You can’t help but feel the buzz of energy when you enter San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen. Volunteers move to and fro preparing the steam table for tasty smelling pans of carne adovada, beef with mushrooms, and chili rellenos, while others fill and line up cups of orange drink and plates of cake.
The crew is getting ready to serve the area’s less fortunate residents lunch under the leadership of the kitchen’s founder Suzan Roybal.
Roybal walks through the hall greeting workers, some of whom have volunteered with her at the kitchen for as long as five years, dishing up home cooked meals. In between those brief conversations composed of half greeting and counsel, Roybal minimizes her role while selflessly singing the praise of the volunteers she credits for the program’s success.
“None of it is a single effort, the volunteers hold us,” Roybal said. “If it wasn’t for community we wouldn’t be able to get anything done.”
Roybal and her two big sisters Theodora Valdez and Erlinda Quintana started the soup kitchen more than 22 years ago to help improve the community they call home.
Since it opened volunteers have served countless lunch-time meals, to the tune of 22,000 to 25,000, per year. In addition to starting the soup kitchen and having various key roles in its operation over the years, Roybal and her sisters belong to several church organizations that focus on keeping families together.
Valdez said the sisters’ compulsion for helping others comes from the stern but nurturing lessons they learned growing up.
“I believe it is because the beautiful loving discipline they instilled in us,” Valdez said of the sisters’ deceased parents. “They taught us how to care and not to judge.”
Roybal said the community work she has done over the years is designed to provide assistance in a manner that keeps one’s self esteem intact.
She likens it to the notion of teaching a man to fish, as opposed to giving him a fish, which will help the person in the long run, because he or she will be able to provide for themselves.
“We offer help that gives them dignity, not take it away,” Roybal said.
She said with the negative associations with being poor or experiencing a temporary set back many are reluctant to ask for help.
“Some people are embarrassed to ask for a handout,” Roybal said. “But when they need it, they are confident they are gonna get help without judgment.”
Besides she said people who she and her sisters have lent a helping hands to come from all walks of life.
“I have seen some poor people,” Roybal said. “But we help others.”
She sees her role in the community, she said frankly, as the official registered agent of the soup kitchen which means she has to answer for mishaps.
“I am the one who gets in trouble if anything goes wrong,” Roybal said jokingly but with serious overtone.
She said in the past 22 years she hasn’t given much thought to work she does because if she did, it would probably ruin her drive.
“I don’t think about it because I wouldn’t do it,” she said with that business like demeanor. “It is hard work and it’s very challenging.”
The hardest part is not keeping track of the inventory, preparing food or writing grants to pay for the equipment and other essentials, it is the push and pull from the community.
“You meet up with a lot of opposition,” she said. “ On one hand many people don’t believe there is need and on the other hand some people want you to do it 24 hours a day.”
Kindness
for weakness
The sisters have been burned many times not from a hot stove but by people who mistook their kindness for weakness. One incident left Roybal with so much disappointment she sought the guidance of her spiritual counselor.
“I had to go for counseling with our priest because I was upset with a person who lied and said his wife was dying,” she said. “ I gave him all the money in my purse.”
She also recalls last year’s break-in at the kitchen when thieves busted through an industrial sized padlock securing the storage shed and ripped off about $2,500 worth of tables and chairs. United Way of Northern New Mexico paid to replace the stolen furniture.
Roybal said the theft hurt mentally because the equipment was difficult to replace on the kitchen’s $40,000 shoe-string budget.
Roybal said she had just returned from burying a friend when her right hand, Mona Romero, phoned her with the bad news.
Romero said she didn’t want to disturb Roybal about the break-in but considering Roybal is legally responsible for the kitchen she decided to go against her first impulse and make the call.
The end result is the kitchen lost some much needed equipment and the building is under constant surveillance.
We had to put up cameras,” Roybal said. “The whole building inside and out is under surveillance.” We hated to do it, but out of self defense, we had too.”
Roybal said it is unfortunate the thought process of teaching folks to take care of themselves hasn’t gained much steam. The roadblock stems from naysayers who doubt homelessness exists or when it does it is the result of laziness or lack of ambition.
