This is the time of year when we are reminded that our greatest heroes of all are those that help others.  Santa comes just once a year, but the Blackfeet Commodity Program delivers every month, bringing food to the elderly, disabled, and families who cannot come into the warehouse to pick up their food.

Daryl has been working at the Commodity Program since 1997 and for most of those years was out delivering essential food boxes, sometimes to as many as 85 households each month.  The Program serves about 500 reservation residents with a complete variety of quality food, meat, produce, and staples.   Most folks come into the warehouse to pick up their food boxes, but many need it delivered, often to the most remote parts of the reservation.

“When you are out there in freezing temperatures, trudging head-down through blinding snow, pulling your sled full of food the last few hundred feet to reach the house, you start to think you will never be warm again,” said Daryl, “But then you reach the porch, the door opens and you see little kids who’ve been anxiously waiting for you beam with excitement and thanks, jumping with joy.   That warms you to the core and reminds you that this isn’t a job but a privilege to be able to help others in such an important way.”

The Blackfeet Commodity Program has 8 employees, most of whom handle office and warehouse tasks while 1 or 2 employees do deliveries.  Recently, Daryl has started to do fewer deliveries and work more in-house, in part because so many years of hazardous winter driving was starting to take its toll.

“The truck we drive is essentially a big sail, and with the winds on the reservation, deliveries often turn into white knuckle, heart-stopping, ice sailing.  One second you are in one lane, the next you are somewhere you don’t want to be.  So as I cut back on deliveries, I guess I don’t miss the treacherous roads or lugging 50+ pound food boxes through snow drifts all that much, but I definitely miss the friends I deliver to and wonder and worry about them.”

And that is the other, unwritten mission of Commodity deliverymen, to perform safety checks and help people in any way possible.

“All of us deliverymen, if we go to a house with an elderly or disabled person and we discover any needs, as soon as we get back to town we make a call and get them help.  If a walkway needs shoveling, and the person won’t ask us to for help, we shovel it anyway.” 

Over the Holidays, we all give thanks for our blessings, and we pray for those less fortunate.  We should all give special thanks to people like Daryl and his co-workers at the Commodity Program who are in the business of helping others and go over and beyond the call of duty to do it.  That’s why Daryl and everyone at the Commodity Program are this week’s Tribal Heroes.