When coronavirus struck, she stepped up: Meet the food fairy of West Philly
“Community work never stops — especially not in the middle of a generational crisis. However neighborhoods pull through the next few months, it’ll be people like Sam Samuel who lead them there. ”
Sam Samuel delivers school lunches out of her van to families unable to pick-up the assistance in her Mantua neighborhood. / WHYY Photo/Kimberly Paynter
Samuel has lived in this neighborhood just north of Drexel University all her life. She knows the streets. She knows the patchwork of rowhomes. She knows the people — how many kids they have and, yes, how many wolfdogs. Samuel also knew that when Philadelphia announced the sites where it would distribute free meals during ongoing school closures, kids in her neighborhood would be left out. None of the schools in Mantua were designated as distribution hubs. The nearest site was a school in the neighboring Belmont section of West Philadelphia — a mile or more from where many Mantua residents live. That didn’t sit right with Samuel or other members of the Mantua Civic Association, where she serves as treasurer.
On a blustery Thursday morning, Sam Samuel wound her black minivan through West Philadelphia’s Mantua neighborhood. To an outsider, her path was inscrutable: A left turn here. A right turn there. A loop back around. At irregular intervals, Samuel hit the brakes, slid the side door open, and hustled up to a neighbor’s door with bags full of sack lunches and Wawa-brand milk cartons…
