Everyone is welcome to join Al Diguido and his group, Al’s Angels. For 30 years, Al has worked to provide holiday meals, toys, and supplies for children and families battling cancer, rare blood diseases, natural disasters & severe financial hardship. He spoke with Good at Heart host Randye Kaye about his organization and the life-changing moment that put him on the path to help others.
WSHU: I'm Randy Kay, and this is Good at Heart, inspired by the quote from Ann Frank. And you know, these days when headlines can be filled with hate and horror and fear, there are also people, so many people, I'm discovering, working quietly to make the world a little bit better, and they've all been inspired by something or someone to do something, and then, in turn, they inspire us. And I always feel inspired talking to people like Al DiGuido, who's one of these people, I'm so in awe. Al has created something called Al's Angels. Al, welcome to Good at Heart.
AD: Great to be here. Thank you. Thank you.
WSHU: Full disclosure, I learned about you. I was having lunch with a mutual friend, also named Randy, and I was telling her about these features and she said,” Oh, you have to interview Al DiGuido”. So let's begin with your story. Tell me about Al's Angels. And you know, what was the germ? What was the spark that got it started?
AD: So about 30 years ago, I became a long-time New York Giant football team fan. And a friend of mine who was working with me at the time said, “Hey, listen, Al, I've got these tickets to this event over in New Jersey, and all the New York Giants are going to be there, and they're going to be there with their wives”. And I said, “Pete, what's this all about?” And he said, “Well, they're raising money for something I don't know, but he said, But you like the Giants, why don't you come? We have an extra seat.” So I did. So I went there, and all my idols back then, Phil Simms, Lawrence Taylor, all these players were all there, and there was a big cocktail reception and dinner. Right as the dinner was closing, a woman came to the stage and said, I want you all to be quiet. I want to tell you why we're all here. She said, I want to introduce you to several women. And she said, Oh, the first woman I want you to be introduced to. Her name is Beth. She walked up, a middle-aged woman, and she said, Hi, my name is Beth. My daughter's name is Charlotte. She's 10 years old, and she's dying of cancer. We've been wiped out financially, and the money that you raised here tonight is going to help us provide clothing and some gifts for her for the holiday season. She walked off. Randye, what was a really loud room got incredibly quiet.
Another woman walked up and said, Hi, my name is Priscilla. My son is eight years old. His name is Todd, and he's dying of cancer. And my husband left us. The money you raise here tonight will help us provide housing and some clothing for the other two children I have. Well, there were two or three other women who came up, and they all said the same thing. And I looked at my buddy, I said, “Pete, what is going on here? “ He said, “I have no idea,” I said, like, that's not a good answer. I said, “How is it in the United States of America, mothers with children that are dying of cancer, have to stand in front of strangers and beg for money, for clothing, for food, for shelter.” He says, “I have no idea.” And I said, That's not a really good answer at all. So I left that night. I always remember it was over in Hackensack, New Jersey, and I'm driving home to Westchester, and I'm thinking about it. At that point, my young children had three; I have three kids. Now today I have seven grandkids. But back then, three kids, and they were all sleeping in their beds, and they were healthy. And I woke up my wife, and I said, Chris, I got to tell you this story. She said, these famous words to me, “What is it, Al? Do you want to change the world?“ I said, “No, I just want to do something to help those families and maybe some other families that are going through a similar battle.” They're battling cancer, they're battling rare blood diseases, and they have severe financial distress. I want to help them as people. She said, “Well, it's the middle of the night. What can we do now?” So I said, “Well, starting, starting tomorrow.”
I had half a dozen friends. We all met in our garage, and I said, Listen, we're going to go to Home Depot. We're going to buy BJs Wholesale Club, and we're going to buy food. We're going to find ourselves 40 families that are in this situation, and we're going to provide them with their Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah meals. And we did, and we went there and stocked up station wagons and everything else and found families. And we were always anonymous. We always went to these places, and we left it there with a note saying, Hey, listen, an angel is providing your holiday meal. We got back to the garage that day. I said, Listen, guys, from now on, every year we're going to figure out how to do more each year. And we did. That was almost 30 years ago. This past year, we helped over 3200 families in the tri-state area, provided them with their holiday meal, which is an 18-gallon bin of food, all food purchased by us, and it goes out to close to 3200 families, almost 10 to 12,000 people each year. We also provided toys back then, and we provide toys this year as well, close to 20,000 toys every year. I gotta tell you, Randye, and those of you who are listening, there are no other programs. There are no other people coming to help them. These are the people who are below the radar screen. We find those people so without us, they're not having their holiday meals. Without us, they would not have gifts to provide their children. Like I said, that was over 30 years ago.
WSHU: Wow. So just for listeners who may be listening outside of our area, the tri-state area is Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.
AD: Correct.
WSHU: And do you still live in Westchester, or are you in Connecticut?
AD: I live in Westport, Connecticut.
WSHU: So I have so many questions that come to mind. So one of them is, how do you go about finding families that are below the radar and need help?
AD - Well, right now, we deal with about 12 to 15 hospitals, Oncology facilities, cancer wards, and churches that provide us with the lists and serve as our partners for these families. You know, we talk about the tri-state area, there are many families that fit this bill. We raise money constantly, trying to do as much as we possibly can, to help as many as we can. We've also extended our reach to provide children and families who have gone through, you know, disasters like this past year. We provided the people down in Asheville, North Carolina, and I, along with another one of my angels, drove a 26-foot truck down to Asheville, North Carolina, in the midst of that hurricane devastation and provided them all kinds of supplies. And we also, just in the last couple of months, sent a 52-foot trailer out to Altadena in California for all the wildfires.
