Cold Feet Warm Hearts delivers 4,000 items to Worcester shelters

WORCESTER — With extra time on their hands thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of Greater Boston students kept busy by raising money and delivering donations to three Worcester homeless shelters on Saturday.

After raising $4,000 on social media, students from the Boston chapter of the Cold Feet Warm Hearts Foundation hand delivered more than 4,000 items — socks, shoes, undergarments, T-shirts, sweatshirts and hand-sewn face masks — to the Martin Luther King Center, the Queen Street homeless shelter and Hotel Grace.

The Emerson Hospital Auxiliary in Concord made the masks after contracting with the foundation.

"We're trying to do what we can with what we have," said one of the students, Hunter Stofer of Weston.

"We want to make a difference in people's lives, and being able to do that is a great opportunity," added Kait Schuster, a senior at Noble and Greenough High School in Dedham.

The Cold Feet Warm Hearts Foundation was created in 2019 by Kait's sister, Kimberly Schuster, a resident of Sudbury, and a junior at Rice University in Texas.

It was the foundation's first delivery in Massachusetts.

As a volunteer at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston, Kimberly Schuster works with homeless and underserved patients, helping them navigate the healthcare system.

Kimberly Schuster identified clothing insecurity as a problem with vulnerable populations, and she created the Cold Feet Warm Hearts Foundation to organize clothing drives and raise money to provide socks, shoes and clothing for patients.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Kimberly Schuster's classes were virtual and she moved home to Massachusetts.

She continued to run the Cold Feet Warm Hearts Foundation from afar. As the pandemic continued, she observed that COVID-19 exacerbated issues of health equity and access to medical care for the most vulnerable populations, including the homeless.

With the help of her sister, Kait, they devised a plan to open the Boston chapter of Cold Feet Warm Hearts, in partnership with UMass Memorial Health Care and the three homeless shelters in Worcester.

“It has been great bringing Kimmy’s vision for helping people meet some of their most basic needs to Massachusetts," Kait said.

Knowing that the best work gets done in teams, Kait reached out to her friends, Grace and Sarah Lautz, of Medfield, and Stofer.

Together, during the past year, they conducted clothing drives and raised money via social media for Worcester's homeless. 

Christine Schuster, president and CEO of Emerson Hospital, and mother of the Schuster girls, also made the trip to Worcester.

"I'm so pleased at the hard work," Christine Schuster said.  "It's hard, doing clothing drives and raising money on social media. But I think they've learned that every penny counts. And I've been so impressed with their work ethic. These kids have found a way, even though they haven't been able to do what they usually do, in meeting in person and sorting the clothes, they found a way to make a difference."

After accepting the donations, a triage supervisor at the Martin Luther King Center, told the group of his appreciation.

"We rely on the private donations; we rely on any donations," said the supervisor, Tom (he would not provide his last name to a reporter).

"Because of COVID, our normal sources or resources that we use to get these things haven't been around. So when we get stuff like this, it's unexpected. And when we get it as much as we do, like we did today, it's incredibly appreciated. Because it's going to use right away.

"We work with some of the most compromised population, and nobody really wants to kind of get near them or kind of be associated with them," Tom continued. "So when we see folks like you guys doing stuff, donating stuff, it's kind of a lost technique on some of the younger kids."

The supervisor said the items would be put to use immediately.