- jailed WNBA star Brittney Griner has a big charitable streak
- “Phoenix Rescue Mission” now has to do without Griner
- Brittney Griner had previously been involved in a large shoe collection campaign
Danny Dahm pulled up in front of the Footprint Center in Phoenix in a white van with “HOPE COACH” written on the hood. In the summer of 2017, he was assigned to pick up Mercury star Brittney Griner from the downtown arena so she could attend a Phoenix Rescue Mission program that was distributing shoes, sanitary kits and socks to the area’s homeless. Dahm figured that Griner would display a certain arrogance in the basketball world considering her size. But when the 1.90 m tall Griner took a seat in the right-hand passenger seat of the vehicle, he was impressed by her friendly charisma. They started chatting. “Like we were friends,” he recalls.
For at least three hours that afternoon, Griner helped the mission care for people who were mostly homeless. During her deployment, a woman wearing “dirty, sweaty clothes,” according to Dahm, approached Griner and said she wanted to buy shoes for herself and her brother, who was staying at a nearby camp. The woman then asked Griner to wait while she went back to her storage area to find something to autograph. Fifteen minutes later, she returned with an oversized white t-shirt, which Griner then signed.
Five years later, Dahm recalls his interaction with the Mercury player in great detail. However, he does so not only because of the current situation in which Griner finds himself – last Thursday a Russian court sentenced Griner to nine years in a penal colony after her arrest for drug smuggling – but also because the woman whose T-shirt she signed, later joined the mission and went through a rehabilitation program. As the woman went through the program, Dahm recalls, she kept recounting her encounter with Griner. “[Griner] said something encouraging to her, and that changed her,” says Dahm, who himself went through the mission’s “Transformation Recovery Program” and has worked there for five years.
Since 2016, Griner has taken part in the Phoenix Rescue Mission’s shoe collection campaigns. In recent months, despite her physical absence – the United States government has for months considered Griner unjustly imprisoned – similar actions have been taken in all WNBA markets to help people in local communities, while also keeping the Griner name im to keep memory.
The Phoenix Mercury has already carried out three missions with the mission this summer, the last earlier this week. And with commemorations at every home game, more than 2,000 pairs of boots have been collected, the most in any single season since the partnership began and more than in the first four years of their efforts combined. “Doing this year’s campaign without her {Griner} is certainly a challenge for many of us, but we felt we were doing the right thing throughout,” said Mercury President Vince Kozar. “That’s what she would do.”
Griner’s interest in the campaign dates back to an encounter at the beginning of the 2016 season when, on her way home from training, she saw a bridge with homeless people under it. A day after this encounter, she met Kozar and asked him if it was okay if she drove around with shoes in the trunk, “if I see people like that again,” Kozar recalls her words.
Kozar, who has worked for the Mercury since 2006, told her she didn’t have to ask his permission. Then he offered her a similar suggestion: “How about we make it bigger? And how about we let the fans help you and we bring in a partner from the community to make the impact bigger?” Griner agreed and eventually chose the Phoenix Rescue Mission.
Because of her connection to the mission, Kozar said the shoe collection is a way to keep the Griner name relevant.
“BG didn’t do it to get attention.”
“It’s kind of incredible what BG did because when BG did it, they didn’t do it to get attention,” says Diana Taurasi. “She always tried to give more than she took. And I think that’s her legacy more than anything.”
Rich Heitz, a so-called Street Outreach Case Manager at the mission, distributed shoes, hygiene kits and socks with Griner in 2018 and 2019. He, too, remembers Griner’s generosity and zeal. At the Mercury Center, he recalls, she rummaged through the pile of shoes to find the right sizes for people. He recalls that she was very empathetic in conversations and hugged people who came to the organization’s van.
This sympathy prompted Heitz to write a letter to Griner recently. (Her agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, said that during her incarceration, Griner was able to sustain written correspondence from friends and family). “It was amazing to see you interact with the homeless population,” he wrote. “I’ve been among the homeless for years and it’s been encouraging to watch you.”
WNBA star Brittney Griner receives encouraging letters from Phoenix pals
Post, Heitz wrote, “is what I call love from outside the bars.” After being imprisoned for eight years himself, he said that “when I got a letter from a family member, it meant to me that I still had a chance with them” and that “people still cared about me”. . By writing his letter now, he wanted to put a smile on Griner’s face.
Dahm also wrote a letter to Griner. While he doesn’t know for sure if she read it, he hopes he encouraged her if she did. “I remember my ideas of who I thought she was before I met her and I remember the change in my heart after getting to know her,” he says. “And I really think she has a heart to make a difference and help people here.”
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