A generous man who was homeless as a child has given away 2,500 Thanksgiving meals this year.
Rob Adams, now a successful real estate agent, lived in the back of a pickup truck aged 11 – with his parents and three siblings – getting the odd night in a motel if they were lucky.
But a random act of kindness one Christmas made Rob vow he would ‘pay in forward’ if he ever came into money.
Rob, 49, said: “I was the oldest of four siblings and my parents struggled to make ends meet.
“Our main meal of the day was school lunch and there were many nights when we didn’t have any dinner.”
One Christmas a local family donated their home to Rob and his family for two weeks while they were out of town for the holidays.
When Rob’s family arrived they found the fridge and cupboards chock full of of food, including turkey, homemade pies and vegetables.
Rob, from Riverton, Utah, USA, recalled crying with happiness when he saw all the fully stocked fridge.
That day he made a vow that if he ever had any money to spare he would do the same to help other people in need.
Rob fulfilled his promise in 2015 by launching a nonprofit called ‘Thanksgiving’s Heroes’, which this year gave away 2,500 food boxes stuffed with everything from pumpkin pie, to turkey and stuffing.
Each box weighs about 53 pounds and is enough to feed a family for several days after the Thanksgiving celebration.
The charity gives away more and more meals each year and in 2019 they began to expand into Texas and Florida as well as Utah.
“We have plans for Arizona and Pennsylvania and would like to grow it into a national operation soon,” said Rob.
Anyone can donate to the cause via the website thanksgivingsheroes.org and anyone can nominate a person or family that is in need of a package.
Rob added: “Many nominations come from the schools, school teachers know who’s struggling.
“It’s a mix of families, elderly people who are living alone and single people, people can nominate themselves if they need to. We don’t discriminate. We also do a lot of single mothers and their families.”
The gratitude expressed by the people who receive the meals is heart wrenching.
Mother-of-two Josette Lillie was so touched to receive her box that she posted an emphatic note to the operators.
She wrote: “We were absolutely shocked and so blessed to have received this Thanksgiving dinner!! I cried a lot because it really helped our family more than you can imagine…
“We are struggling so much trying to make ends meet and pay the bills and I didn’t know what to do about Thanksgiving.
“We were going to skip it, but now we can have a family Thanksgiving because we were so blessed with this wonderful gift of food.”
Rob said: “A lot of people say that they wound’t have eaten anything if they hadn’t received the package and this year people are struggling more that ever because of job losses from COVID.
“We’ve noticed a much larger quantity of nominations this year, we filled up the quota faster than ever before.”
About 1,200 people volunteered this year to help organize the meals, then package and distribute them.
Rob added: “We didn’t have much time for fundraising this year but we still managed to meet our commitments.
“The message I would love to share is that it’s not about the food it’s about delivering hope in a hopeless time.
“I feel like these families need that even more than they need the food.
“We want to serve others with have love and gratitude in our hearts, the fear is contagious right now, so people need hope more than ever.”