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Vol. 90 No. 52
HERALD PERSON oF THE YEAR Reyna Felix
On the frontline against hunger
From client to program coordinator, Reyna Felix brings dignity, urgency and heart to L.I. Cares' busiest food hub Freeport Fire Department celebrates 150 years. Page 3
By Mohammad Rafiq
On most mornings at Long Island Cares’ busiest pantry, the Nassau Center for Collaborative Assistance, on Sunrise Highway in Freeport, Program Coordinator Reyna Felix arrives before the facility opens and starts doing the invisible work that makes the visible work possible. “I got 45 minutes to get ready, read my emails, make some phone calls, make sure if I’m getting a delivery that day,” Felix, 35, said, describing the rhythm of a typical shift. Once the pantry’s doors open at 9 a.m., it’s a sprint that continues until 2:30 in the afternoon — after which he cares Felix and her staff begin preparing for the next day. about The lobby fills day after day, and everyone. Don’t Felix oversees a fast-paced, retail-style matter who the operation — deliveries, volunteer coverage, database tracking and the ev- person is. She eryday emergencies that don’t fit neatly really cares into anyone’s schedule. “It’s like a like a retail store, I would about all of us. say,” she said. “You want to give the best. Everything you have in stock, you GuillErmo VEGa want to make sure the client is able to Pantry client see it.” That mix of logistics and humanity is why colleagues, volunteers and clients have come to see Felix as the personification of the Freeport pantry’s steady pulse, whose impact is measured not in speeches or spotlights but in full grocery bags carried out the door with dignity intact. For all she does for Long Island Cares, the Herald is proud to name Felix its 2025 Person of the Year. Her association with the organization didn’t begin with a job title. It began with need. Felix grew up in the Dominican Republic, and first came to the United States, and Freeport, with her family at age 14. She later returned to the D.R. to finish secondary school, and to earn a college degree in international business, before coming back to New York. Before she went to work for the pantry, she was — like the many she serves day in and day out — a client. She had worked as both a server and a manager in restaurants, as a bartender, and as a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, but the pandemic years upended everything: Jobs disappeared, hours shrank and family budgets snapped under the strain. Felix was raising three children at the time — including a
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newborn — while trying to hold on to unstable work. “It was a rough time,” she recounted. “It was a point of life that me and my husband were struggling because I had no job, and he was only doing part-time.” She came to the pantry for food — first with her mother, then for herself — and found something else, too: a staff that understood what families were up against. A place that give you diapers, milk, formula, some help for your pantry,” Felix said, recalling her elation. “Oh my God, it’s awesome. So I was very happy as a client.” Then, one day in early 2022, she spotted a sign saying that the facility was hiring. She applied from the parking lot, sending her résumé on her phone while waiting to shop. Two days later, she got a call. Two weeks after that, she resigned from her job at USPS. “I said, ‘Listen, I’m not gonna say I was looking for this, but I think that this is part of me,’” she recalls telling her previous manager when questioned about leaving a secure government job. “I know how good they’ve been for me, so I think I can do
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Courtesy Long Island Cares
Photo: Reyna Felix, program coordinator at Long Island Cares’ Nassau Center for Collaborative Assistance in Freeport, oversees daily operations at the organization’s busiest food pantry.