For J Fazel of Elgin, volunteering is more than a full-time job.
It is six days a week, 1,000 miles a month on his car, a conversion van he pulled the middle seat out of to make room for the unwanted food he picks up from local businesses. He delivers that food to churches and other organizations that help seniors, the homeless and the unemployed.
(Michael Smart/Staff Photographer)
Contact Emily McFarlan at emcfarlan@scn1.com
It is six nights a week running the kitchen at PADS of Elgin and waking up at 4 a.m. each Friday to prepare the men's breakfast at his church, Epworth United Methodist Church in Elgin. It's spare time spent organizing the program to supply food to a local food shelter at Epworth, delivering Meals on Wheels with Sherman Hospital, taking part in the Elgin Cooperative Ministry and leading Venture Crew 9911 of Girl and Boy Scouts ages 14 to 21.
"It just gives you a real good feeling to be able to help somebody out," Fazel said.
Two weeks ago, his volunteerism was awarded with the 2009 Andrus Award for Community Service from AARP. The national award recognizes 53 individuals from each state, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands each year.
"Evidently, someone in this house" nominated him, Fazel said.
That someone was his wife, Ann, who wrote in the nomination letter, "There is nothing courageous about this gentleman. He brings love and fellowship to the people he helps. We constantly run into those he helps who thank him for what he does and how much it means to him."
Fazel said, "Oh, man. It was just a big surprise. It was overwhelming."
At AARP's volunteer appreciation event at the governor's mansion in Springfield, he said he got to sit alongside "real political people."
And it's not the first award his volunteerism has won him. He also was awarded a 2005 Elgin Image Award, and he said he's been recognized "too many times to count" by the Boy Scouts of America, which he has been a part of for 63 years.
But Fazel said he doesn't volunteer for the recognition. In fact, he's not entirely sure why he does it.
"I don't know. It's all I've ever done. I have no idea. It's what I do," he said.
Fazel said he got started picking up food from Piggly Wiggly and Cub Foods and driving it to a food pantry when the man who had been doing it at Epworth moved away from the area in the early 1990s. Not long after, one pantry told him it didn't have bread, so he talked to Holsum.
It grew from there.
He now picks up from Holsum, Dominick's, SuperTarget, Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating, Ultra Foods, KFC, Herb's Bakery and Caputo's Fresh Market. He delivers to PADS, Community Crisis Center, Senior Services Association, Centro de Informacion and various soup kettles.
"I do bring them all kinds of goodies -- cake, cheesecake, brownies," Fazel said. "They're homeless people and, you know, they don't get the finer things like a lot of people do -- cheesecake, especially."
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