On the Dallas Stars and Charitable Work during Thanksgiving Week

Last Thursday, a group of Stars players visited Metrocrest Services in Carrollton. Right off the bat, let me tell you how Metrocrest Services describes themselves:

Since 1971, Metrocrest Services has provided hope and relief to those who need a helping hand. Metrocrest offers a comprehensive bundle of services to address gaps in finances, employment, and nutrition to holistically help end poverty.

Okay, that sounds nice and all, but what does that mean practically, for the community?

Metrocrest Services specializes in helping individuals, families, and seniors stabilize their lives for a brighter future. We offer a wide range of services including housing stability assistance, financial coaching and education, a food pantry, employment coaching and job readiness, senior services to help seniors age in place, and seasonal programs focused on children including holiday gifts and food for the summer.

We’ll get back to the Stars players in a moment, but I think it’s important to really understand what nonprofit, community organizations like Metrocrest Services do. I talked to CEO Tracy Eubanks for a few minutes on Thursday, and he described all the different ways Metrocrest is working to serve people in great need in a local community that is growing in both population and diversity every day.

“We are a community-based organization,” says Eubanks. “So, not a national firm. We’re serving a portion of Dallas—we serve about 25,000 people a year—and it continues to grow. The need continues to grow.”

That need looks different for every family, too. For instance, in the pantry area of Metrocrest, their clients can walk around the shelves and coolers and pick out items like fresh squash, canned food, refrigerated meat, or even children’s books*. There were Thanksgiving-themed items on the shelves with signs indicating the quantities that clients can take. Casen, one of four full-time employees in the food pantry area, told me that this quanity corresponds to the size of your household. So, clients can come in, do their shopping, then check out just like you would at a normal market, but without the pressure of worrying about finances. It’s also a genuinely warm environment, and Casen was chatting with familiar customers as we walked through the aisles.

But it’s not just about providing basic needs like food to families who need it, says Eubanks. “We’ve added Mental Health Services to Metro Care on site. We’ve added other non-profit partners, providing specific services that are needed by our community things that we don’t do. We’re adding classes here, and we have Partnerships with Dallas College. We’re teaching ESL on-site, GED [classes] on site. What we want to be is a gathering place.”

In a time where the Dallas/Fort Worth area has seen inflation higher than any other major city in the contintental U.S., it was good to see up close that people in exigent need have places to go that are helping them not just meet basic human needs, but also to succeed and achieve greater self-sufficiency. Clients who walk in looking for help are able to apply via a tablet, which asks for some forms to verify their residency.

Eubanks says that occasionally they’ll meet folks who don’t live locally, in which case the goal is to connect them with aid organizations closer to their home community. But for those who do live near the Carollton location, Metrocrest serves clients in a whole host of ways. And once clients have filled out some basic paperwork to apply for help, the list of services that Metrocrest provides is pretty extensive.

“We want to make sure that people in this community have access to healthcare,” says Eubanks. “We want to make sure the evictions are down. We want to make sure people have access to maybe a livable wage job. The vision is to be what I call a ‘self-sufficiency center.’ When someone is here. They’re coming maybe to meet their case manager. They’re getting some food. They’re also attending a class of how to start your own side hustle. They’re in the computer lab with Dallas College, learning English, taking an ESL class, or getting their GED to improve their education.”

In other words, Metrocrest Services is looking to help people succeed—at the most basic levels, yes, but also as productive, self-sufficient members of their local community. And full disclosure: my family lived in an apartment on Josey Lane when I was born, so this part of the community is a little extra special to me. A lot of things in the Metroplex have changed since I was born, but some things have not. People still need a little extra food around the holidays. A lot of folks still need a little extra help to speak English more fluently, or to get a little extra guidance in completing their education. And these sorts of resources are only there if somebody works and volunteers to make them happen.

