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How Alma Gross Impacts Her Community
 Some people call her Speedy Gonzalez. Others call her the Energizer Bunny. She says, “Just call me Alma.”
Alma Elaine Gross volunteers at the Samaritan Center three days a week for eight hours a day as an incredibly speedy first-sorter. That means that when it’s time to open boxes and garbage bags full of clothes, dishes, and anything else that our community has decided to donate, Alma is the first one to see what’s inside.
“I could have done any of the sorting jobs,” she says, “but I like being a first-sorter best of all. Every day, every bag, and every box is a new adventure! You never know what you’ll find—the good, the bad, the breakables, and more.”
“Once I found a big box, and I opened it,” Alma remembers. “Inside of it was another box, so I opened it. That box had one more box inside of it, and inside that last box I found a big rock! It was the strangest thing.”
But Alma doesn’t get frustrated by her strange finds; she gets a kick of out them. She has always known that unique donations are exactly what make the Samaritan Center shopping experience special. After all, long before she ever considered volunteering with the Center, Alma came to know it as a customer.
“My momma was a dedicated Samaritan Center shopper,” Alma recalls. “At the end of a shopping trip, the car would be so full of buys that we could hardly fit in it to ride home.”
Then about 11 months ago Alma found some free time on her hands and decided to use it to get to know the Samaritan Center on a new level.
“I wanted to do something with my life and make a difference in someone else’s,” she explains. “I knew God had blessed me with the ability to work hard, and I wanted to put my gift to good use. And I sure am glad I did—it’s been a life-changing experience.”
Even though she often doesn’t see the faces of the clients in crisis whom her volunteer labor helps to bless, Alma finds her job very inspiring.
“The work I do now is behind the scenes,” she says, “but one day in heaven I know I’ll get to meet the people whose lives I touched, and they’ll know what I did. God will give me my reward when the time comes. Until then, I’ll keep on sorting like there’s no tomorrow.”
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