‘Kindness is contagious’: Every Alaskan has a story

Presented by Rasmuson Foundation

Shiccia Brown was preparing to leave an Anchorage department store with her infant son and purchases when she had a problem: The cart wheels locked up at the exit.

Fortunately, a fellow shopper noticed her and stopped to offer a hand. Between them, they got Brown’s son, his car seat and all of her bags out to the car.

To Brown, that short exchange shows something special about Alaskans. Though born and raised in Alaska, she’s also lived in Seattle and Phoenix.

“Nowhere is like Alaska when it comes to people helping … being so willing to give a helping hand,” she said.

As the late Elmer Rasmuson used to say, “Helping is an Alaska tradition.” Those acts of kindness have big ripple effects – whether helping a stranger in the street or creating a local food pantry for students.

The Seawolf Food Pantry at the University of Alaska Anchorage started as an idea generated by the school’s Hunger and Homelessness Support Network, said Amanda Walch, associate professor in dietetics and nutrition. She and a colleague started work on getting approval for the project.

Then a survey by UAA Faculty found that 44% of students face “some form of food insecurity” while in school. Those findings — far higher than the state’s estimated food insecurity — gave the project new urgency. After working through some COVID-related delays, the food pantry launched in March 2022.

The food pantry has grown from helping just a few students a month to now more than 50 on average, said Walch, who serves as its faculty lead. The pantry provides non-perishable food to students living in households of up to four people; the average household size is 2.5 people.

The food pantry accepts financial and non-perishable food donations. It can also use toiletries and kitchen items, like pans or utensils, Walch said.

Sometimes people feel a stigma about seeking help there, or fear that someone else might need it more. But “we all have different needs at different times in our lives,” Walch said.

For Misty Notte, who’s lived in Alaska almost a decade, the need for help came when her husband received a pancreatic cancer diagnosis in August 2023. By October, she had to quit her job to serve as his full-time caregiver.

In recent months, she’s received a range of support, mostly from people in Facebook groups like Find Olive the Things, a resource for all things Anchorage; her Buy Nothing group, where people post items they are giving away or need; and another focused on sharing Costco deals at Alaska stores.

At one point, Notte’s husband’s cancer affected his eating to the point where he could only stomach Starbucks’ cheese danishes. When she asked one of these online groups for less-expensive alternatives, explaining how the cancer had made eating a struggle, Notte got an “outpouring of people wanting to donate to my husband’s danish fund,” she said.

Other group members have delivered things for her and refused to take payment or offered to have their teenagers help with snow shoveling. (Notte hasn’t been able to leave home in at least a month, she said.)

In one recent post, Notte had only asked about the availability of Costco’s pumpkin cheesecake. She didn’t explain about the cancer, but one stranger knew about her husband’s illness from other posts and she offered to drop off a cheesecake. She, too, refused payment.

“I think the strangers helping is truly an Alaskan thing,” Notte said. “I spent 30 years in Florida and never had this sense of community.”

Many Alaskans help each other on a one-off, individual basis. But it takes a community that’s used to helping each other to pull off more ambitious and long-term projects, like the transitional housing launched by In Our Backyard.

Founder Julie Greene-Graham said the idea first came up in a meeting with people from the Fairview neighborhood around her church, Central Lutheran. With the Sullivan Arena winter shelter closing soon, they expected that some former shelter residents would spread into the surrounding area. Some might even camp on Central’s property, which adjoins a piece of open city land along A Street.

Greene-Graham said that, as the group discussed ideas and concerns, someone asked, “could Central host them?”

In previous years, the church had worked with other congregations to provide a rotating shelter for families. But each church only hosted people one night a week. (This program has since moved to a residential building staffed by rotating volunteers.)

Central’s building couldn’t provide long-term shelter work, but the conversation got Greene-Graham and others at the church thinking about other parts of their property. The church has a fairly large parking lot, she said. Could it be used to help provide new shelter?

Months of research and conversation later, Greene-Graham and a vicar at the church had gotten support from the congregation, formed a board to lead In Our Backyard and launched an effort to build six tiny homes on the southwest corner of Central Lutheran’s property at 1420 Cordova St.

With support from other churches, plus community and corporate sponsors including Rasmuson Foundation, In Our Backyard plans to welcome six new residents before the New Year.

Greene-Graham hopes that what they learn from the experience can help others launch similar projects of their own. “If other churches or even business groups or organizations could take what we’re doing and build five or six houses for shelter, that would really get people off the street and keep people from dying,” she said.

The forms may continue to change, but helping others remains an Alaskan tradition.

This story was sponsored by Rasmuson Foundation, working to promote a better life for Alaskans through partnerships and grants to nonprofits, tribal and local governments, and individual artists. The Foundation supports quality health care and social support, thriving communities and people, education and economic possibility, vibrant arts and culture, and civic and philanthropic opportunity.

This article was produced by the sponsored content department of Anchorage Daily News in collaboration with Rasmuson Foundation. The ADN newsroom was not involved in its production.