Photo by Yuvie Styles
Chef Gary Irvin wakes up bright and early in his Lakewood home for another day of work in the kitchen. He starts by gathering donated food ingredients and begins preparing meals that will be donated to homeless individuals every Wednesday around Dallas.
This wasn’t always his routine.
With over 25 years of professional culinary experience, Irvin’s background includes working in restaurants and corporate kitchens. As a self-proclaimed animal lover, Irvin always found ways to help the homeless community and their animals as a chef. According to co-worker Robin Perdue, who has known Irvin for over a decade, Irvin’s love for animals often led him to taking in more animals off the street than he knew what to do with.
“In a corporate setting, we have stations on campus and we make different things for [employees]. After a couple days we have to throw it away,” Irvin says. “So, I would just grab some of that stuff and I would just drive around and hand it out. I’m a huge animal lover. I’ve been in animal rescue for a long time. When I would see people with animals, my senses would get heightened and I would pull over say ‘do you have food for your dog?’”
Irvin recalls the helplessness he felt when talking to people in the homeless community and seeing how other organizations would send out bags of potatoes and canned goods.
Three years ago, Irvin discovered a new purpose — founding Rescue Markets, a culinary initiative of Pet Sitters Care.
Pet Sitters Care is a network of pet sitters that aid rescues, shelters and animal-related nonprofits by organizing fundraising events and providing pet food to pet-oriented organizations. The nonprofit was founded by Robin Perdue, the owner of VIP Pet Services, an Austin and Dallas-based pet sitting company. Irvin joined Perdue in founding Rescue Markets in order to make a more direct impact on Dallas’ homeless population.
Inspired by the impact he could make, Irvin decided to retire from cooking in May and do full-time work to help feed homeless individuals and their animals on the streets.
“There’s so many organizations that are involved in helping feed the homeless. We’ll just be able to go out there and help feed homeless people with their animals,” Irvin says. “The need is everywhere. As more and more people find out about me more and more people keep asking for help. We’re just a small organization. We can’t fill the demand at all. We’re trying.”
The Rescue Markets website offers several ways for neighbors to get involved. Meals made by Irvin himself in different themes, like July’s International Taco Paw’ty, offer a selection of meals with proceeds used to fund Pet Sitters Care projects and donations. Meals are available for pickup or delivery in Lakewood.
“[I thought], ‘what can I do that will really help us raise money?’ Well I’m a chef,” Irvin says.
Users can also donate to the water fund to distribute bottles to those in need, pet food assistance to provide pet food for shelters, senior snack kits for older adults in need to supplement their daily food intake or straight donations.
Irvin gathers the donations and supplies and distributes them himself weekly in the Dallas area. They’d love to expand to other cities, but first they have to get other chefs on board to help, Perdue says.
Irvin recalls asking people “dog food or meal?” to see what the pet owners would say. Most times, he’d see that the owners would choose dog food over being fed themselves.
“[For] a lot of these people, the only reason they’re holding on is because they have this animal,” Irvin says. “They love this animal and they want this animal to survive. So it forces him to want to survive because a lot of them, without their animals, they just want to give up.”
“I wish people would open their hearts up and say, ‘I know that it sucks that these people are on the corner with these animals. But when they [take the animal] they don’t realize what they’re doing not just to the animal, but to that homeless veteran who lost his legs.”