“There is something wrong with our system,” Roybal concluded emphatically.
She said everyone is up in arms when it comes to taking care of animals but people rarely get the same consideration.
“We make sure they have animal shelters but when it comes to people, there are no people shelters,” Roybal pointed out.
To illustrate this anomaly Roybal recalls the several failed attempts to establish what she and many others characterize as a much needed homeless shelter in the community.
Volunteers
Other commitments and a full-time job keep Roybal’s sisters away from the kitchen far more than they like.
So to get things done Roybal relies on many people just like herself. For the better part of the last 10 years, Roybal has leaned on Romero to help handle the kitchen’s day-to-day operations.
“She is our guardian angel,” Roybal said. “She is little in stature and big in heart and effort.”
Romero said her choice to volunteer at the soup kitchen was natural after a work injury forced her to leave her job as Española Valley High School’s head cook.
“They are the biggest inspiration you can find,” she said. “I come back every day to help people. I love working with people. I have to put up with a lot of stuff. I just come to talk to the people.”
Romero said she enjoys working with Roybal but said with a smile, as she patted Valdez on the back, they sometimes drive her crazy. The sisters, specifically Roybal, who she spends the most time with, have imparted some valuable lessons, such as how to combine care with discipline.
Romero said she gets to practice some of the lessons she learned from Roybal and her sisters quite often. When someone shows up to the kitchen intoxicated, Romero said combine discipline with empathy to let the transgressor know they are welcome but intoxication of any sort won’t be tolerated.
The kitchen’s volunteers come in all ages and generations. Two elementary-aged children help 23-year-old Juan Lopez.
Lopez said he volunteers whenever he can as he boxed up Styrofoam trays filled with carne adovada, beef with mushrooms served over rice and a chile relleno.
Lopez said he likes to help out because he is grateful for all of his good fortunes.
“I’m grateful for all the advantages I have,” he said. “I just like to pay it forward and give back what I can when I can.”
He said that he is motivated by the team work and level of caring Roybal, and the others display.
“They are such inspiration and because they care,” he said.
Roybal leads a group of about 100 volunteers, who help prepare meals, serve food and keep the kitchen clean.
She said it is important to get the young volunteers started to start them on a life of giving.
“We need to invest heavily in our children and teach the importance of community service,” she said. “If we teach our children compassion and generosity to their fellow man, especially the poor and needy our future is secured.”
Learning to give
Valdez said she and her sisters have been extremely close since their upbringing in Santa Cruz.
The deep bonds stem from growing up in a family with six siblings and parents who emphasized the importance of community, Roybal said.
Working toward the betterment of one’s community comes naturally to Roybal and her sisters. From a very young age the girls watched their parents work tirelessly helping others.
“Our mother taught us well,” Roybal said. “Both our mom and dad were very charitable and Christian.”
Roybal said growing up their house was always filled with neighbors in need.
“I remember when I was little, three or four years old the neighbors would come to my mother’s house when they needed help cooking for a funeral,” she said. “The neighbors were always calling for mom to help.”
Watching their parents help others had a profound influence on how they approached the world as adults.
Valdez said it is only natural that the girls would grow up and live by the example their parents set and extend a hand-up to help others.
“You follow in your parents footsteps,” She said. “You have the desire and the need to go out and help people.”
Giving intensifies
For years leading up to the formation of the soup kitchen the sisters’ charitable work assumed the form of missionary-like work. Roybal and both of her sisters were and are still involved in multiple ministries that focus on helping people realize their spiritual needs. This includes home-based visits to those whose spiritual or religious needs weren’t being met because of limited mobility.
But the desire to give increased after Roybal embarked on a 6,000-mile pilgrimage to Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia, nearly 25 years ago. The sisters went on the journey as a testament of faith and to catch a glimpse of the Our Lady, who has appeared at the site since 1981.
The world travelers arrived in Medjugoje Wednesday afternoon so they wouldn’t have too wait long to start celebrating their faith.
Maundy Thursday is a sacred day for the deeply devout in the Christian faith. Thursday is the oldest observance of Holy Week. The celebration commemorates the Eucharist, the Christian sacrament in which Christ’s Last Supper is commemorated by the dedication of bread and wine.
