Maui News: Hungry Heroes Hawaii Making a difference, one meal at a time
Steve Calkins and Brad Kukral are the co-founders of Hungry Homeless Heroes Hawaii, a new nonprofit on Maui.
Just after the stay-at-home order began islandwide, the two were walking down Front Street in Lahaina.
“It was a ghost town,” said Calkins. Both felt there was a visible yet indiscernible need for those without shelter or food.
The following day, Kukral visited a supermarket. He witnessed a man running from the store with a shopping cart filled with his belongings. A store employee ran behind him, eventually catching up and grabbing the two bags of beef jerky the man had stolen from the store.
“It couldn’t have been more than $15,” said Kukral. The man with the cart then broke down, pleading and begging with the store worker, telling him he was hungry and hadn’t eaten in days.
“No one was really paying attention,” said Kukral.
He pulled into a parking spot nearby and continued to watch from a distance. A construction worker, who was also on the scene, stepped in and began yelling at the homeless man. He proceeded to take the man’s cart and empty it’s contents onto the street. People continued to walk by, no one doing anything. A few strangers muttered and audibly snickered passing by.
Kukral had seen enough. He proceeded into the store and bought the man a bento box. Giving it to him, he said, “I don’t really condone stealing. But I understand what you’re going through.”
He knew that he would have to do something about it. That night Calkins and Kukral began brainstorming.
“We decided we could cook some meals,” they said.
They posted the initiative to the Facebook group, Maui Helping Maui. The response was immediate. Donations began pouring in from the Maui community with offers of rice, pasta, beans — all kinds of food.
“If someone is going to donate something to us, we’re gonna use it,” said Kukral.
What humbly began as just a few meals, all prepared in Kukral’s one-room apartment, grew daily as it caught the attention of others who wanted to help. With the online network that Maui Helping Maui gave the growing team of volunteers, Kukral and Calkins connected with other community heroes like Aaron Fung, owner of Blue Moon Cafe in Kihei. Fung graciously donated his space and licensed kitchen, which gave a central location for Hungry Homeless Heroes to continue to prepare meals. His kitchen offered a perfect temporary solution. What started as a way to feed the hungry on the west side, grew rapidly with more drivers, more cooks and more helping heroes.
Declining to have their photo taken, Calkins’ said the real heroes are the people they feed every day. Right now, Hungry Homeless Heroes is serving between 350 and 450 people a night, according to Calkins.
Their clients are the most vulnerable. Based on the latest study released by the County of Maui, there are roughly 1,300 to 1,400 people living without shelter on the island. It would be safe to assume those numbers are actually considerably higher, and the vulnerable population has grown exponentially with the current economic climate.
Calkins and Kukral prove that individuals can really make a difference in the lives of many. Human kindness that can make the difference in someone’s life is sometimes served one meal at a time.
Hungry Homeless Heroes is accepting monetary gifts, food and man-hour donations.
