By Bill Zeeble, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-877408.mp3
Dallas, TX –
Five hundred Dallas homeless will enjoy red-carpet treatment at the downtown Hyatt hotel today. KERA's Bill Zeeble reports.
For the 5th straight year, Dave Timothy, his Soupmobile organization, and some 15-hundred volunteers will bus homeless Dallasites to the Reunion-area hotel this Christmas Eve day. They'll arrive at 9 this morning, and amid star-treatment hoopla, walk a 75-foot red carpet into the Hyatt.
Dave Timothy: We have snow machines blowing snow on everybody and we have local high school band continually playing the Rocky theme song. We check them in, give them new clothes, back packs, and they go up to their rooms, get cleaned up.
Dave Timothy says at 12:30 the homeless will be served a sumptuous banquet with volunteer servers, led by Dallas Mayor Leppert.
Timothy: Unlike the big muckety-muck banquets where we get served, we're the servers here.
Timothy says the volunteers are just trying to do a bit of God's work. He says the food and rooms are not free, but they are provided at a discount. He and the volunteers raised the money.