WSHU: See. And without this lunch with my friend, I wouldn't have even known. I have these two questions here. I don't know which one to ask first, but I think I'll ask the philosophy one first. Why you?
AD: Well, you know what I forgot to mention to you? Which has been the driving force for me. That night in New Jersey, I was on my way home, and I asked people all the time, Have you ever been visited? Have you ever been spooked? And they kind of laugh when they say that, but that night in the pouring rain, God spoke to me. He said these words, and these have been my guiding force all these years. “What if it were you? What if it were your family? What if it were today my grandchildren?”. I thought that once my children were grown, I was done with this, but now it's my grandchildren, so they range from 16 down to eight. So I think about what if it were me who had, all of a sudden, my whole life was turned upside down, and I had to deal with all this stuff. And what's incredibly rewarding for me is that over these years, we have close to 8000 volunteers now. We started with six in a garage, and now, in the database, close to 8000. People have been incredibly generous and incredibly supportive. And I think what's really important is what you said before in the beginning, that today, there's a lot of craziness going on in the world, right? There's a lot of hate, there's a lot of anger.
WSHU: And we know about so much of it because the headlines are so clickable when it's about that, and that's why I really feel it's so important to give a headline to somebody like you. And I know it was the voice of God to you. For others, it's just a voice inside my head that told me, or it could be anything. We can interpret the voice of God in a million different ways, in a million different religions, but now you have 8000 people who are helping you. So that leads me into my next question, which was, who helps you? How do they find you? And how can people help you now?
AD: Well, if you go to www.alsangels.org, you can help in two different ways. One, obviously, we're always doing fundraising. There are no paid employees. We're 100% volunteer. So you can either sign up to be part of our volunteer group. You know, most of our work is done in the fourth quarter of the year during the holiday timeframe,
So, believe it or not, we're setting up our food shipments and our toys, and all that stuff is being set up now, and then the Thanksgiving event will happen on November 15. What's great about it is Howard Saffan, who owns the Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater up in Bridgeport; he literally gives us that arena to use to back our trucks in. We get close to 1000 people there who, in a four to five-hour period of time, put all the meal bins out and literally do it in a day, a full day, everything is done.
WSHU: Okay, November 15th to get ready for Thanksgiving and the holidays. People can visit your website to donate their time and/or money. Do you need money as well? Do you need money?
AD: Yeah, we always need funds. And also, we have a kickoff. One of our kickoff events a family in Fairfield is this year. They do it every year. It's having an Oktoberfest party, and people are bringing new and unwrapped toys for Alzheimer's. So they kick off our toy drive. People who are on the list will get a notification about what toys are on our wish list. I mean, we think about it, we're going to distribute 20,000 toys. It's an amazing undertaking. We have a guy, a developer in Fairfield, Mike Shinola, who, each year, gives us a space for free to use as our workshop, where we bring all the toys, sort them, and people come pick them up and such. And this year again, once again, we'll be in Fairfield.
WSHU: Do your kids and grandkids help out with this?
AD: Always! You can't be part of the DiGuido family without helping out in some way. And I've got two on the West Coast, and they help out as well. So it's an amazing feeling. You said about what goes on in the world. But people who come to these events walk away touched. Your friend Randy, my friend Randy, came and said the same thing. It's you're surrounded by people whose only initiative there that day is to do something good for someone else. It's an incredible feeling.
WSHU: Exactly, we all need our faith and humanity restored. And by giving to others, that's how we do it. So I was going to ask you what you get out of it, but I think you've answered that. So, do you think about a piece of advice that you ever got from other human beings or a quote that keeps you going, that you can share?
AD - Yeah, I mean, I always think about the words “Do unto others as you'd have done to yourself.” So many people are obsessed with their own issues and their own challenges and silly things sometimes, right?
And I always think you've got to come back to a place in your heart. I mean, how do you treat people? We're made to love one another. I mean, truly love one another, not love people of our same religion, our same race, or our same political beliefs; it’s love one another. So we never discriminate against anyone. You have a need, and we can help you solve it. I've been in hospitals and oncology facilities. I've seen people at their lowest, and I've seen the impact that one individual, a number of individuals, can have on the lives of other people. It's incredibly important. And I think the other big reward for me is the number of kids that we have come and helped. People say, well, is my child too young? We say, Well, if your child can walk, they can help. So, the fact that we're imparting to this next generation the message that they can help somebody. They could spend a small amount of their time away from sports and everything else, and they can help someone else and change someone else's life. So I mean, I think that, to me, is incredibly rewarding, is to see the number of kids that show up. And the parents really do, really want to, want to have that experience for their kids.
WSHU: Are there other organizations like yours around the nation that have been in touch with you to pick up on your model?
AD: Yeah, we have had people on the West Coast. We've had people down south when we went to Asheville. It takes a lot of work. And we have, you know, one of my close friends here was moved by us, and his daughter had leukemia. Thank god, she's better now. I know if you're familiar with Dan Vieira and LivFree? But Dan was a friend of mine from the very beginning. He saw what we're doing. He said, I got to do something as well, and he created the LivFree organization.
WSHU: Well, you are absolutely almost a textbook example of Good at Heart, and I'm so delighted to have you be the subject of this episode. So, Al DiGuido, why do you think we're here on Earth?
AD: For me, it's always been to do God's will. Whatever your religion is, all have a basic foundation, and loving one another and taking care of those less fortunate. You know, I've had great success in my life. I have a great family. I have great children, I have great grandchildren. Everybody's healthy. You really have to give back. You have to spend some time, and you can make every excuse. And I could have made every excuse. I don't have the time. I'm too busy. I'm doing this or that. Make the time, find the time.
