She set up a fridge full of free food. Here’s what happened when someone stole it
Sherina Jones is crying so hard she can barely speak.
It has been less than 12 hours — two days before Thanksgiving — since someone stole the refrigerator full of free food she set up in Liberty City.
“That just crushed me. That really, really crushed me,” she says. “I mean, people know why it’s there, to give people free food.”
Jones, 35, set up a community refrigerator in August, where people from the neighborhood can take or donate food. A sign on the front read, “Take what you need, donate what you don’t.”
Since then, after a steady flow of donations, she started two more, one at 717 Opa Locka Blvd. outside Upward Bound’s offices and another at 10128 NW 27th Ave., outside Blossom Beauty Salon.
Every morning, before heading to her business as an aesthetician in Miramar, she stopped at the community refrigerator to stock it with food and to hand out hot meals: hot ham-and-cheese sandwiches and bags of groceries. At night, after work, she stopped by again to top it off with everything from homemade sandwiches and fresh vegetables to canned foods and ready-to-heat meals. She is working with Legal Services of Greater Miami to register her Village Pantry as a nonprofit.
But on Nov. 24, two hours after stocking the fridge and getting home from a long day, she got a nervous call from her friend, Danny Agnew, who hosts the fridge at his Roots Collective print shop at 5505 NW Seventh Ave. The fridge was gone.
“When I pulled up and didn’t see it, I didn’t believe my eyes,” Agnew said. “A guy who stops by every night for food said, ‘You ended it?’ I had to tell him someone stole it. Everybody was in disbelief.”
It came as an especially hard blow as Jones and Agnew planned a turkey giveaway Wednesday from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Roots Collective, with hot food for those who don’t have a home and a kit to make a Thanksgiving dinner for those who do.
“The refrigerator is the center of the whole thing. And now it’s gone,” she said.
She leaves her contact information on the fridge, so people from the neighborhood who regularly stop by for meals called her Wednesday morning to ask what happened to the fridge: a frail homeless man who gained 10 pounds since she opened the fridge, a mother who brings her two kids for hot meals before setting them up for virtual school. Jones couldn’t keep her composure.
“I’m there every day, and I hear their stories. People really need this. It makes me feel like I let them down,” she says, a sob quickly catching in her throat. It is a minute before she can speak again.
But less than an hour after she composed herself enough to post about the theft on the fridge’s Instagram page late Tuesday night, a friend from high school saw the note and sent her enough money to buy a new fridge — and a second one to keep her dream project growing.
“When one thing gets taken away from you, the blessings come back double,” her former Carol City High classmate wrote her.
Jones promised the turkey giveaway would still go on. And the fridge will return. While telling the story, she was on her way to purchase a new community fridge for Liberty City. A friend, she said, is donating GPS trackers.
“People are jumping in to help,” Jones said.
How to donate
One-time and continuing donations: Rootscollectivemarket.org/rootsblackhouse
Direct donations through Cash App: $villagepantry
Go Fund Me: Gofundme.com/f/community-refrigerator-miami-edition
This story was originally published November 25, 2020 at 12:19 PM.
