When Rhonda Sneed moved to Richmond from New York City in 2013, she was shocked by the homelessness she saw. “I didn’t expect it,” she said over coffee at Ellwood Thompson’s. “It’s different down here.”

Her shock didn’t come from lack of experience, however. She grew up seeing homelessness in NYC and has even experienced it herself, shortly after leaving the US Air Force. “I was homeless, pregnant, right out of the military. I know what it’s like,” the retired postal worker and veteran said.

Still, the scale of suffering and the lack of resources in the River City shocked her when she arrived, but she quickly fell into a familiar pattern and did what she’s always done: Made food for people. “When I was six, I made pb&j and gave that out,” she said. “People live in cardboard boxes up there. You can see them, the city lets them.”

Each day, she made soup in a crockpot and distributed it by car in styrofoam cups. She enlisted two of her friends, including Cathy Davis, who joined us for coffee, but otherwise just kept working in obscurity.

After three years though, she found that the need was greater than she could meet, especially as she struggled with occasional flare-ups of fibromyalgia. She finally took up Davis on her suggestion to start a Facebook page, which she titled, Because We Care, We Are Blessing Warriors. Membership grew over the course of a year from a few dozen to over 1,700. Prospective members have to answer one question before she approves them: “Another word for a homeless person is?”

With donations and support from the group, Sneed turned her self-funded effort into a massive project that feeds hundreds of people across Richmond every day. I got to know Sneed over several interactions, but I first met her at the end of 2017 at the city overflow shelter, where Richmond’s homeless were huddled against the wall waiting to get inside, away from a 14-degree evening.

The food being offered included 25-gallons of hot soup, over 100 sandwiches, hot drinks, and prepackaged meals. Warm clothes were distributed among men and women who lacked gloves, blankets, and even socks.

One of the men stopped to hug Sneed and another volunteer, Kim Lumpkin. He introduced himself as Ken Dahl, and said, “I don’t go inside and just forget about y’all.” He also wanted to share an idea for fixing homelessness, which he said would take, “rais[ing] a couple dollars from everybody, we could build a permanent home for everybody. We’d do the work.”

Sneed said his willingness to work was par for the course. “Most of the people I bring food to want to work,” she said, but many suffer from health problems or disabilities. Even with government assistance, she said it’s a struggle,

People get $650 a month on disability, it’s not enough for an apartment but too much for food stamps. Some can pay for a room, $550, and only have $100 leftover for food a month.

Although many groups come out during the blistering cold we had this winter, Sneed said it’s an everyday vocation. The only difference is “Gatorade in the summer, warm clothes in the winter. People forget how hot it gets in the summer. We do 300 bottles of water a day, half of them frozen, and Gatorade.”

Sneed and her friends set out styrofoam coolers they keep stocked with water, but many of them disappear. “I think the city takes them,” Sneed said. “Although we try to make them blend in, look pretty. The young people in the group paint them.”

The Cold Weather Overflow Shelter, which opens its doors at 7 PM on nights when the temperature dips below 40 degrees, isn’t the only place that Sneed feeds people. She still keeps up her regular routine, a multi-stop hours-long drive across the city, most days of the week.

Near the end of February, I got the chance to join her, Davis, and Lumpkin over at Lowe’s Home Improvement on West Broad Street for a truncated version of their usual day. As they began inventory of the supplies in Sneed’s Nissan Xterra, a man who has seen them out before drove over and introduced himself as James McEachern.

He wanted to donate his lunch, a pasta dish he made himself, and said, “I have food at home, I can wait until work is done to eat.”

Sneed described it as part of a normal day, saying, “People stop, they give us five, ten dollars. They want to help, they just don’t know how.”

The first two people we met on that day were Faith and Greg, a couple who get around on old mountain bikes. Greg told me they had a 2 and 3-year-old living with relatives, and that they currently pay a small amount each month to sleep on a floor in an apartment. The couple does odd-jobs and is looking for stable work so they can live as a family again. When I asked for a photo, Faith said she loved to have her picture taken while Greg tenderly removed her broken sunglasses.

Before we left Lowe’s, the group gave out food and clothing to some 20 people at the Allen and Lombardy Street entrances. One of the men, Craig, came over and gave all the women hugs. “This is the most beautiful woman in the city,” he said about Sneed. “When I see her, it makes me smile every time.” Like most of the men I met, he was sensitive and gentle, and enthusiastic about the women who come out to help him.

“One man said he’d rather just sit and talk with us than have something to eat,” Sneed said as we drove to our next stop, behind the abandoned 6th Street Marketplace. Davis said that’s because of who Sneed is.

She moved to Richmond from NYC to help with Sneed’s efforts and describes her with the wonderment one usually hears about saints. “She could get a call at 1 AM, she’ll fix them a sandwich and drive over. The other night, she took her shoes off for a woman,” Davis said.

Sneed, who added that she can always go home to get another pair of shoes, said her only wish is for people to call her sooner when they need something.

“When I do get a call, they haven’t eaten in two to three days, and they feel guilty for calling me,” she said. “They don’t need to go hungry. I’m happy to come out and feed them wherever they are.”

Davis also brought up a young woman who they see around town, prompting Sneed to share her story. “For six months I fed her, she never spoke. I would just put the food on a plate near her. One day, I go there, and she says to me, ‘I’m having an episode. I need help. Call 9-1-1.’”

