, big close to the year. Nice. Very nice. You know, we're still trying to get there. And every little bit, you know, it always concerned me when everybody saw everybody leave in Afghanistan that all of a sudden people would be like that whole 9-11 kind of dedication would go away. But, you know, that would be the point that I would make is...
We really didn't have that many people in Afghanistan anymore. We really have a huge number, Horn of Africa, Pacific Rim, Europe. We still have a ton of people deployed over there. A lot of soldiers overseas right now could use a little bit of cheer from home. Folks, if you get a chance, please go to their website, but give it to us again, how they can help you out, how they can get a hold of you.
Absolutely. The website is packagesfromhome.org. And obviously, if you want to just follow us on Facebook and Instagram, you can see what events and what we're doing. And that will lead you back. And folks, these guys, like all of the charities we're bringing on this week and next...
They are super efficient with your money if you donate to them. They really turn a huge percentage of that directly into these packages that go to the soldiers and that go to veterans and homeless that are at risk here in this country. So you know when you go on that website, you're really doing something good with your money.
Yeah, as a member of the board, I mean, we audit ourselves every year with a third-party auditor comes and takes a look at how efficient we are. And as far as benchmarking this against other charities, I mean, way... I couldn't give you the number because it's so out of reach, but we're way more efficient at sending your dollar directly out the door in a package and not to the administration, the organization. It's really actually...
Very few people run this organization. If you saw how much stuff we process with so few people, I mean, really, we need the volunteers is what we need, and we need the money. So, folks, get on there. Get your checkbook out. Get your credit card out. Packagesfromhome.org. Follow them on Facebook. Follow them on social media. And give them a few bucks.
Chuck, any last thoughts before we let Buck go? No, Buck, thanks for coming on, and we'll hope you'll be on with us in the future and give us more of an update, and we're going to work on our end to get the message out. This is a wonderful charity, as we've had all of them today, and doing, as an old friend of mine said, doing the Lord's work. We appreciate it. I appreciate you guys helping us out here. Thanks very much. Thank you, Buck. I'd love to talk about you. You guys can call me anytime. Buck, thank you so much for joining us. We'd love to have you anytime.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Merry Christmas, guys. Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas. Well, Chuck, you know, I'm almost speechless. Well, you know, there's a line I read years ago from Neil Maxwell, and he said, life is full of the walking wounded. And I think we as a society, we we've learned to cover those up. We don't want to show weakness anymore.
You know, I'm thinking about St. Mary's, for example. You know, there's people, you and I and Kip knows and Jamie that are facing food insecurity and they would never tell us. Yeah. And, you know, so it's through these groups. Look, you know, there was the old I think it was old Charles Schultz, Charles, who did peanuts. I forget his name. Yeah.
Charles Schultz. Yeah, Charles Schultz.
And, you know, I donated to both today as we're on the show. I know you donate to both of them. And we'll have Jamie and Kip push this hard on social media. We'll talk about that after. But these people are really doing a hero's work. And there are walking wounded. And you have groups like this that we can all participate in and make a difference in someone's life. You know, one thing I always laugh about with military veterans, you know, I
You try to go and get these, you know, have them express their stories. You know, tell us about one of your Christmas days. Well, I woke up to mortar fire. I mean, you know, it's a fairly harrowing experience and they sort of just gloss it over. But, you know, come on. You know, it's that's a that's a life changing event in many ways. Yeah. I mean, look, you can totally understand opening your Christmas presents at that moment before you have a chance to get together with anyone else because it might be your last moment to open them. I mean, that's an amazing story. Yeah.
I think another thing, too, we talked here about what we would call temporal needs. One thing I have felt inspired to do this Christmas, and I've taken time, is I've written a lot of personal handwritten Christmas cards with some thought inside, not just a Merry Christmas. I have been astounded and surprised at the number of people who replied to those and said, this is what I needed.
And I think it is incumbent upon all of us to realize that there's a lot of people in or out of our orbit who are lonely. And if you have time, folks, on Christmas Day,
Go through your iPhone address book and just make some calls. How are you? Yeah. What are you doing? Let's take the time to remember that, you know, look, we're all in this life together. We're all struggling together. And it's a lot easier when there's more than one. Well, I think the folks we had on highlight it so well, you know, whether it is someone like Tim Berry, who was a successful guy and then found himself on the street and needed that hand up.
You know, whether you're talking to someone like Buck who woke up on Christmas morning to mortar fire. But, you know, everything can be changed by that gift from home, that connection to another person. And that's kind of the story you kept hearing with St. Mary's too. It's the connection to people that these organizations are providing that a lot of people desperately need.
Well, one other thing, you know, we were talking earlier in the show with our original guest. And, you know, as we were talking to Tim Berry, Hope for Homeless, you know, folks, besides those who are struggling like that, let's not forget these families. They've been put through hell and it's not just emotional. It's been financial. There are families out there who have mortgaged everything.
to try to turn around the life of a loved one. And so I think sometimes we go and look at the main source, the person, but realize there's a lot of families that need you to come reach out and grab them by the hand, give them a word of encouragement, take them out for a little Starbucks or bottled water. Like I said, as Neil Maxwell said, life is full of walking wounded. This Christmas season, I hope all of us
We'll show that Christmas spirit, that Christlike love for our neighbors. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We only have about 30 seconds left, folks. We got one more episode here in 2021, and then we move on to our second year on radio. It doesn't feel like it's been an entire year yet, does it? No, it does not. It does not. You've aged well, though, Sam. You've aged well this year, Sam. Yeah.
As have you, Chuck. I want to thank you for this year on the radio and for all the fun we have had in the studio throughout that time. Any last words? No. Merry Christmas. We love you all. I'm grateful for your friendship, Sam and Kip and Jamie. It's a true blessing in my life. It makes me a richer man. Absolutely. Broken potholes. We'll be back next week. No internet, no download special this week. Folks, we're coming back for a new year next week.
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