"We're just a little tiny charity," said Krista Jones, founder and Executive Director of Sparrow's Nest, a non-profit organization that makes and delivers varied nutritious meals to cancer patients and their families in the Hudson Valley of New York. The service continues, free of charge, for the length of a patient's illness. And in the sad event of a patient's death, the service continues to support the family for another year.
The charity may be "tiny" in the eyes of Jones, but the impact on its recipients is huge. Because of her culinary efforts, a small staff, and the willingness of volunteer cooks and delivery drivers, Sparrow's Nest provides more than prepared food for 350 people. It offers the type of sustenance that only human kindness can supply. It reminds cancer patients and their families that someone cares enough to go the extra mile. It tells them that, even if their personal environment jolts out of control, there is a hand to help steady the course of everyday life. And it provides a form of support that is, in a word, delicious.
Jones, honored with the 2022 Cancer Community Catalyst for Care award, came to her life's calling by a circuitous route. Born in Connecticut, then relocated to Florida and Louisiana, Jones' early professional career began in yet another location, a St. Louis television station newsroom where she dispatched reporters. She moved to New York and became a radio news reporter, and later relocated within the state to become a radio news director, as well as an on-air morning show host.
"There was a lot of banter," she recalls, lightheartedly. "We started to run contests for our listeners...things like, 'Why does your mother deserve Mother's Day treats?' or "Nominate a family in need of Christmas gifts this year.' I started to read the letters that came in and got to see the human side of life. As I helped to pick contest winners, I felt a passion emerge; I really wanted to help these people."
Jones, by then married (and now for 23 years, "with three fiery red-haired daughters..."), continued to expand her human services role at the station, always looking for ways to help more and more listeners. At the same time, her life became a jumble of arriving at the studio at 3 a.m. while taking care of a baby "who I took to work with me and breastfed while on the air," she revealed, laughingly. "Oh, and I started to DJ events-weddings and parties on the weekends." She also joined a mothers' group where moms and children could socialize, go on outings, play, and commiserate together. And that's where Jones' life took a turn. That's where the "sparrow" got its wings.
Cooking With Love
"There was one mother, Kathy, who was so much like me," Jones recalled. "She would get up and go. She'd call at 7 a.m. and say, 'Hey, let's take the kids to the Crayola Factory,' and we'd make the 2-hour drive, then head to the beach. We'd do all this crazy stuff that most moms wouldn't even consider with three children under the age of 4. But we did it. And we became fantastic friends."
At this point in telling the story to Oncology Times, Jones teared up. The memory became bittersweet.
"Kathy, who had been on a weight-loss journey, started losing a lot of weight-too much weight. It went on for maybe 6 months," Jones said. "Then one day while I was DJ'ing a wedding, she called and asked me to come over and watch the kids when I was done. She didn't feel well and her husband had to take her to the hospital." It was only a matter of hours later when Kathy's husband called and said, "Kathy's sick. She has colon cancer."
"I didn't know what it meant," Jones admitted. "I didn't even know what it meant to be 'staged,' but I was told Kathy was Stage 4. I didn't know how someone so young, just 38, could be that sick. And yet Kathy battled on. Watching her, I thought it was completely normal for a person to have chemo and then take her kids to the beach. It wasn't normal; it was Kathy. She was superhuman. She was one of the best moms I've ever met."
But Kathy's disease progressed and, as it took its toll, Jones felt helpless to really support her friend. Then, suddenly, she had an idea. "In my youth, I spent a lot of years in Louisiana and down there you cook for people. That's what you do for everyone. You cook for the homecoming queen. You cook for someone who gets a promotion. You cook when someone breaks a leg. Knowing Kathy's children and husband were so important to her and would need healthy meals, I was no longer helpless; I could cook for Kathy and her family."
Other mothers/neighbors joined the effort. And while their sincerity was never in doubt, the safety of their cooking was. "I saw that when you have a cancer diagnosis, you can't have random people knocking on your door every day with food that you don't know where it's coming from, what it contains, or how it was cooked," Jones said. "It can become a liability for that person if the food is prepared unsafely.
"And everyone made baked ziti. Everyone," she recalled. "We ended up having to buy a second freezer just for all the pans of baked ziti." As Kathy got sicker, Jones realized cooking for cancer patients had become a worthy life focus.
"This idea started evolving in my head. As I realized Kathy was nearly at the end of this journey, I swore to her, 'I will never make ziti.' To this day, the one recipe I refuse to make at Sparrow's Nest is baked ziti."
Finding a Sign
In her waning days, Kathy poured herself into her faith. "And she was always saying to me, 'Krista, you can turn anything into a coincidence or you can believe it is a sign. I want you to see signs in everything you do,'" Jones recalled. It is something that would later be important as she ventured forward with her efforts.
After Kathy passed, Jones went to her funeral, where they played her favorite song, "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." "The gist of the song is you are being watched and cared for and loved, even if you don't know it. And what does the sparrow watch? It's nest. That's how Sparrow's Nest came to be. That's how it got its name."
Determined to form a bona fide non-profit charity called Sparrow's Nest, Jones soon found out it was no easy task. There were legalities to learn and paperwork to be filed.
