From Rockaway, to Newark, with love | Di Ionno

The van pulls up in the circular driveway outside the Hilton in Newark, across from Penn Station, like it does every evening.

Jenny Schumm DePaul is on time, as usual, and a few people are waiting for her.

The logo on the door is a green heart formed, in part, by a yellow and purple hand. Below, is the name of DePaul’s family organization, Project Kind, underscored by these words:

Love one another.

She slides open the cargo door and gathers up bags of snacks, sandwiches and water.

She tells the group to wait for her. She has to “check up” on some people in Penn Station.

Loaded down with bags, DePaul, 46, dodges the lingering rush-hour traffic, late commuter pick ups, and taxis looking for fares.

She is going against the grain of the evening-rush crowd leaving the station, all those people hurrying to get home.

Her people are not among them. Her people are those with nowhere to go.

At least not at the moment.

Their time could come when the city shelters open for the night at 9 p.m., or it could stretch from weeks to months or more, with no place to call home.

All are DePaul’s regulars. They wait for her. She cares for them.

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Inside Penn Station, she sits next to Patrick Boina, a 32-year-old Liberian, who because of his dirty clothes, has a bench to himself. She reaches up and touches his neck, checking to see how hot and dry his skin feels.

He is on kidney dialysis and dehydration could kill him. She gives him water and food.

“I am very sick with kidney problems,” he says after she leaves. “She saves my life. She gives me things to drink and eat so I can take my medication.”

DePaul moves through the benches of homeless, who are now coming inside as rush-hour ends. The Port Authority police roust them out in early morning but allow them back in when things slow down. All the cops know DePaul, too.   

On many nights at Penn Station, there is help for the homeless. Church groups and corporations send teams of volunteers to distribute food and clothing.

DePaul is there twice a day, driving 25 miles from her home in Rockaway Borough with whatever she can get her hands on to give out.

But perhaps the greatest gift she brings is her time and compassion to listen, to hear their stories, and to search for specific ways to help.

Kareem Welch comes up with his shoes broken at the sides. His feet are sticking through.

“Here, size 10, you’re in luck,” DePaul says as she hands him a pair of new sneakers and some socks.

“God bless, y’all,” Welch says, and leans against a post to change shoes and socks.

Welch, 46, said he was employed by a steel company in Kearny until six months ago.

“I lost my room, and I’ve been out on the street,” he said. “It happens quick.”

He said DePaul is proof to him “that God is real and he didn’t forget about me. She don’t know me, I don’t know her, but she comes out to help. There’s good people in this world and this one (DePaul) should go straight to heaven.”

Next, she hands a box of diapers to Raymond Ortiz, 56, who has been homeless for two years. He said he was a math teacher in Puerto Rico and a tutor for students at Essex County College and New Jersey Institute of Technology, but a burst appendix, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder from a mugging have left him homeless while his wife and 9-month-old baby stay with her brother.

“When you learn their stories,” DePaul said, “you realize how easy it is to become homeless. So many people have no safety net.”

DePaul has been delivering food and supplies to the homeless for 4 1/2 years and was recently given a new van by Toyota, which recognized her commitment.

“This was huge,” she said. “We can bring so much more now.”

The donations come from people in the Rockaway region, who leave sandwiches, snacks, water and clothing on her front porch. Even the new Toyota van had a Rockaway connection. Kevin Curran, a former classmate of DePaul’s at Morris Hills High School, is the assistant general manager of the Toyota’s New York region. When he heard of her work, he got his company to donate the van.

“Without Kevin, this (the van) would have never happened,” DePaul said.

And on this particular night, she handed out a dozen red “super fan” T-shirts, donated from Morris Hills High.

“It’s a community-wide effort,” she said of Project Kind.

But it is her vision. 

“When my husband (Michael) and I got married, we decided to live our lives true to the belief that we should share what we have,” DePaul said.

They have had 13 foster children, in addition to their two biological daughters, and adopted a boy with autism.

“Everybody deserves to be loved,” she said.

This simple statement is the basis for her work, and no one has received more of that love than Kental DePaul, 13, who, as a 3-year-old began to physically regress to point where he now needs the round-the-clock care of the DePaul family. They adopted the autistic boy, despite his severe medical problems and she is now battling the state, which favors group homes for people like Kental rather than providing costly in-home services.

“We want to keep him home,” she said. “We don’t want to break up our family.”

It is this instinct DePaul brings to the homeless in Newark, where she is a constant presence and helps bring them together.

“She looks out for them, so they look out for each other,” said Diane, 71, who didn’t want to give her last name. She has been homeless for seven months after the restaurant in Bloomfield where she worked closed. “She’s a good person with a lot of compassion.”

After getting his red T-shirt, Steven Spencer, 30, quickly stripped off the shirt he’d been “wearing for 10 days.”

A few minutes later, he says to DePaul, “Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day. You’re like a mother to everyone down here.”

Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.