John Young, assistant manager of Sam's Club, packs some last food in backpacks, labeled with their recipients' names, at Tope Elementary School. Troy D. Sides/Criterion

What do you do in response to seeing something that breaks your heart?
Some people give speeches. Others might even hold fundraisers. For Mike Berry, a financial advisor in Grand Juction, the day his heart was broken seven years ago, he didn’t know what to do. He tried pouring his heart out to people who would understand, who would understand what it was like seeing an unknown, third grade girl walk up to him before the start of his daughter’s school day, tired and lean, with tears in her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Mike and Deb, his wife, had asked her, after dropping off their daughter at Orchard Avenue Elementary School.
“I’m hungry,” the girl said. “I’m tired; I had to sleep in my mom’s car last night. And now I’m late for school.”
Few options were available to Mike and Deb at the moment. They walked the girl to school, not knowing as the girl slipped inside the front doors that they would never see her again, and that their lives would never be the same.
“That,” Berry said in a recent interview, “was when God tugged on my heart.”
The stark image of the lean, tear-stained girl was engraved into Berry’s mind. He began doing research, poring over websites and talking to principals of local schools, and found that approximately 47 percent of the elementary-aged students in the Grand Valley ate off of the free and reduced lunch program. This feeding program works fine during the week, except that it also means that these kids do not get any food over the weekend.
“And for those kids whose parents are either working or drugged-up all weekend,” Berry said, “that means their last meal is Friday at noon, and they don’t eat again until Monday.”
That heart-wrenching fact did not exactly sit well with Berry. The problem seemed overwhelming, but one day he and his wife just bought a handful of backpacks and, from inside their own garage, began stuffing them with food. They would find out from school staff which kids were not fed over the weekend and distribute the bags to the kids before they went home on Friday.
“You and I alone can’t solve world hunger,” Berry said. “But if everyone just did something, then we could eliminate problems one at a time.”
Over time, friends and parents began volunteering their help, and by Sept. 2008 the small, determined group was packing over 150 backpacks full of food. Word reached Canyon View Vineyard Church, who worked with Berry to “adopt” Nisley Elementary, and immediately 160 more kids had food for the weekend.
From there, the “Backpack Program” exploded.
By the end of the 2008-2009 school year the program was supporting 12 schools and feeding over 800 kids. The Vineyard had adopted four more schools. Valley Church adopted Dos Rios and Appleton Elementary schools, and Faith Heights, First Presbyterian, and First Baptist churches all took schools. That March, the program had grown so much that the nonprofit organization “Kids Aid” was founded by Mike Berry.
“The whole theme of Kids Aid,” Berry said, “is to let kids be kids. Kids should be running around outside and playing, and if they’re always worrying about food or where to sleep, they’re not being kids.”
Currently, 16 schools are supported and over 1,300 kids are fed each weekend. Berry estimates, however, that the need is closer to 2,000 and will continue to grow as the country’s economy continues to suffer.
“This has really opened people’s eyes to the needs around here,” Geoff Walker, pastor of Valley Church, said. “A lot of people with needs around here are almost invisible, and a lot of the time you don’t even know they’re needy.”
Kids Aid has received considerable support from Mesa City Government and Sam’s Club, which offers Kids Aid food at a discounted price.
“There’s more than enough food in this world to feed everyone,” John Young, assistant manager at Sam’s Club, said. “The only problem is distribution. That’s what this program fixes.”
The money needed to purchase backpacks and food for 1,300 kids is well over $6,000 per week, while weekly donations are only around $2,000. Despite this, all 1,300 children receive their backpacks each weekend.
“We’re working with government, churches, and schools,” Berry said. “I just think we spend too much time finding ways to not work together and not enough time looking at how to work together. All of us have this as our common denominator, and once you have that, it’s amazing what you can do.”
Thousands of meals have been provided to children and their families in the seven years since that day Berry saw the little girl, an image that remains with him to this day.
“I’m not so disturbed when I think of her now like I was then,” he said. “But I do wonder what happened to her, where she is now, how she’s doing. I will always think of her.”
And 1,300 children, because Mike Berry responded to a broken heart, will always think of him.
Donations can be made toward the Backpack Program by making checks out to “Kids Aid” and mailing them to P.O. Box 2569; Grand Junction, CO 81502. For more information you can visit the website at www.kidsaidcolorado.org.