legal emigration at its finest
crapyetr
1 hour ago
You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. ~ John Wooden
In Queens, he's called an angel. Around the world, he's being hailed as a hero.
Bus driver Jorge Muñoz has selflessly been serving free meals to thousands of hungry strangers for years.
Muñoz, 45, has become a regular fixture beneath the elevated No. 7 line in Jackson Heights, where - each night for more than four years - he has doled out hot food from a mobile food pantry.
"My mother said we'd have a better future here," said Muñoz, who emigrated from Columbia in 1981 and later became a U.S. citizen. "Now I want to make sure others are fed so they can have futures."
Muñoz's home has turned into a makeshift food pantry: His living room is filled with cartons of milk and boxes of graham crackers. His basement is overflowing with food.
Each weekday, he rises at 5 a.m. and spends his mornings as a bus driver ferrying children to school.
By the afternoon, he is in his Woodhaven home slaving over the stove with his mother and sister before they pack the food into cartons and dish up at least 125 dinners each night.
And his generosity seemingly knows no bounds: He also has housed and fed a homeless man he met at church for the past two months.
"You just have to share whatever you can," said Muñoz, who spends about $150 a week of his own money on supplies and relies on donations and food handouts for the rest.
"It's a mission that I am on. God helps me on this mission."
Muñoz has been short-listed as one of 10 heroes around the world, from a pool of more than 9,000 names.
The finalists, who win $25,000 each, will be profiled on TV and online.
Muñoz says he will use his $25,000 winnings to pay his credit card bills and help pay off the Toyota Tacoma truck he uses to deliver food.
And if he wins the $100,000 prize for Hero of the Year?
"If I won it would be great because I'd have a budget to help people for at least two years," he said.