LYNN — This Thanksgiving, Lynn resident and owner of Innergy cafe and gym Michael Quintana, with the help of numerous community leaders, is donating around 300 turkeys to be distributed to families throughout the city.
Quintana, Ward 3 City Councilor Coco Alinsug, and Golden Monkey Cafe owner Peter Toeung met outside Brickett Elementary School Monday morning to bring 40 turkeys to the school, where they will be brought home and enjoyed by families over the holiday.
Ten years ago, when Quintana started his turkey drive, he donated 13 turkeys to the Salvation Army. Now, Quintana’s turkey drive, with the help of local donations from folks like Jessica Figueiredo, Joshua Castillo, and Thomas Mackin & Sean Reid, who hosted a bar crawl to raise money for the turkey drive, Quintana feeds hundreds of Lynners each year.
Quintana said that his annual turkey drive is his way of “paying it forward.” Growing up in a family of nine children, Quintana’s experienced hard financial times, and benefited from his school’s local turkey drive. After making a decent living at his last job as a train conductor, he decided to help the same community that helped him.
“When I was younger, I remember some of the schools distributed, you know, Thanksgiving baskets or turkeys. I said that if I was ever in a position to do the same thing, I want to pay it forward,” Quintana said. “I was fortunate enough to be blessed with a great job prior to where I’m at right now and I became a train conductor. My finances changed dramatically and I was making a lot of money, and the biggest thing that was taught to me by one of my mentors was never forget where you come from.”
Quintana on Monday and Tuesday, stopped by schools throughout the city bringing 30 to 50 frozen turkeys to each school, hoping that they will thaw by Thanksgiving. By Tuesday morning, he expects to have donated 300 in total — a leap from last year’s drive, when Quintana said that his business was struggling, and he had to make a difficult choice between his smoothie shop and his turkey drive.
“Last year was one of the years that it was hard for us to make the decision of whether or not to donate turkeys or to pay our bills. We made the decision to donate turkeys where it may have not felt like the smartest decision, but we felt like it was the right thing to do, and fast forward, we did twice as much this year,” he said.
Quintana said that he’s grateful for all of the community members who worked to support his turkey drive, including his business and life partner, Rosa Sosa. He hopes that families enjoying his Thanksgiving turkeys will, if given the opportunity, pay it forward some day.
“We give them to the teachers so they can distribute them to the students so they can keep their relationships with them, but there’s nothing in it for me. I like to have them build the relationships so that some way, later down the road, one person sees it and it changes their perspective and they pay it forward. That’s how it was for me.”
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected]