BELLINGHAM — The line began forming outside Market Basket in Bellingham a good half-hour before the 6 a.m. opening on Wednesday.
“I’ve seen the line here go back all the way to Walmart," said one shopper. “People standing in the rain.”
No rain on this late April morning, but it’s plenty cold as the masked men and women, bundled up in winter coats, apportioned themselves six feet apart on the sidewalk.
They shared two things in common: each is 60 years of age or older and not one of them knew on Wednesday morning they were about to benefit from a random act of kindness.
It came from the woman who pulled up in a white van with purple lettering on the side.
“Good morning, everyone,” said Lois Olivo as she walked up to the line. “It’s wonderful to see you all out here today.”
Olivo’s hands clutched a plastic grocery bag. Inside, unbeknownst to those in line, were one hundred $50 Market Basket gift cards. She gave them out on behalf of the Jacqueline Olivo Foundation, named in memory of her daughter, who died unexpectedly nearly six years ago.
“Before my daughter passed away, I promised her that one day the whole world would know her," Olivo told us later. “And eventually the whole world will know her.”
The foundation, which primarily funnels essentials to the homeless, was born from a mother’s grief.
“She was a wonderful daughter. She was my best friend," Olivo said. “When she passed I didn’t want to keep going. And I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something in her name.’”
Spreading joy isn’t an explicit part of the foundation’s mission -- but, in effect, that’s what Olivo and her volunteers do. For example, they have distributed warm clothes to homeless people in Worcester.
And it was joy Olivo spread up and down the line outside Market Basket, with one shopper moved to tears by the gift.
“I think it’s great, I think it’s fantastic," another shopper said. “Especially for people over 60 like us.”
Not everyone would accept the gift cards.
One woman said, “When she offered us one, at first, I thought it was going to be some scam, you know. And then she explained and we said, ‘No we can’t take this, somebody else needs this.’"
Need is something that’s always been out there, Olivo said. That is now exploding because of the pandemic.
“It was always so overwhelming to see exactly how many homeless people are out there and how many people are working hard and still can’t feed their families," she said. “When this virus hit, I remember my first thought was, ‘Oh my God, what is it going to look like at the end of this?’”
At the end of the morning, in the middle of all this, the Market Basket parking lot looked a little less stressed than before. Some shoppers rolled baskets in Lois Olivo's direction to thank her again. A woman drove up and rolled her window down to say Olivo had made her day.
One shopper agreed with us that it’s a tough time, but said: “We’ll get through it. You know, people like that make it better, make it go away."
As Lois Olivo was about to leave, one of the men she gave a gift card to reached in and gave her a cash donation. She texted: “Some people are just wonderful.”
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