"My husband and I did a lot of it ourselves in the beginning. We literally spent thousands of dollars filling out applications and tons of paperwork," she said. "But because we had no idea what we were doing or how to do it, our applications were rejected by the IRS. I thought it was a lost cause. I was depressed and just gave up for 2 months-did nothing. One snowy day, in the dead of winter, I decided to go to a local gym and take a walk in a workout/movie room. I was getting on the treadmill when, suddenly, up on the movie screen I saw Whitney Houston singing 'His Eye Is on the Sparrow.' That was my sign.
"I started crying and looking upward toward the ceiling and saying, 'Okay, Kathy, I understand, I can't give up. People need this and they are waiting for me.' The woman on the treadmill next to me leaned over and said, 'Are you OK? Do you need me to call for help?' The truth is, from then on, I was OK. I just buckled down and kept going. I was a force to be reckoned with. An accountant did the paperwork for us for a nominal fee and it all went through. Since then, there have been bumps along the way," Jones admitted. "But bumps are not roadblocks. We can overcome just about anything. We received 501C3 status in 2013. It's already a decade later."
Feeding Patients & Families
Today, Sparrow's Nest feeds between 340 and 360 people. "The number fluctuates because we have people coming on and going off the service every week," Jones explained. "Recipients are referred by oncology offices, hospitals, and social workers who assess patients' needs, as well as through individuals who have a loved one who is sick. We very rarely have the actual family contact us directly. Society has made us think we can do it all and should do it all, so people don't ask for help."
Sparrow's Nest provides meals to patients "...with any type of cancer, throughout treatment-whether chemo, radiation, surgery, etc. We have one person we call our 'miracle patient.' Doctors had given her 4 years to live, but she's already on year 8. And we have fed her through all 8 years," Jones said.
Patients can be a child, a parent, or a grandparent in the home. The service is open to any income group. However, there is one caveat right now: There must be a child under the age of 18 living in the home. It is a restriction Jones looks forward to lifting. Having purchased land in 2022, Jones is ready to break ground for a new 7,000-square-foot facility, which will allow for expanded services and the removal of that one restriction.
"When that requirement comes off the table, we will be able to feed anyone: senior citizens with no children in the home, single people with no children, people whose children have aged out or are in college. It will be a wonderful expansion," said Jones, earnestly.
In the meantime, "We have a really tiny crew," she explained. "I do the cooking alongside my kitchen manager, with help from four volunteers who come in the morning, in a commercial kitchen in a rented facility. On Mondays, we start at 6 a.m. and make two meals (with enough servings of each meal for 2 days) for our recipients, plus side dishes and desserts. The next morning, 12 volunteer drivers deliver the prepared food to local recipients in our county. The rest is loaded into a refrigerated truck, which our kitchen manager drives to four other counties where she meets volunteers who then distribute the food to recipients."
Remembering the baked ziti debacle, Jones proudly said, "We make different meals every week, and I never repeat the same recipe in a year. We make sure they are meals that are not easy to put together. Last week, we did chicken chimichangas with an avocado-corn salad, fresh bread, a beef stew-home comfort food." In addition, supplemental food is delivered to about a third of the recipients, based on need. "Some families were only eating what we were bringing, so we realized they needed help. So, for example, we'll provide a family pack of chicken breasts, extra fruits, vegetables, etc."
Funding the Effort
The running and rental of a commercial kitchen, refrigerated truck, salaries for the few paid positions (kitchen manager, financial director, patient liaison, and Jones), and a constant supply of high-quality food does not come without a cost.
"Our operating budget is about $1 million a year," said Jones, who noted that fundraising takes a great deal of her time and effort. Toward that end, she coordinates a yearly running race that has become a major source of income. Each year, a large team of volunteer runners drawn from the community raises $3,000 each in pledges.
"It takes 8 or 9 months of coordination," Jones said. "We train them. We teach them nutrition. We do meet and greets. Then we travel to a run location-we've been all over the country-and each team member gets two nights in a hotel and a special luncheon. This year we hope to do the Disney World run in November. When it's over, we typically raise between $300,000 and $400,000. About 85 percent of that money stays with the charity; the rest goes out in expenses."
As a Cancer Community award winner, Sparrow's Nest received a $50,000 award that Jones has judiciously earmarked. "It costs us about $5,000 to feed a family of four for a year. So that money will feed even more families," she said, with spirited optimism. "And when we build our new facility, we plan to have industrial hoop houses-plastic greenhouses-where we can grow our own fruits and vegetables. The award also will help fund that. The money is a tremendous boost."
As she reviewed the massive changes in her life since her early radio days and the tragic loss of her friend Kathy, Jones reflected on the lessons learned since becoming intimately involved in a world of cancer patients.
"I now know that we all need to treat the whole patient," she stressed. "There is much more to it than just medical needs. We need to address the mental well-being of patients fighting for their lives because it has a lot to do with the quality and even outcome of their journeys.
"I get so much more from the patients than I give. I see people walk through storms they never anticipated and were not prepared for. But they walk through diagnosis and treatment with strength, determination, and grace. I see what a real struggle looks like, and my entire life is changed because of it. I have learned what real priorities are. I have learned not to whine or complain about things that are just inconveniences and not really problems. I count my blessings every day." Indeed, "His eye is on the sparrow."
Valerie Neff Newitt is a contributing writer.