*One book I saw was “One Morning in Maine,” which is one of my absolute favorite children’s books out there. I won’t go on a diatribe about children’s literature on this web site right now, but as you’re doing your holiday shopping this year, just remember that a beautifully illustrated and well-written children’s book that will stand the test of time is worth its weight in gold.

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Back to the Stars, though. The purpose of the visit was for the players to pack boxes of food in preparation for Thanksgiving Week, when Metrocrest serves a lot of families. These boxes are termed “emergency boxes,” as they can be quickly disbursed in a drive-through line during a week when a lot of us are gorging ourselves on luxurious foods before plopping down in front of giant televisions on a sofa.

Players drove themselves to the building, then parked and walked through the parking lot up to the front door, where they were then directed back to the food packing area. It’s worth pointing out that this was all happening at noon the day after the 5-2 win against the San Jose Sharks, when the Stars played with just five defensemen for the majority of the game. Certainly, driving down Josey Lane to put a bunch of dry goods into cardboard boxes is not a regular part of the recovery regimen for most world-class athletes the day after a game, but these players showed up on time.

Anyway, after everyone had arrived, the players were handed their respective jerseys to put on, and after Eubanks thanked them all for coming out and explained a bit of the mission of the organization, the players got to work.

It may occur to you that the players don’t need to be wearing their jerseys to do this. And to be totally honest, I felt a little weird about that part of this whole thing, because there’s no escaping the fact that there is a public relations element to charitable outreach efforts like this one. Even by writing about it, I know there’s a risk of me being perceived as carrying water for the organization, but I hope you’ll withhold your judgment on that front until the end of this piece.

It’s a reasonable question, though. I mean, when you have millionaire athletes wearing their uniforms to break down pallets of food exactly like I was doing every night at Trader Joe’s seven years ago, there’s probably a bit of quid pro quo going on somewhere. Charitable work sometimes has a cosmetic appeal that can be divorced from its intended goal.

We know full-well that charity can sometimes be more about the good press than the long-term good that’s done. But, to the players’ credit, this wasn’t about a photo op from where they were standing. They had a job to do.

As you can see from the picture up top, the players formed an assembly line to pack hundreds of boxes of food, containing shelf-stable things like pasta, peanut butter, rice, beans, chicken, and applesauce. You can see the contents of one box here, which Mavrik Bourque allowed me to interrupt his flow in order to snap a picture of.

Casen told me that the majority of folks who help out at Metrocrest are volunteers, dozens of whom I saw Thursday. If they don’t have a lot of volunteers on a given day, then the smaller number of full-time employees have to do what they can to get everything done (and they do a lot). But with the community growing and the need for help not diminishing, they’re always looking for more volunteers, and more community partners.

On this Thursday, they had nine extra volunteers (or ten, if you count Victor E. Green, who was driving a motorized pallet jack around with an unsettlingly high degree of skill). And as it turned out, the players blew past their original number of boxes to be packed, which necessitated some whispered discussions about just how much free labor it was right to squeeze out of the players. But everyone was in good spirits, so the boxes kept getting packed for a good hour or so, the original goal falling by the wayside.

“We had a fun time doing it,” said Jake Oettinger afterwards. “Hopefully we can make a difference. We made a lot of meals.”

Oettinger has been known for his community work for years now, being nominated for the King Clancy Award last April, so it was no surprise to see him having a good time. “This was a fun one,” said the Stars goalie. “We got to push each other and keep each other accountable, so I thought a lot of guys pulled their weight, and we did a good job.”

Athletes are competitive in any context, and this was no exception. When asked who had the hardest job of the day, Oettinger didn’t hesitate to answer with a perfect deadpan. “I was on like three jobs, and I don’t think I said a word for an hour,” said Oettiner, holding back a grin. “I was just like a machine right there, so I thought I won MVP today.”

When asked who had the easiest job of the day, Oettinger likewise didn’t hesitate to give one of his good friends a hard time. “Probably Mason,” said Oettinger with a suppressed smirk. “It’s not surprising he picked the easiest job, but you know, we made up for him.”

