Angel of Queens nightly saviour for New York's homeless

Anyone speeding down Roosevelt Ave in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, under the elevated tracks of the Number 7 line, could be forgiven for not even seeing the shuffling gaggle of men at 74th St.

It is night-time and the intense cold means nearly everyone is in heavy black coats and hoods.

Most of these men come here every night and then wait. Shortly before 9.30pm, they spy a white car approaching from the east and they instantly form a neat queue along the edge of the pavement. False alarm; the vehicle glides by.

The mercury is plunging. Jorge Munoz is late, which is unusual. His day job is driving school buses and today he is delayed because of a class trip to a bowling alley.

Finally, just before 10pm, he draws up in his white pick-up truck. Not that anyone had any doubts. Munoz, otherwise known as the Angel of Queens, has been stopping here, his truck laden with hot free food, every night for five years.

It takes barely a minute for Jorge, his sister Luz and two friends to transform the bed of the pick-up into a steaming kitchen. A plastic canteen is filled with sugary hot coffee. Metal trays contain chicken pieces, spicy and hot, that are placed into polystyrene boxes already filled with macaroni salad. The men slowly shuffle forward and collect their helpings.

"Friends of mine told me about the Angel this week and this is my third night," says Dominic, who is 67, and is from Argentina. His only income is a weekly disability cheque, which doesn't get him far "in the most expensive city in the world".

Jorge says this year has been hard because the numbers turning up keep growing. He was feeding about 90 people a night in the spring and now it's up to 150 every day. Two things may be involved, he says - the economy and the publicity that he received this year when CNN nominated him as its 2009 Hero of the Year and when British chef Jamie Oliver featured him on his television series about food in America.

Otherwise, the sudden burst of media attention has not impressed Jorge, a diminutive 44-year-old native of Colombia who is now an American citizen.

It's past 11pm by the time they are finished.

Jorge gets up at 5.15am daily for his driving job. As soon as he gets home in the evening, he joins Luz and his mother in his small apartment preparing the food for that night's run. In five years, he has served 70,000 meals, he reckons, with no financial aid from the city or anyone else. He does, though, have volunteers and friends who donate time and food. Asked what sustains him on this mad routine of selflessness: his commitment is to be at this spot at this time 365 days a year, Christmas included, and Jorge evokes a higher power.

"God is the one who supports me," he says. "And we will continue to do this until God makes us stop." That and the fact that these people now rely on him.

It all started when Jorge left bars in the neighbourhood and noticed men huddled near the subway tracks, waiting for the police to go away so they could settle under their shelters.

Moved by their plight, he began turning up most days with paper bags containing an apple, a biscuit and something to drink.

This night Jorge and Luz have more food than they can give away. "Who wants more?" he shouts, pushing his ladle through another pan of chickens. Most of the men who were here an hour ago have melted into the frigid streets, every nearby litter bin spilling over with empty white boxes.

A few remain, eating quietly against the wall beneath the subway station. They shake their heads, smiling.

Robert, 35, from Peru, spends every morning waiting on a nearby corner in search of casual day labour on construction sites.

Right now, he says, he is lucky if he gets one day of work every fortnight.

But he can rely on the Angel of Queens. He is here every night without fail and has been for more than a year. If Jorge wasn't around, how would he cope? "No eat!" he says simply.

- INDEPENDENT