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On many Thursday nights, just before 8 p.m., Zoe Abrahamson (MD ’25), a fourth-year medical student in the Community and Global Health Honors Program, arrives at the Forest Park Blue Line station in Chicago to provide on-site medical care for unhoused riders as part of Loyola’s Street Medicine program.
Seeking overnight shelter on CTA trains during the winter months, these “continuous riders” are often cold and in need of urgent care, she says. Some have frostbite and open sores on their feet. Others are in need of inhalers, prescription refills, or socks and gloves to stay warm. Still others have chronic conditions, requiring referral to primary care physicians, mental health services, or Loyola Medicine’s emergency department where they can receive longer-term treatment.
“I’ve struggled with insecurity myself and being on the edge of homelessness,” Abrahamson says. “And so, my drive really comes from knowing just the tip of the iceberg for what it may be like to go through this kind of stuff.”’
Abrahamson was one of roughly 50 Loyola students, staff, and faculty volunteers who gathered in the atrium of the Cuneo Center in Maywood on Tuesday, January 21, to assemble hygiene kits for such individuals. The activity was one of three organized by the Division of Student Development, in partnership with the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Community Service & Action; and HSC Ministry, to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of community engagement and recognize the parallel Jesuit ideal to be people “for and with others.”
“Putting on these service events really allows folks to serve and be connected with their community as we are called to serve and support those at the margins,” says Cory Barnes, director of Center for Black Student Excellence, which led the plenary group organizing MLK Day of Service activities. “I always think about the prominent quote from Dr. King: ‘Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?’”
Standing in assembly-line fashion before a series of side-by-side folding tables, medical students, faculty members, and staff volunteers from Loyola’s advancement division packed hygiene items and first-aid essentials—soap, shampoo, toothpaste tubes, Band-Aids—along with snacks and warm clothes into bags for delivery. To accompany the kits, they wrote handwritten notes on colored card stock.
Imani Ba (MD ’29), who is pursuing a medical degree at the Stritch School of Medicine, sat at a table beside Abrahamson. To her, the MLK Day of Service event served as a meaningful extension of King’s statement that “people should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.” King’s well-known aphorism is properly applied to “all aspects of [one’s] identify, including the fact that you don’t have means,” she says.
After a three-year hiatus, this year’s MLK Day of Service offered more than 70 registered volunteers the opportunity to participate across Loyola’s campuses, Barnes says.
In addition to supporting Loyola’s Street Medicine Program on Tuesday, volunteers helped sort and fold donated clothing at Chicago Lights, a youth development and adult social services nonprofit at Fourth Presbyterian Church. As music by Michael Jackson broadcast into a lower-level church cafeteria on Thursday, January 23, Loyola students and staff arranged the clothes for display in the Share Shop, a converted manse, where shirts, pants, coats, and hats for drop-in participants were draped from hangers and neatly set out on shelves.
“It’s a good opportunity to help out, honestly,” says Cameron Wright (MS ’25) a freshman majoring in international business who was volunteering at the event. “There is a ton of overlap with [what] Dr. King actually talked about. But I think the most significant thing is providing a foundation of equality.”
For Jackson, a participant who declined to share his full name or the location where he shelters, visits to Chicago Lights for clothing have been a blessing in a scary time. “It feels safe being in the Lord’s house, not outside.”
