A Continuation of The Ribbon of Hope

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” — Matthew 25:35

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” — Genesis 4:9

Twenty-five years after a sandwich saved a dying boy, the world had an answer to both questions.

Yes. A thousand times, yes.

~ ♡ ~

Seth Roberts was sixty-one years old when he finally stopped moving.

Not because he was tired. Because the work had grown large enough to stand without him.

He sat on the porch of the house in South Chicago — not the penthouse, never the penthouse anymore — and watched the street. The same street where his wife had grown up. Three blocks from Lincoln Elementary. The same cracked sidewalks, but different now. Repaired. Lit. Alive.

Selena came out and handed him coffee. Sat beside him without saying anything.

That was one of the things he loved most about her. She had always known when words weren’t needed.

They watched a group of teenagers walk past, laughing, backpacks on. One of the girls had a red ribbon tied at her wrist.

Neither Seth nor Selena said a word.

They didn’t need to.

~ ♡ ~

This is what one sandwich became.

The Red Ribbon Initiative, in its twenty-fifth year, had served 14,847 young people across 34 American cities.

Not served. Transformed.

There is a difference. Served means you handed someone food at a window. Transformed means you handed someone a future and watched them build it with their own hands.

14,847 young people who had aged out of foster care, who had been invisible, who had slipped through the cracks of every system designed to catch them — were now doctors, engineers, teachers, parents, business owners, veterans, artists, social workers, and yes, some of them ran programs just like this one in cities no one had thought to look yet.

The seed Selena planted when she was nine years old — hungry herself, giving away the only meal she was guaranteed that day — had become a forest.

And the forest was still growing.

~ ♡ ~

Sarah came back on a Tuesday in November.

She was thirty-two years old. Tall. Composed. The kind of woman who walked into a room and the room reorganized itself around her.

She had been eight years old the last time she stood outside this building. The night of Seth and Selena’s wedding. A hungry child at a fence. Seth had knelt down, tied a red ribbon around her thin wrist, and said: you are going to be okay. I promise.

She had not forgotten.

Not one day of her life had she forgotten.

The Red Ribbon Initiative had found her a foster placement that didn’t break her. Then a group home that actually cared. Then a scholarship. Then an apartment. Then a job. Then a career. She had become a pediatric surgeon at Rush University Medical Center. She had operated on over 3,000 children.

Every single one of them had received, from her, somewhere in the process, a small red ribbon.

“Someone gave me one once,” she always said. “Now I’m giving you yours.”

~ ♡ ~

Sarah sat across from Seth and Selena in the community center that bore Selena’s name.

She had asked for this meeting for one reason.

“I needed to tell you something,” Sarah said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to say it for years.”

Seth leaned forward. Selena was still.

“When I was eight years old, I had decided I was done,” Sarah said. “Not — “ she paused, chose her words carefully. “Not in a dramatic way. I just. Stopped believing anything was going to get better. I stopped trying. A child can do that. Just go quiet inside and wait for whatever comes.”