The volunteer angels who run Saintly City Snow Angels found themselves scrambling after this weekend’s snowfall.
Too much snow, not enough shovelers.
With a chance of more snow this weekend, the Saintly City Snow Angels are seeking volunteers to join their Facebook group and be on call to shovel the sidewalks and driveways of people who need help.
“We need angels. We need shovelers,” said Heather Worthington, who started the group in the pre-pandemic days of 2020 after she and her husband, Chris Worthington, noticed sidewalks in their Midway neighborhood not getting shoveled. “It’s really just super-simple: All you need to do is watch the page, and if you see someone who posts that they need help near you, and you can go out and help, then you go out and help.”
That first winter, the group had 50 members. Now there are 1,500.
The mission of the group, which has expanded from Midway to every neighborhood in the city, is “to help less-abled and elderly neighbors make sure their sidewalks are shoveled so that we have safe and passable sidewalks,” according to Worthington.
How it works
Anyone who needs help posts a message on the group’s Facebook page listing their cross streets. “Looking for snow help in the area of West 7th and Forbes Avenue. Thanks so much,” a woman wrote on Sunday night.
A few hours later, a volunteer responded: “Hi, I can help with shoveling. Can you DM me your address?”
Worthington said she chose Facebook as the group’s platform because it was the “easiest way to connect people using that kind of bulletin board approach.”
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“It’s a very user-friendly interface, especially for elderly people, who make up the vast majority of the people who use the service,” she said. “We like to keep it pretty simple so that people don’t feel like they have to learn a lot of things in order to use it.”
Organizations who work with seniors know about the group and will post if they learn of someone needing help who might not be online, Worthington said. “Midway Elders, for example, is great about going on the page and making a post for that person,” she said.
Worthington and fellow moderators/matchmakers Melissa Wenzel, Nikita Godette and Becky Graham also will step in and help connect people, she said.
“We are trying to normalize asking for help,” said Wenzel, who works at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and, during her lunch breaks, updates the Saintly City Snow Angel spreadsheet with names and addresses of those seeking help.
There are no limitations or criteria set for people to receive help, she said.
“We assume people ask for help because they need it, but there’s a lot of different ways or reasons why somebody might need help,” she said. “It’s not always physical. If people hear about this and they are looking for help, that’s great. You don’t need to justify why you need help. Whatever your needs are, they are your needs.”
‘Good for my mental health’
Among those who have asked for help from Saintly City Snow Angels: people with heart conditions, a man who needed his driveway cleared to get to dialysis, a man who needed his front walk cleared so his oxygen tank could be delivered, and a man who has had both legs amputated, said Wenzel, who lives in the West Seventh Street neighborhood of St. Paul.
Some volunteers don’t even own shovels, she said.
“They’re borrowing shovels from other people to be able to do this,” she said. “They’re just, like, ‘I want to help wherever I can.’”
One volunteer, Crystal Heflin, drives in from Waseca to help. Heflin, who used to live on St. Paul’s East Side, shovels a dozen different walks in her old neighborhood each time it snows. “It’s good for my mental health,” she said. “I can only plow my driveway one time.”
Volunteer Aman Imani joined the group this year and “helped out nine people his first day,” said Godette, who lives in Highland. “He made a comment back to us of, ‘I’m happy to be a snow angel! Today was my first day out as a snow angel helping folks around the city, and it was so gratifying.’”
Saint Agnes School’s wrestling team regularly helps out in the city’s Frogtown neighborhood, Godette said. Whenever there’s a snowfall, groups of wrestlers will head out to the homes to shovel after their practice ends.
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“One of our big themes is family. We’re a family,” Dean Cummings, the assistant coach for the high school wrestling team and the head coach for the youth team, told the Pioneer Press in 2022. “People live by our school. They’re a part of our family, too; we need to take care of them.”
Worthington said the Snow Angels group is especially needed in this day and age because people “are not as good about knowing our neighbors as we used to be.”
“Part of the reason I started this was that I wanted my neighbors to meet each other and know each other, so they could help each other,” she said. “The whole point is to take care of each other. It’s very simple. But I love how people have literally met somebody who lives two doors down. They’ve never met them in, like, 20 years. That has happened so many times, and that is really super-heartwarming for me.”
Saintly City Snow Angels
If you live in St. Paul and either need help shoveling this winter or would like to volunteer, search for the Saintly City Snow Angels on Facebook.
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