Therefore it was quite apropos that that Thursday the world travelers experienced the highlight of their trip. That Thursday they joined thousands of other pilgrims for a prayer trek up a sacred hill.
Their 6,000-mile journey peaked with a trek up Apparition Hill, the site where Virgin Mary first appeared in 1981. On top of the hill, the sisters and their friend Zoriada Ortega, prayed with 3,000 other pilgrims, which strengthened their belief in community.
They missed Our Lady but knew she had appeared because they smelled the roses and saw the three flashes of lighting, Valdez said.
The Virgin’s presence compelled them to embark on the mission that has led to thousands of meals being served to Española’s needier residents.
“We smelled roses and we felt this holy presence,” Valdez said, “And immediately we knew what we had to do.”
The entire journey was filled with testimonies of faith that emphasized the need to help others.
The next day the sisters set out on a mission which strengthened Roybal’s and her sisters’ belief in miracles.
Valdez points to the hike up a three mile peak over slippery boulders and unstable rocks. Ortega already in her 70s didn’t want to take the hike because of the physical challenges it posed.
But Valdez wasn’t having that. She convinced her friend to accept the challenge and both ascended the hill.
“I held her hand and we stopped and rested she tried to get me to leave her because she felt she was slowing me down,” Valdez said. “But we made it. The boulders were slippery.”
Valdez said making the three-mile journey holding her elderly friend’s hand gave her immense strength and ease to finish the long uphill walk.
However, when she let go of her friend’s hand she said she felt an immense physical burden.
Valdez said the entire trip was the result of a couple of miracles.
“In my case, it was a miracle,” she said. “I was an administrator in Pojoaque School District. I didn’t think they would give me the time off. That was the first miracle. The second miracle was I didn’t have the money and the money appeared. We went on a wing.”
Roybal said there wasn’t one particular event that inspired her but rather it was the entirety of the trip.
“There was no individual event which was our inspiration,” she said. “The experience as a whole was our inspiration to open Soup Kitchen.”
She said when they returned, the trip inspired them to embark on the mission that has become the San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen.
The soup kitchen originally got off the ground under the umbrella of the Ministerial Alliance. The Alliance later disbanded but the kitchen continued with the blessing and support from individual churches.
Establishing the soup kitchen wasn’t easy. When the travelers touched down in the Valley they went to work exploring ways to establish a soup kitchen. The planning sessions lasted about two years until the San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen opened July 1992.
The original kitchen opened its doors at the MG Hall in Ranchitos, with the help of Modesto and Mickie Gallegos. But the celebration was short lived.
Nearly sixteen months later, the hall burned down along with the soup kitchen it housed.
A couple of weeks later, the kitchen reopened in the Apple Valley Senior Center where it has operated rent, and utility free for the past 22 years.
Roybal said if anyone learns anything from her efforts over the years, it is pay attention to others and treat people well.
“If we just treat each other well we wouldn’t be in the shape we are in,”she said. “Smile with each other. Talk to each other and find out if they need anything. You see someone at the super market and ask them how are they doing and they may respond I am feeling bad and we say oh good—because we aren’t paying attention.”
She said both she and Romero have noticed that the more they give the more they get.
“We have the miracle of the turkey and the ham,” Roybal said.
Every holiday season, the Kitchen receives 300 turkeys and 300 hams from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Securing Our Country LLC.
“We give and we give, the turkey and hams in food boxes,” Roybal said. “We cook with them and the piles never go down until the next year. Our pantry will get down to the last and someone will call us and say we had a food drive here is $20,000 of food.”
The regeneration of the kitchen’s food resource during the holiday rush isn’t the only phenomenon. Roybal said the miracle extends to their volunteer staff.
“We have volunteers that will get severely sick or they pass away or they move,” she said. “But before you know it, we have a whole new team of volunteers that drop in from nowhere. Our volunteers aren’t just volunteers they are soup kitchen angels.
Roybal said she would like to see more permanent solutions for empowering area residents like job-readiness skills.
“I think that if we would counsel people on how to find a job we would reduce the number of people needing help,” Roybal said.