Sneed said she did, but the EMS workers who showed up weren’t properly trained. “They refused to work with me, they just kept saying if she couldn’t describe the problem to them, they were going to leave.” Eventually, she got the woman to get into the ambulance by promising she’d go with her, but the ambulance crew wouldn’t let her in. She drove to the hospital herself, found the room, and made her way in despite pushback from the hospital staff.

For six months I fed her and she never talked to me, until that day. When I went in that hospital room, she cried. She said, “Thank you for feeding me.” She still doesn’t talk to anyone, but she talks to me.

At the next site, between the Richmond Coliseum and the abandoned downtown mall, I saw more examples of the ways Sneed connects with people who are struggling. Living under a tragic sign that reads “building a better future” were a number of men in their late 60s to 70s, many of them veterans. They knew Sneed and started gathering around her Xterra as best they could.

Carlton Johnson was one of them, but he couldn’t make the walk over from the bench he sat on. The 78-year-old man can’t walk on his own and spends his days on a bench without shelter. Sam Sims, a 64-year-old man who works nearby, approached us to ask what could be done for Johnson. “This man is a veteran, he served his country. He needs some help,” he said. “If this is how we treat people, what type of people are we?”

Sneed had been aware of Johnson and worried about him. She’s working on getting his army paperwork so she can get him into the Department of Veteran Affairs for medical attention and a spot in assisted living. “The VA can’t help you until you’re homeless,” she said, reflecting on her personal experience.

She said the VA is a hard institution to work with, but noted that one of her biggest supporters is a doctor at the VA. “He comes out in his wheelchair to help people with me.”

After she sat with Johnson, Sneed rejoined Lumpkin and Davis in feeding the other men at the site. Sims followed and told the women some good news: It was his 64th birthday. They sang happy birthday to him, give him a little food, and send him on his way. He works and has a room, but like many of the people Sneed helps, he lives just at the poverty line and struggles.

Another man who came by, who went by Kenny, had more good news for the women: He had a room. After an extended time living behind the coliseum, which he said is swarmed by dozens of rats at night, he had finally secured a stable spot to live indoors.

The last visitor was Anthony Kelly, who rode up on a bicycle before he sat down to eat with us at a park table. The former warehouse clerk and chef suffered a stroke which resulted in memory loss and physical infirmity; he was fired from his job and lost his apartment when he couldn’t balance rent and medical expenses.

He looks for jobs every day, but never gets called back. “I’m almost 60. People look at that first, then once they hear I’m diabetic and had a stroke, they don’t want to hire me,” he said. He’s worked his whole life, starting at 15, first cleaning bathrooms and gutters for a restaurant with a special permit and restricted hours as a minor.

He was quickly promoted to dishwasher, then prep cook, then into the bakery. He moved into his own apartment at 17 and was proud of a stable employment record with future promotions that ended with him moving to another restaurant to be the head chef.

“It was a weight on my shoulders, though, too much stress,” he said about the long hours working without benefits. That led him into warehousing, which he did for 10 years before his stroke.

After he finished sharing his story, Sneed asked him what he needed for supplies or clothes. Davis took down notes and the two scheduled another visit after they finished up their afternoon food runs to bring him dinner, a sleeping bag, and various toiletries. Sneed made sure he had her number, and then we all piled back into the Xterra to head to our last stop at 17th Street in Shockoe Bottom.

On the drive over, they told me they’ve organized the group into teams that handle cooking, inventory, donations, and more, and explained the work they do beyond this one food run. A seniors team coordinates care for the homebound, older folks who can’t get out or prepare food anymore. Sneed said, “There are food pantries, but what are you going to do with a raw chicken if you can’t drive or cook?”

We also talked about her two granddaughters, Ariana and Xiomara, who live with her and are following in her footsteps. Both donated some of their Christmas gifts to homeless children they met, and they go out with their grandmother whenever they can.

At 17th Street, we saw Bernard, a man the women described as a pillar of the local community. He’s a networker and a people person, and he came over with detailed updates on the local population. “We may be homeless, but we got a lot of love for each other,” he said, explaining why he puts in so much work to help his friends. “I drink. Of course, I do, it gets cold out here at night, but I do my best for everyone.”

Sneed and the other women joined him recently for his baptism, a ceremony he’d invited them to witness after he found a church and joined this winter. Many of the men at 17th Street share Sneed’s devout religious beliefs, which she expresses not with evangelical words but by her actions, doing work she says is rooted in a love of God.

Another man there, Brother Robinson, talked about his faith and demonstrated some of the work he does. He makes small cross necklaces out of paperclips and yarns that he sells. One of his best customers is Sneed, who buys them to resell as fundraisers for the group. After feeding more than a dozen people, I joined the women back in the car for the return trip to Lowe’s, where they’d drop me off before regrouping to head out on their evening route.

When I sat down with Sneed at Ellwood Thompson’s in January, she’d offered a thought that she didn’t finish.

People think it’s the food. It’s more than that,” she said. I meant to ask her to expand on it, but after spending a day with her, I didn’t need to. I saw what she meant by it first-hand.

Whether she’s giving food and clothes, a hug, or just spending time talking, the bigger thing she’s doing is sharing her love. Her fundamental view, that all people have value and deserve love, is demonstrated in every aspect of her work, and it was all the more meaningful as something I witnessed instead of something that was explained.

Update: Since deadline, Sneed reports that Anthony Kelly has gotten into a program, and Bernard has found an apartment in an assisted living community in Church Hill. Carlton Johnson is still looking for assistance.

If you want to get involved, gas cards are needed for the group to keep the cars running that distribute food. Donations can be made via paypal. People who want to do more can join the Facebook group or email Sneed.

Photos by David Streever