Three brothers who serve as youth volunteers with Santa Clarita Grocery raised $6,000 over the course of several months in order to purchase two new, state-of-the-art refrigerators for the organization.

On Thursday, the Patrus family met with Santa Clarita Grocery Founder Bradley Grose to present a check for $6,000 for the purchase of two brand-new refrigerators.

“When I was doing dairy once I started volunteering here, I saw that the fridges were old and weren’t working very well,” said Nathan Patrus, one of three brothers who was the first in his family to notice the need. “It’s really important to me because I just want to help out the community. Before COVID, there were only around 150 families, and then afterwards there were more than 800 during COVID, so I just wanted to help them out.”

The Patrus family began volunteering with Santa Clarita Grocery in April, where the three brothers were able to see first-hand how the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted the community, according to their mother Fatin.

“We would come here most Fridays and try and sort a lot of food to help a lot of people since COVID was really bringing more people to the food pantry and they really needed help,” said Alexander Patrus, Nathan’s brother. “Because there were so many more people, there was more fridge space needed, and basically we really wanted to just make the fridges nicer, better and cleaner, and just help more people out in the community.

(from left to right) Alexander, Bradley, Jonathon and Nathan pose with the check outside of the Santa Clarita Grocery facility. Photo by Michael Brown/KHTS News.

After identifying this need, Nathan went to Grose, who told the youth volunteer that a new refrigerator would cost $3,000. Then, Nathan and his two brothers went to work.

“We worked on making a GoFundMe page and worked on a website together,” said Jonathon Patrus. “We all pitched in.”

Fatin said that none of her three sons have social media accounts, so the role of reaching out online fell to her as the Patrus brothers reached out to their friends, neighbors, and even their principal for help.

“I just thought it was really amazing to see the community coming together to help everyone else out,” Alexander said. “I think seeing people we didn’t even know, people that we’d never seen their names before, really just want to contribute and help out because they want to make the city better, I think that was really cool to see.”

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The three were able to raise the initial $3,000 needed, but decided that they did not want to stop there.

“It made me feel really good that we got to start raising money to help get the refrigerators,” Nathan said. “Once we raised $3,000, we realized that we wanted to get another refrigerator, and we increased our goal.” 

By the end, the three brothers managed to double their original goal: enough to buy two state-of-the-art refrigerators for Santa Clarita Grocery.

“They did it from their heart. They wanted to help,” Fatin said. “Their passion to help others started when they were very young.”

The $6,000 donation was actually the second project that the brothers had taken upon themselves this year. Towards the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, the three worked together to gather and distribute roughly 3,000 facemasks to workers in the healthcare field.

The Patrus Family. Photo by Michael Brown/KHTS News.

“Once we were finished with that, we wanted to do more,” Jonathon said. “So then we came here (to Santa Clarita Grocery), and we did that. We worked on getting the fundraising for the fridges and it’s nice to see what our work has done.

Fatin believes that it is important for all young people to volunteer during these difficult times, as it “gets them out of the house to help others.”

“Life is harder just for everybody, there’s people who are struggling now that weren’t before. I think that being able to offer something and help others is really important and it strengthens your community bonds,” Alexander said, echoing his mother’s sentiments. “I think that us coming here just to help out is a really small thing and it’s got a big change.”

For more information on how to donate or volunteer with Santa Clarita Grocery, click here.

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