It all started 10 years ago for Paul and Denise Grogger as a trip to “take a little homeless magic to downtown Phoenix” one Christmas.
With their four adult children away, and knowing that people were living on the streets, they decided to assemble some simple gift bags and drive the nearly 45 minutes from their home in Carefree, Ariz.
“Paul and I drove through the downtown area. We would stop on the street, and Paul would get out of the truck and hand [the bag] to someone,” Denise recalled.
The bags held a sandwich, cookies, chips, a Nativity holy card and an orange.
Some of the street dwellers were surprised. Most took the item without saying much, a few thanked the Groggers.
“They were cold and tired. Two or three said, ‘Merry Christmas.’ Most had little reaction,” Denise remembered. “They were scared. They just needed to know someone cares.”
It was the first time the Groggers saw the area’s homeless challenges up close.
“We were in shock. We found people sleeping behind buildings, stairwells,” she said.
The couple was moved to do more.
After sharing their experience with friends, bringing in a few new volunteers, they
brought 100 bags to the area the next year, adding a warm hat and gloves. “By the third year, we were up to 200.”
And the group has kept bringing them each holiday season since. Along the way, they’ve added items, including Wet Wipes and plastic garbage bags, that homeless individuals have asked for.
And then, there’s the orange.
The story behind the round, juicy citrus fruit comes from Native American author Scott Momaday, whom the Groggers met years ago at a Scottsdale art gallery. A Kiowa Indian and 1969 Nobel Prize winner for his novel, “House Made of Dawn,” Momaday is widely credited for launching the era of contemporary Native American writers. But it was a small statement about the orange and Christmas that fueled the Groggers’ decision to make it the staple of their holiday homeless outreach.
“I am told that three wiseman brought gifts to the Christ Child of gold, frankincense and myrrh. I like to think that the gold might have been an orange and that the Christ Child might have found it wonderful beyond the telling,” Momaday is quoted in a 2003 article in the Phoenix-based Indian art magazine, Native Peoples.
It is in this characterization, the Groggers found an identity for their annual donations, as volunteer Larry Dorame explained: “The Christmas orange is a symbol of the simplicity of a gift. A gift of nourishment, love and mercy. A gift that goes beyond the physical but that transcends the spirit of love that Christ asks us to show one another. No one should be hungry or forgotten on any day, but most especially during Christmas!” Dorame stated.
‘He’s there with us’
The number of volunteers has grown steadily as well, with friends of the Groggers at their parish, Our Lady of Joy in Carefree, Ariz., telling others of the work.
“It’s all been word of mouth,” Denise said. “We do no advertising.”
Each early January by the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord – the first Sunday in January after the Feast of the Epiphany – the group has handed out the bags, timing its mission to allow volunteers time with their families. The Baptism of Our Lord is considered by Catholics the formal end to the Christmas season.
Though the ministry was born with the Groggers, its lifeblood has been its volunteers, an expansion that grew a couple of years ago to include schoolchildren from St. Mary-Basha Catholic School in Chandler, Ariz. Dorame’s two daughters attend the school and have helped organize donations there to support the ministry.
“What’s really touched my heart these last two years is [getting] more children involved,” Denise said. “It’s very important young people know about the homeless.”
The volunteers – young and old – may have meant more than ever to the mission in 2020, when Denise lost her husband that April. Paul, a chef, and founder of a local spice company, passed away after a nearly eight-year battle with lung cancer. The couple had been married for 37 years.
Denise never thought about stopping the donations. “I’m doing what Paul would have wanted me to do. He’s there [with us in spirit] every day, especially during the Christmas season,” she said.
‘We are so grateful’
In each of the previous three years, the group handed out more than 750 gift bags – more than 2,300 in all the years of ministry
This past Sunday, they delivered another 750 bags, marking the 10-year milestone by doing something brand-new. They still handed out some bags on the street, but most of them went to three Valley agencies that serve the homeless and partner with the Diocese of Phoenix: Andre House and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, both in Phoenix, and Paz de Christo, Spanish for “Peace of Christ,” in Mesa, Ariz.
Denise said the shift to shelters better safeguards volunteers, especially the younger ones who have joined the group in the past few years. “The shelters are inside. It’s a protected area,” she explained.
The ministry now also collects the gift items and prepares bags at the home of two of its volunteers, Dick and Shelby Crowley, in central Phoenix, about a 15-minute ride into the downtown Phoenix area. Volunteers made sandwiches and packed the bags Thursday and Friday, before Diocese of Phoenix Auxiliary Bishop Eduardo Nevares stopped by Saturday to bless the bags.
The next day, the group headed to St. Vincent de Paul’s shelter at 29th Street and Washington, its main headquarters, which includes Rosalie’s Place and the Ozanam transitional shelters. They also went to Andre House, which offers meals, clothing, laundry and shower services. Group members then dropped off the remaining bags at Paz de Cristo, which offers meals, hot showers, clothing and job-assistance services.
“It’s very heartwarming. Thank you for being here,” said a beaming Cande De Leon, St. Vincent de Paul’s chief mission engagement officer, to volunteers minutes before they gave bags to dozens of clients at the Washington Street shelter. The facility currently serves 243 men and women with comprehensive services to help start them on the road to self-sustainment.
“We never see ourselves as doing anything alone,” De Leon said. “This is part of a wider community effort to support the homeless. Thank you for being a part of that. We’re so grateful. You guys are awesome!”
‘OUR CALL AS CATHOLICS’
As volunteers handed out bags, many residents looked inside, others headed to nearby tables, where they sat down and took some of the items out.
“The bags are great, but I have to say, the Wet Wipes were awesome!” smiled Cynthia Rongey, 50, who has been at the shelter for nine months following a previous five-month stay in 2022.
Rosa Vega, 58, who has lived there 14 months, said it felt good to receive a gift at Christmastime with items she’ll use. “I got socks, gloves, snacks, a toothbrush, toothpaste, water [and] I like oranges.”
Darius Grantling, 44, was grateful. “It’s a blessing,” he said, haling the volunteers’ generosity. “It’s better to give than to receive, that’s how I feel,”
Denise said all of the items are donated from various sources, including schools, businesses, small groups and individuals. “A dentist helps every year with the toothbrushes,” she noted.
Four years ago, the group began receiving donations of sleeping bags in Paul Grogger’s memory. This year, they distributed them both to organizations and to a few people experiencing homelessness on the street in the neighborhood near Andre House on Watkins Road in south Phoenix.
In handing these items out, the volunteers were blessed in their own way. “There’s a practical need in serving, but it also helps our mental health, our spirit, our psyche. It changes us. It transforms us,” said de Leon.
“I love it. I look forward to it every year,” said Elle Foster, 27, Denise’s oldest granddaughter and a fellow Our Lady of Joy parishioner. “Every year, we’ve added to the bags based on what recipients told us they can use. It really humanizes the experience. It makes me proud of the family and community we’ve built. I feel if I were ever to go through a life-altering thing and needed help, I could lean on groups and organizations like this.”
St. Thomas the Apostle in Phoenix parishioner Rebecca Even, noting the public often looks past a homeless individual on the street, said this ministry is a way to help those people not feel marginalized, but valued. “[You] look them in the eye, smile, it’s about giving them the dignity of eye-to-eye contact. It’s respect. That’s our call as Catholics, human dignity.”
