Randy Salars, executive director of the Silver City Gospel Mission, received the Silver City-Grant County Chamber of Commerce Linda Kay Jones Humanitarian of the Year award recently. He spoke to the Beat.
Q: What do you do that earned you the Linda Kay Jones Humanitarian of the Year award?
A: I am Executive Director for the Silver City Gospel Mission. We provide emergency services to those in need with a daily food pantry, clothing bank, soup kitchen, women and children's shelter and a cold weather men's shelter.
We also provide monthly mobile food pantries to the 6th Street Elementary School and Senior Citizens and have a monthly farmers market food distribution in the summer months.
We provide long-term services through a caseworker, life-skills classes and/or work experience and counseling and referral services to those who are interested.
Q: How long have you been in the current job/business and how long in the field that you work in?
A: Around 6 years
Q: Why did you take the job or create the business?
A: I wanted to slow down and give a little back to my community
Q: What does an average day look like for you? Do you have an average day?
A: I'm up early doing paperwork and arrive at the Mission around 7:30 and we get ready for the day by sorting any food deliveries we have received the previous day.
The cold weather shelter is closed for the night and we begin breakfast and life skills training and counseling. The food pantry, public thrift store, and clothing bank runs Monday through Friday throughout the day and the women and children's shelter is open full time.
After breakfast is cleaned up, we immediately begin to prepare lunch.
Afternoons consist of lunch cleanup, closing of the thrift store/food pantry, picking up scheduled food deliveries, mobile food pantries and closing paperwork and bank deposit.
The cold weather shelter for men opens at 5 pm and I'm usually out of here by that time and try and take the evening off, if possible and start over the next day.
As in any place of business, there are constant problems that have to be dealt with and we have periodic events throughout the year, but I love the work, helping others and the people of this town!
Q: How many people do you have working directly with you in your office/place of work?
A: thousands monthly
Q: What are your future plans for your job/business? What is your vision for the job/business?
A: I eventually would like to have a full-time men's, women and children's and family shelter with our soup kitchen, food pantry and clothing bank all under one roof and with our thrift store located in a separate location downtown.
What do you want your legacy to be?
A: I want my kids and grandkids to know that family and Silver City take care of their own and I was always willing to go the extra mile in order to help someone else out.
Q: Anything else you want to tell me about you and the award.
A: It is a team effort; I'm a pretty good manager and organizer, but we couldn't help near the amount of folks that we do without a lot of help from my staff, board, volunteers and donors. I was very honored to receive this award, but it really belongs to the people of this town because we couldn't do what we do without a lot of help.