Beechview junior spreads hope, delivers Christmas gifts to homeless in Pittsburgh
This really is the most wonderful time of the year for Katrina Luffey.
But it has nothing to do with the gifts she expects to receive for Christmas, and everything to do with the people she looks forward to helping.
For the past eight years, the 16year-old Brashear High School junior has spent Christmas Day handing out gifts to homeless people around the city of Pittsburgh and sharing a message of hope and compassion.
“I just want to be a person who is there for them and helps them understand there are people out there who do care,” she said. “They need to know there are people who want to see them do better and succeed.”
She used to go directly into homeless encampments located around Uptown, along the Monongahela River and under the Seventh Street Bridge to hand out coats and blankets she collected from family members and friends. Her mother, Christine Luffey, a Pittsburgh police officer, has escorted Katrina every year and personally donated the funds to buy several $10 Giant Eagle gift cards she handed out along with cash for food.
They moved the annual event to a central location at Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship and Veteran’s Home in Uptown four years ago.
With a snowstorm pounding the region early Christmas morning, about 40 homeless men and women who came to the shelter for breakfast and prayer were able to help themselves to whatever they wanted from heaping mounds of donated goods laid out on several tables in the main lobby. Brand new coats, blankets, gloves, hats, thermal underwear
and socks were available in abundance as well as personal care items such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, soap, hand sanitizer and mouthwash.
Everyone also received either a $10 gift card to McDonald’s or $10 cash.
Katrina was determined to hold this year’s event despite the coronavirus pandemic and the social distancing limitations that would be necessary.
“When I asked my daughter if she wanted to postpone the homeless project this year due to COVID, I was impressed at her response. She told me people need help now more than ever,” said Officer Luffey, a community relations officer with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police at Zone 3 and a 28-year police veteran.
The homeless project became a labor of love for Katrina in 2012 when she was 8.
While at home on Thanksgiving Day, she saw her mother on live TV news along with other city police officers delivering meals to homeless people in freezing weather.
“I didn’t have a concept of not having a home,” she said. “It was cold out. I could hardly stand being outside for even a short time, and I felt a really sincere concern. I felt like they needed help, and what’s a better time to give to people than Christmas?”
As fate would have it, Officer Luffey soon afterward was scheduled to speak at a monthly block group meeting in the Carrick/Overbrook community and wasn’t able to find someone to watch Katrina that particular night. She had to bring Katrina to the meeting.
“While I’m speaking, my daughter is standing beside me and she keeps tugging gently at me the whole time saying, ‘Momma, can I talk?’ So I let her, and she told the group she was worried about the homeless people being in the freezing cold in the winter.
“A woman came up to us after the meeting and said her husband died and she could donate his coats and some blankets,” she said. The word got out, and in the days that followed, donations of coats and blankets started pouring into the Zone 3 precinct for Katrina’s project.
While Katrina is the driving force behind the Christmas Day project, she’s quick to point out the support she gets from donors, the police community and family and friends, which includes teachers at Brashear High School who joined the effort this year as well as employees at UPMC Shadyside, who’ve donated for the past five years.
“People here have very fond positive memories of the Christmas mornings they have come with gifts. They remember the compassion and caring,” said Father Jim Chester, an assistant priest at Shepherd’s Heart.
Before the gifts go out, Katrina said she always takes an opportunity to tell the gift recipients how much she fears for them in the harsh winter conditions they face.
“I let them know it would be really good not to see you in this position next year,” she said. “I hope I don’t hand gifts to you next year. I hope you have bettered yourself and you have a roof over your head and become a working, happy person in the community.”
A straight-A student at Brashear, Katrina said she is undecided between becoming a mathematics or science teacher and a neuropsychologist.
“The hardest part is not receiving the hugs this year,” she said. “Almost every person would hug me. For me, it’s about seeing the
smile on others’ faces when they receive something they didn’t expect to get.
“It’s my intention to do this well into adulthood and probably the rest of my life. I will pass this on to my kids. I
hope one day I’m not the only one doing this and it becomes more general in our society to care about others.”