Chef wants kids to avoid mean streets he saw
Weeks ago, 10 families received phone calls that they were nominated anonymously to receive a Christmas shopping spree.
Many recipients were skeptical, but it wasn’t a scam.
On Saturday morning, Milas Williams welcomed the families to the Unity in December event at the Walmart store on Austin Highway. His nonprofit World Lolei sponsored the event and allotted each family $1,000 to buy gifts and necessities.
Between aisles 13 and 15, Williams and his team prayed with the grateful mothers, fathers and children. They received free T-shirts from chef Johnny Hernandez and his family, supporters of the nonprofit’s cause.
The excited children and their happy parents then headed out to the store aisles, filling their shopping baskets with clothes, toys and household goods.
“It’s not every day something like this happens,” Makeisha Wallace, 29, said as she chose clothes for her three children.
The eyebrows of Jacqueline Cardena, 20, and her mother, Maria, rose above what surely were smiles behind protective masks as each woman pushed a cart clanging with cleaning products and toiletries.
“To see the looks on their faces was monumental,” Williams, 40, said through a camouflage mask. “This is the true meaning of Christmas. What better way to celebrate Jesus Christ’s birthday than to give back.”
In 2014, Williams, brother Detrick and Athena Williams founded World Lolei, which stands for “Loyalty Over Liberty Equals Integrity.”
The Christmas shopping spree was the organization’s newest event. For the past five years, he’s hosted the Youth Empowerment Thanksgiving Dinner and the Junior Chef Competition.
The nonprofit also sponsors three families bimonthly, paying utilities, expenses and rent to relieve burdens brought on by the pandemic.
An executive sous chef at Oak Hills Tavern on Fredericksburg Road, Williams and his organization aids families in urban communities and offer opportunities to San Antonio youths.
His road to becoming a humanitarian was paved with trial and error.
Williams grew up in the East Terrace neighborhood, among the New Light Village apartments, one of several gang turfs on the East Side in the late ’80s.
Bullet casings littered the sidewalks. Sneakers swung by shoelaces from power lines, a sign in this neighborhood that someone had been killed. Drug dealers and prostitutes populated the streets, but suspended their activities when children walked by.
His mother, Marshell Williams; stepfather, Tracy Allen Stevens; and his father, Curtis Duhon, raised him, three sisters and two brothers with love, morals and values, yet Williams was drawn to the temptations of his environment.
He was 11 when he joined the East Terrace gang and took on the lifestyle lived by some of his uncles and cousins. Williams said he wasn’t as notorious as some of his street peers, but he did his fair share of mayhem.
He was 19 when his crimes caught up with him. Williams was arrested for aggravated robbery and sentenced to 25 years in the state penitentiary.
One year in the Texas criminal justice system brought salvation and saving grace, he said. Mentors from all walks of life and a culinary program internship helped Williams evolve.
After five years, he was eligible to enroll in a careers program. Cooking was one of his favorite things to do with his mother and grandmother, so he chose a culinary program. That led to the San Antonio Food Bank Second Chance culinary program.
“Our life is like a recipe,” Williams said. “The different ingredients in our lives are like the different people in our lives. We’re all defined by the ingredients of our success.”
His list of benefactors is long and diverse.
There was Dana King, a female detention sergeant at a unit near Houston who believed in him when no one else did. Bobby Stanton, an older inmate who shared sayings by Confucius, bits of wisdom that Williams still quotes. He learned about respect from Joe Thompson, a weightlifting trainer serving a life sentence.
Monday through Friday, he would wake at 6 a.m., line up and walk to culinary class. From 6:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., he worked on skills that would open doors to a promising future. There were recipes that didn’t turn out right, and his instructor had Williams cook them up again. And again.
A member of a prison gang taught him how to make biscuits and cornbread at a prison kitchen in Abilene. He also taught the future chef an important lesson.
Williams was puzzled by the intricate techniques the white cook used to bake a cake.
“Hey, how did you learn to cook like that in prison?” he asked.
The man pointed to his head, and said, “I never got locked up here.” Then he pointed to the skin on his arm and said, “I got locked up here. As long as I’m free in my mind, I’m still a baker like I was in the world.”
Williams was released early after serving 15 years and graduated from St. Philip’s College culinary school. He credits his success to chefs that include Hernandez, David Gates, JoJo Doyle, Ruben Luna, Brian West and David Delgado.
He said his nonprofit’s contributions wouldn’t be possible without his family, donors and team members.
Williams said his staff, directors and supporters know youth served by the nonprofit by name and stay in their lives to offer an alternative to the gang life. Their work is in the name of East Side icons such as the late Rev. Claude Black and former Councilman Joe Webb.
“They were like our Moses,” Williams said. “And our Martin Luther Kings and Malcom X’s. They were superheroes in our community.”
“I want these children to keep their innocence,” Williams said. “Every child wants to feel like they are a superstar at an event. We know these children.”
His mother has always known her children had promise.
She’s cried for the boy who cooked by her side, grew into a teen prowling with gangs, and was jailed as a young man for his crime. Now, she cries tears of joy whenever she sees her evolved son on television sharing his story.
She cries, Williams said, because her prayers for his deliverance from evil have been answered.