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Afterwards, the players gathered for an obligatory Giant Check Photo that I’m sure you’ll see the team share this week. The amount of the donation was related to Oettinger’s saves last year, a fact which his teamms immediately gave Oettinger hoots and hollers about.

Chelsea Livington, Vice President, Community Relations & Foundation for the Dallas Stars Foundation, said that particularly during the holidays, it’s the Foundation’s mission to give back to families in need in the Dallas/Fort Worth community. So when National Life Group, a sponsor of the Dallas Stars, was looking to do some extra promotional giving, Livingston said they and the Dallas Stars Foundation came up with a charitable contribution to Metrocrest Services that was tied to the number of saves Oettinger made last year. Then the Dallas Stars Foundation contributed additional funds to bring the number up to $20,000.

“For us, being a sports team, you have a very unique platform that you are able to use,” says Livingston. “In additional to the monetary grants, we also take a grass-roots approach.” That means fans and community members can be involved in these sorts of things too, apart from the giant checks or the photo ops.

Livingston mentioned that the Foundation had 25 volunteers who chose to go out and help clean up a local lake a couple of weeks ago, and you’ve also seen their work with everything from Hockey Fights Cancer night to various other spotlight moments. It’s a lot of work to find which organizations are looking to do what sort of giving, and then to tie that to the community and make sure people in need are actually benefiting.

“This is a part of our neighborhood family,” said Livingston on Thursday. “So for us to be able to come out and give back to those families in need is the mission of the Dallas Stars Foundation.”

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It’s easy to be cynical about corporate charity work, and even moreso when times are tough. It’s easy to turn away when the charity work looks glamorous, or when you suspect the organization is making a donation because it’s in their best interest to do so, whether for PR purposes or tax write-offs or whatever. But if you’ll indulge a couple of final thoughts from me on my own personal website here, I think there’s a nuance to this sort of work that gets lost when we get too cynical.

It’s good for privileged people like professional athletes to do these things, and I mean good for them as people, as human beings. I think you could justify events like these on that point alone, because goodness knows NHL players are forced to live in a sort of bubble for most of the year. Getting reminded of just how far removed they are from the daily worries of life is a very good and healthy thing for wealthy people to do, just for for their own well-being, let alone for those whom they serve.

And frankly, it’s good for us, too. I’m not a millionaire, but doing mundane tasks with people that push me out of my comfort zone is a healthy thing. I’ve been fortunate enough to be pushed into volunteering early in life by my parents, and I’ve had to be pushed or dragged at other times, when I frankly just don’t feel like it, because I’d rather spend my time on things that I enjoy. In other words, I’m a selfish person sometimes, when people don’t push me to be better. Many of us are not so far removed from worries about bills, debt, food, travel, education, and jobs, but we are still incredibly lucky to have much we can take for granted. It is good for us, too, to give without expectation of return.

One of my old professors once said that the worst thing for our souls is to live like kings. And like every instance of modern society before us, we have more access to luxury and entertainment than anyone in history. The idea of getting to see a theatre troupe perform on command used to be reserved for idle monarchs; now we moan about having to pay eight dollars a month for a streaming service with more shows than we could watch in a lifetime, and we spend hours every day doing just that.

Entertainment isn’t bad for us inherently. We’re talking about this in the context of sports, after all. But idle luxury is like candy. Fine to enjoy once in a while, but deadly if it becomes a regular part of our diet. Volunteering to serve people in your community is a bit of metaphorical exercise to contrast with the metaphorical junk food that is entertainment. Meeting real people and making their life just a little less hard because we can? Well, that’s real life. As isolated as our society is increasingly becoming, we need each other more than ever. So whether you want to volunteer with the Dallas Stars Foundation, Metrocrest Services, or any one of thousands of places that would be grateful for a couple of hours of your time, I think you should consider it, because I know I should consider it. Because it’s good for us to do what’s good for each other, and that will never change.