CITIZEN SPOTLIGHT
Tamara Nelson TAMARA NELSON’S MISSION TO PROVIDE A SMALL NECESSITY TURNED INTO SERVING HER COMMUNITY ON A MUCH LARGER SCALE. Story and photo by Berlin Green
It all started with socks. One may not consider it a luxury to slip into a nice, clean pair of socks, but to many people, that’s exactly what it is. Tamara Nelson is an economic development specialist with the Ok la homa Depa r tment of Commerce. She specializes in historic preservation, with her work taking her into a lot of the state’s older buildings and structures. “I noticed that in these buildings, there were a lot of younger people and older women living in them,” Nelson said. “I just ignored it like everybody else — I’m just here to do my job, and let’s get out of here. But it just bothered me enough, so I started asking them one question, ‘Hey, I can’t fix your problem, but if I could give you something right now, what can I give you?’ And they all have the same answer. ‘My feet hurt. I need a pair of socks.’ Oklahoma’s infrastructure is to move cars, not people. So if you’re homeless and in poverty, you don’t have a vehicle. It’s patent leather for you and if you don’t have proper footwear, your feet are broken down really quickly. Minor injuries can quickly turn infected and in cold weather, you can lose unprotected toes and feet.” On Valentine’s Day in 2016, Tamara and a few friends went out and distributed over 200 pairs of socks to homeless residents in downtown Oklahoma City. “When we were out of socks in, like, seven minutes, I knew it was a problem,” she said. An encounter that day with a woman in yoga pants and a tank top changed her forever. “No socks, no shoes, in February. It’s cold outside, and she’s lying on a trash bag. Her toes were blue, and she was going to lose her toes. When she sat up, she looked like a skunk — she was bruised all the way around. She’d run out of the house because she was being abused. So that’s why no socks, no shoes, no nothing. Her skull was broken. We put like seven pairs of socks on her feet, got her warmed up and tried to help her. That’s
when I knew this was something far bigger and not just some one-off, feelgood kind of thing. These people are out here suffering. It ’s not just because they ’re on drugs or they misuse their mone y or whatever. A Tamara Nelson of Laundry Love and Sox of Love lot of people are just victims of circumstance, Del City, Christine Price. She was so a sock is something that we can picking up families that she knew take care of.” did not send their kids to school. That day Sox of Love was born. They were already three weeks Tamara rallied volunteers and conbehind because they didn’t have tinued to raise money and give out any clean clothes. Their water was socks to unhoused residents and shut off. About 50 percent of the those in need far beyond our state’s people that we serve are elderly, border, but it wasn’t long before she disabled or a grandparent that is noticed a much larger problem. raising a grandchild so they don’t “We learned about two years in have the money to wash clothes. that over half our donations were They are usually using the money going into the trash,” Nelson said. that they should be using for their “People in poverty don’t have the medication, food or gas in their car luxury of thinking about going to wash clothes.” somewhere to wash their clothes. Laundry Love now has more It’s really expensive. It became very than 430 volunteers who help resdifficult for me to continue asking idents in need do their laundry for donations, knowing that the likeevery fourth Saturday of the month lihood of that donation going into at nine different laundromat locathe garbage.” tions across Oklahoma City. They Tamara took the problem to provide ten dollars for the masocial media, requesting anyone chines as well as detergent, dryer interested in helping join her to sheets and bleach. In 2021 alone, discuss the problem. A small group the grassroots non-profit washed gathered at the Wendy’s at NW 36th more than 89,200 pounds of clothes and May Avenue to come up with a and served 2,365 homeless resiplan and Laundry Love soon began dents and families in need. That at the laundromat in the strip mall same year, Sox of Love distributed at that intersection. 28,390 pairs of socks with the help “We thought this was just going of generous donors. Volunteers also to be like more of a homeless outuse that time to get to know the reach to help people with laundry, people they serve and connect them but we really started understandwith more resources to get them ing that this is a poverty issue. The the help they need. very first time we did Laundry “More than anything, we have Love, I noticed this woman that love,” Nelson said. “We’re not a minkept coming back, but she had difistry, we are just neighbors loving ferent families every time. It ended our neighbors. Our hope is to be the up being a city councilwoman from lowest barrier. Simply a friend to
our neighbors. You don’t need an appointment, you don’t need ID or proof of residency, you don’t need proof of anything. If you show up and you say you need help, we’re going to help you. There’s nothing they have to do but show up and we just love them the best way that we can, while they’re here. An average person is with us for 75 minutes. We fill that time with storytime, we serve a meal and offer connection. A lot of people just want to sit and talk while you know what happened and how they got there. They want someone to hear them. We partner with Empowerment Community Services and they have licensed counselors, because a lot of people need more than what we can offer. If a person is needing rental assistance, is about to get evicted, whatever their issue is, we can connect them with the right resource.” Tamara’s goal is to continue growing Laundry Love and Sox of Love so she can serve as many people in need as possible, and she does it all with a very uncomplicated mission. “We have three core values and that’s to build, love and serve. We want to build our community, we want to love our neighbors and we want to serve our neighbors.” To learn more about Laundry Love and Sox of Love and their services, or to donate and volunteer, visit www.soxoflove.org.
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