Story by Daphne Chen
Video by Kara McFarland
Original Video – More videos at TinyPic
On one Saturday every month, people can witness a caravan of cars, full of high school students, cruising down I-35 at 4 a.m..
In the trunks, giant coolers filled with sandwiches, fruit, bread and boiled eggs are along for the ride.
About twenty students, led by senior Kara McFarland, make this early-morning migration every month to the Austin Street Shelter in downtown Dallas, to donate food to the homeless.
“This actually started as a service project that my church started called Feed the Homeless, but it was always with adults,” McFarland said. “I wanted to make it more with kids my age, so this basically started as kind of a selfish thing.”
What began her junior year as a small get-together has now become a monthly ritual for McFarland and the many friends from other schools that mutual friends bring along.
“She’s always been about helping people,” father Scott McFarland said. “She cares for the people around her and she likes to rally groups like this.”
On Fridays, the night before an Austin Street Shelter visit, McFarland’s house is like a busy factory. Students walk in and out, bringing supplies purchased with their own money. Eggs are set to boil on the stove and one boy is assigned to “watch them”. Bread slices smothered with jam and peanut butter are being high-fived. Students toss sandwiches back and forth, and towards the far wall of the kitchen, where McFarland’s little brother waits to alley-oop them into the coolers.
“We’re making it fun,” Cistercian Preparatory School senior Steven Imaizumi said. “We could be there sitting, making sandwiches by ourself, but this just feels like hanging out. But it isn’t sitting on a couch watching TV – we’re actually doing something together.”
The food is finished by 6 p.m., but many of the students don’t sleep that night – they stay up, because everybody must be gathered in the CHS parking lot by 4 a.m. in order to get to Austin Street and feed the several hundred residents by 6 a.m..
Once at the shelter, the scene is very different from the jubilant warmth of McFarland’s house. It is still dark as the students set up the food on a series of long tables and face the seemingly-endless rows of cots and tired faces. A divider separates the men from the women and children. Everybody starts lining up.
“Students are surprised [the first time],” McFarland said. “They are always surprised. It can bring you down, just seeing the amount of people and the destitution. It sounds cliché, but it makes you feel humbled by your service.”
As difficult as the times must be for these residents, many still have cheerful things to say to the students, from “God bless you” to cracking jokes about the boiled eggs: “You don’t have them scrambled?”
“I like actually talking to the guys,” senior Graham Baxter said. “It’s nice to see the results.”
After about half an hour, the line begins to dwindle. They run out of orange juice. Students start packing up the trash and leftover food. “Give it up for Coppell High School!” says a man on a megaphone. Everybody claps and the students humbly accept the applause.
Piling back into their cars, many drift off to sleep. It is still dark by the time they get home.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but Austin Street Shelter was fed in an hour.
“It affects more than you,” McFarland said. “I hope people come back because they walk away eager for more.”
