Teon Bagged 300 Cookies. Then He Put Away the Pan and Picked Up the Next One.
Nobody asked him to. That’s the part that stays with you.
Volunteer Suzanne Howard was holding the bag open. Teon was placing cookies inside — one per bag, steady and focused, moving through an entire tray without losing his pace. When he finished, he threw away the parchment paper, put the used pan away, and picked up the next tray.
Nobody told him to do that.
“They love having a job,” Suzanne said afterward. She had been volunteering every Tuesday for months by then — 53 years old, playing kickball, laughing hard, walking away each week with what she described as a full heart. She said volunteering at Wonderfully Made had been life-changing for herself. And she meant it.
But watch Teon for one Tuesday and you begin to understand that the exchange goes both ways. He isn’t receiving her generosity passively. He is working. He is contributing. He is the one who can reach the top shelves in the kitchen — out of reach for everyone else — and he takes that seriously. The kitchen is clean when Teon is there. The shelves are stocked. The parchment is disposed of properly.
Three hundred cookies. Methodical. Focused. Done.
Outside the kitchen, Teon is the resident Spotify DJ at Wonderfully Made — which means the playlist belongs to him, and if you disagree with his selections, you can take it up with the karaoke king. He follows his favorite NBA and NFL teams with genuine investment. His favorite food is Golden Corral. His favorite cookie is chocolate chip, which he makes himself and will tell you is the right answer.
“You go to volunteer but you walk away with your heart full of joy, because they are so happy.”
That’s Suzanne. She was describing Teon, and everyone else, and the whole room at once.
This is the thing about Wonderfully Made that is hard to explain until you’ve been inside it. The people we thought we were serving end up serving us right back. The volunteers come to give and leave changed. The families who were carrying this weight alone discover they don’t have to anymore. And the Wonder Makers — people like Teon — show up, do the work, and make you realize that they were never the ones who needed fixing. The gap was always on our side.
We were the ones who weren’t paying attention.
Volunteer with the Wonder Makers
Teon doesn’t need a speech. He needs a Tuesday. Come join us. Visit wonderfullymadecommunity.org/get-involved/volunteer to sign up.