Restaurant owner stepped up to help Navajo Nation
Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19, marks the anniversary of the day Texas formally acknowledged the Emancipation Proclamation, the last of the Confederate states to do so. For more than 150 years, it has stood as a holiday of deep importance. In 2020, it feels especially poignant.
Mesa restaurant República Empanada was busy with activity on Wednesday afternoon. But the tables weren’t filled with customers. The restaurant’s dining room remains closed due to the coronavirus pandemic even though Arizona restaurants have been allowed to reopen for more than a month.
Owner Marco Meraz, with the help of his family, friends and the community, has instead turned the restaurant into a collection site for hundreds of pounds of food and supplies. These supplies are collected, sorted and boxed up for a long journey north.
Once a week since May 5, Meraz and his team have hauled supplies about five hours north to the Navajo Nation and surrounding towns — areas that have been some of the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic nationwide.
The project has grown each week, and now the team takes seven trucks filled with supplies each time. On Wednesday, the team was preparing for their sixth trip to the Navajo Nation and surrounding communities, a region with more COVID-19 cases per capita than New York.
“I don’t know when the right time will be to open our dining room,” Meraz said. “So as long as this ball keeps rolling, we are going to keep going.”
Here’s how the donation drive started
When he started the donation drive, Meraz didn’t plan for it to grow into the huge effort it is now.
The project started when
Meraz’s close friend Saul Pacheco told him of another friend who was taking supplies to his family on the Navajo Nation. Pacheco volunteered to help collect supplies for his friend’s family. When Meraz heard, he wanted to get involved as well.
“It really started as a couple buddies wanting to help out a mutual friend,” Pacheco said.
Now, six weekly trips and hundreds of pounds of supplies later, Meraz’s restaurant is a full time collection center.
“If I knew what it was going to
become from the beginning, I might have shied away or at least hesitated,” Meraz said. “But we got so much stuff and we got up there and saw how remote these places are and I realized what it’s really like up there.”
Some of the donation drop-off sites are an hour and a half away from the nearest paved road, Meraz said.
“What about the people that leave their homes?” he said.
‘It all adds up’: How the distribution works
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Brianna “Bunnie” Jones lives and works on the Navajo Nation and has helped receive and distribute supplies in three of the donation drives to the area. She initially got involved through one of her sisters, who lives in Mesa and is neighbors with Meraz.
Her sister volunteers in Mesa and when the caravan of trucks makes it to Chinle, a town in the northeast corner of Arizona, Jones picks up the work.
Each trip, the needs of the community continue to evolve, she said. Jones now stores some of the supplies in her home and distributes them herself.
“On the first week, we focused on the elderly,” Jones said. “I’m fluent in Navajo so I would explain to them where it was coming from. They were in awe of the whole entire process.”
The second and third donation drives, Jones focused on distributing supplies to friends, family and coworkers who she knew had tested positive for COVID-19 or who were in quarantine.
Because of health care privacy laws, hospitals and local doctors can’t release information on who has tested positive, so Jones relied on her community contacts to find those who need help the most.
Members of Jones’ family have struggled through the sickness, and she had a coworker who recently died of COVID-19.
The Navajo Nation continues to be one of the hardest-hit areas nationwide throughout the coronavirus pandemic. In mid-May, the Navajo Nation surpassed New York state for the highest infection rate in the country. For eight consecutive weekends, the Navajo Nation was under 57-hour-long weekend curfews in effort to slow the spread of the virus.
As of Thursday, June 11, the Navajo Nation reported 6,378 cases and 298 deaths. And those numbers continue to climb.
While the tribal members fight the pandemic, every donation helps, Jones said.
“Even just one case of water helps,” she said. “There’s a lot of us out here on the Navajo Reservation but it all adds up.”
‘Really everything does help the community’
The Navajo Nation — which straddles Arizona, Utah and New Mexico — surrounds the Hopi Reservation and also shares territory with the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.
Meraz and his team have made an effort to reach different portions of the tribal lands to bring donations to those who need it most.
So far, the group has brought supplies to the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe twice, on May 21 and June 4, according to tribal receptionist Tulley Blackhat. During the pandemic, his responsibilities have grown to include participating in the COVID-19 response team and helping coordinate the collection of supplies.
In order to stop people traveling far to find food and other groceries, workers and volunteers at the community center are delivering supplies to individual households.
“We try to encourage the stay at home order,” Blackhat said. “So the food helps prevent people from traveling.”
The community center works with several local channels of collecting supplies, Blackhat said. But some supplies are increasingly hard to get from anywhere close by.
“It means a lot, especially when it comes from outside the community,” he said of the help, but also of the supplies themselves.
Disinfecting wipes and spray are some of the hardest things to find, along with paper towels, bleach and fresh produce. All of those supplies are included in the care packages from República Empanada
“Really everything does community,” Blackhat said.
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‘There’s a lot of really good energy in the act of service’
On two other trips, Meraz’s group has visited the village of Moenkopi, a Hopi village close to Tuba City.
Community volunteer Kyle Sumatzkuku got more involved with the project on the second trip.
“At first he just all of a sudden showed up on the reservation of the Hopi,” Sumatzkuku said, “but now whenever we need some help, we reach out to him.”
Meraz’s team brings supplies to the Moenkopi Community Center where volunteers sort and distribute the items. The center has been set up as a drivethru where people can bring their cars to be loaded up with supplies.
Sumatzkuku started volunteering after the community center put out a call for young and healthy volunteers. Sumatzkuku, 23, said it’s important for him to help the community, which has many elders, and to “gain experience giving back.”
Since working with Meraz and his team, they’ve become “pals,” Sumatzkuku said.
“They are very warm and welcoming and so are we, so we have just built that relationship,” Sumatzkuku said.
The relationships built, more so than the outpouring of gratitude, are what keeps Meraz and Pacheco motivated, they said.
“They are so receptive and willing to allow us to go into their communities,” Pacheco said. “They know people around the state care about them and are not turning their back.”
Some recipients of supplies have given Meraz and his team small gifts along with an abundance of smiles, friendships and questions of when they’ll be
In order to make the donation trips a reality, coordination through the team, community and volunteers are necessary on a weekly basis.
Each week Meraz posts a list to his social media pages for República Empanada. The lists detail specific items, including produce such as celery, carrots and onions along with dry goods such as rice, beans, honey and salt. Other needed items include bars of soap, Clorox wipes and diapers.
Donations can be brought to República Empanada in Mesa, 24 Carrots in Tempe and Pomegranate Cafe in Chandler as owners of the two other restaurants have volunteered to help Meraz with donation collections.
Donations each weekend at 4 p.m. on Tuesdays, leaving volunteers time on Tuesday night and Wednesday to sort through all the supplies and create boxes that are ready for distribution.
On Thursday, Meraz and his team pack up about seven trucks, some with rented trailers if they need more space, and start the drive north. The team either travels back the same day or stays one night before heading back to Mesa.
Those who can’t make it out to the drop-off spots can donate money instead. Meraz set up a Venmo account, @navajonation2020, where supporters can donate money that goes towards truck and trailer rental, gas and purchasing extra supplies.